John Comaroff

John L. Comaroff (born January 1, 1945)^[1] is a Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. He is also Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation.

Comaroff was born in Cape Town in 1945 and received his BA at the University of Cape Town in 1968. After college he and his wife left South Africa for the United Kingdom, where he received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics in 1973. His field research focus is on the Tswana people of Southern Africa. He researches and publishes independently and in collaboration with his wife, Jean Comaroff, who is also a distinguished service professor at U of C. His interests also include corporate Christianity, witchcraft, political culture, colonialism, the history of consciousness, politics, historical anthropology, law, post colonialism, modernity, and social theory.

Select recent publications

Independent

• "Governmentality, Materiality, Legality, Modernity: On the Colonial State in Africa." In J-G Deutsch, P. Probst & H. Schmidt, eds., Perspectives on African Modernities. London: James Currey, 2002.

Collaborative with Jean Comaroff

• "Colonizing Currencies: Beasts, Banknotes and the Color of Money in South Africa." In P. Geschiere & W. van Binsbergben, eds., Commodification: Things, Agency, and Identities: The Social Life of Things Revisited. Munster, Germany: LIT, 2006.
• "The Portraits of an Ethnographer as a Young Man: The Photography of Isaac Schapera in 'Old Botswana.'" Anthropology Today. (2006) 22(1):10-17.
• Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (eds.) University of Chicago Press, 2006.
• "Figuring Crime: Quantifacts and the Production of the Un/real." Public Culture. (2006) 18(1):207-44.
• "Reflections on Youth. From the Past to the Postcolony." In A. Honwana and P. De Boek, eds., Makers and Breakers, Made and Broken: Children and Youth as Emerging Categories in Postcolonial Africa. Oxford: James Currey, 2002. Also in G. Downey and M.S. Fisher, eds., Frontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Reflections on the New Economy. Duke University Press (in press).
• "Ethnicity, Inc." (Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning), University Of Chicago Press (July 15, 2009)

Quotes by John Comaroff

"I don't care if students come to share my views. That's irrelevant to my teaching. I just want to see them develop intellectual passions, to see their eyes open, their nerve-endings jangle.^[2]

Sources

• University of Chicago faculty bio page
• American Bar Foundation bio page

Notes