Section: Social Anthropology

Richard Baxstrom

Name
Dr Richard Baxstrom
Title
Lecturer
Organisation
Social Anthropology, School of Social and Political Science
University of Edinburgh
Address
5.29 Chrystal Macmillan Building 15a George Square Edinburgh UK EH8 9LD
Telephone
+44 (0)131 650 4051
E-Mail
URL
http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/staff/social_anthropology/baxstrom_richard
Richard Baxtrom

Office Hours:

Tuesdays, 1-3pm

 

Research Interests:

  • Malaysia and Southeast Asia
  • Urban and Legal Anthropology
  • Religion and Ritual
  • The anthropology of disability, particularly blindness
  • Cinema and Popular Culture

PhD Supervision:

Interested in supervising students in areas related to:

  • Malaysia and Southeast Asia
  • Everyday life in urban settings
  • Popular religious practices, ritual, and magic
  • Popular culture, particularly cinema and visual anthropology

Biographical Statement:

Richard Baxstrom's research interests include Malaysia and Southeast Asia, everyday life in urban settings, law, religion, and popular culture, particularly cinema. His first book regarding problems of belief and experience in urban Malaysia was published in 2008 and he has co-edited a volume and DVD entitled anthropologies that was also released in 2008. Currently he is completing (with Todd Meyers) a manuscript regarding cinema entitled Cinema/Thinking/Affect: Notions of the Human in Film. Portions of this work have been published in Parachute: review d'art contemporain (2005) and in a special issue of Rue Descartes (2006) entitled "À Quoi Pense Le Cinéma?" His next ethnographic project will be a study of an urban community of blind and partially sighted persons in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 2006 and, in addition to Edinburgh, he has also taught at Johns Hopkins University, the Maryland Institute College of Art and Gettysburg College.

Selected Publications:

2009 (forthcoming). “Cities of Slow Spirits,” in Concepts of Life (eds. Meyers, Bennett, Marrati). Stanford: Stanford University Press (Cultural Memory in the Present series).

2008  Houses in Motion: The Experience of Place and the Problem of Belief in Urban Malaysia. Stanford: Stanford University Press (Cultural Memory in the Present series).

2008  anthropologies, editor (with Todd Meyers) and contributor. Baltimore: Creative Capitalism.

2008 "Quand le public n'en est pas un/When Publics Go Public [Creative Capitalism]" with Todd Meyers, in Esse: arts + opinions. Montreal. No. 63 (special issue: Actions réciproques/Mutual Actions). 

2007 "Living Between Promise and Danger: the Law, Urban Development, and the Transformation of Everyday Life in Kuala Lumpur". Edinburgh. Edinburgh Papers in South Asian Studies, Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh. 

2006. “Dead Man de Jim Jarmusch: La Poésie du fusil Arriflex” (tr: “Arriflex Shotgun Poetry: Jarmusch’s Dead Man”), with Todd Meyers, Stefanos Geroulanos (French translator: Paola Marrati), in Rue Descartes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France (PUF). No. 53 (special issue: A quoi pense le cinéma?).

2006. “Cinema Thinking Affect: The Hustler’s Soft Magic,” with Todd Meyers, in Parachute: review d’art contemporain. Montreal. No. 121 (special issue: Extra Humain/Extra Human).

2005. “Networks Actual and Potential: Think Tanks, War Games and the Creation of Contemporary American Politics” with Deborah Poole, Bhrigupati Singh, Naveeda Khan, in Theory and Event. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Vol. 8, No. 4.

2000. "Governmentality, Bio-Power and the Emergence of the Malayan-Tamil Subject on the Plantations of Colonial Malaya," in Crossroads:  An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. DeKalb:  Northern Illinois University. Vol. 14, No. 2.

 

This page was published on 22 September 2008


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