Bruce Kapferer

Bruce Kapferer (born 1940 in Sydney) is a prominent Australian social anthropologist. He was raised in Sydney, and studied anthropology at the University of Sydney. Having done field research among the Bisa of Lake Bangweulu followed by research in Kabwe (Zambia), he went on to the University of Manchester to study with Max Gluckman and Clyde Mitchell, and received his Ph.D in 1969.

After years of teaching at Manchester, he founded the anthropology department at the University of Adelaide being joined two years later by Kingsley Garbett, a colleague from Manchester, who came as Reader. Kapferer founded the journal Social Analysis with support of Michael Roberts who was succeeded as the main editor by Kingsley Garbett. He is currently professor of social anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway ^[1] and is once again the editor of Social Analysis. He is also one of the main editors of the journal Anthropological Theory, currently published by SAGE Publications.

Kapferer's research interests span from Africa to Asia, and include ritual, thematically healing systems and folk drama, Buddhist cosmology, ethnic identity, nationalism and violence,Globalisation and State Sovereignty, Urban Politics and ecological systems.

Academic positions

• Commonwealth Scholar & Research Affiliate, Rhodes-Livingstone Institute (later the Institute For African Studies), Zambia 1963-1966;
• Lecturer, Senior Lecturer , University of Manchester 1966-1973;
• Foundation Professor, University of Adelaide 1973-1985;
• Professor, University College London 1985 -1996;
• Foundation Professor, James Cook University 1996 - 1999;
• Professor, University of Bergen 1999 to date.
• Visiting Professor, University of California, Los Angeles
• Visiting Professor, University of Stockholm
• Visiting Professor, University of Copenhagen
• Visiting Professor, Göteborg University

Fellowships

• Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California
• Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Institute For Advanced Studies, Hebrew University
• Centre for Cultural Research, University of Aarhus

Selected publications

• 2005. (ed). "Oligarchs and Oligopolies: New Formations of Global Power". Berghahn Books: New York and Oxford.
• 2005. (ed). "The Retreat of the Social: The Rise and RISE of Reductionism". Berghahn Books: New York and Oxford.
• 2004. (ed). "State, sovereignty, war: civil violence in emerging global realities". Berghahn Books: New York and Oxford.
• 2003. (ed). "Beyond Rationalism: Rethinking Magic, Witchcraft and Sorcery". Berghahn Books: New York & Oxford.
• 2003. "Introduction: Outside All Reason - Magic, Sorcery and Epistemology in Anthropology". In "Beyond Rationalism"
• 2003. "Sorcery, Modernity and the Constitutive Imaginary: Hybridising Continuities". In "Beyond Rationalism"
• 2002. (Editor) "The World Trade Center and Global Crisis". Social Analysis, Forum 46(1):92-152.
• 2002. "Foundation and Empire (with apologies to Isaac Asimov): A Consideration of Hardt and Negri's Empire". Review Article. Social Analysis 46(1):167-79.
• 2002. "Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Culture of the State. The 17th Edvard Westermarck Memorial Lecture". Suomen Anthropologi 27(2):4-23.
• 2001. "Sorcery and the Shape of Globalization". Suomen Anthropologi 26(1):4-28.
• 1998. "Legends of People, Myths of State: Violence, Intolerance and Political Culture in Sri Lanka and Australia". Second edition. Crawford Press. First published 1988 by the Smithsonian Institution Press.
• 1997. "The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power". Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
• 1983. "A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka". Bloomington: Indiana University press.
• 1972. "Strategy and Transaction in an African Factory", Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• 1969. "Norms and the Manipulation of Relationships in a Work Context", in Social Networks in Urban Situations, edited by J. C. Mitchell. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

References

• Bruce Kapferer - An interview. Antropolog Nytt. 3/2000.
• Bruce Kapferer. AnthroBase.

External links

• Staff page at University of Bergen