Akhil Gupta
Professor
I have been doing research on call centers in India since 2009. My research projects have led me from studying agriculture to state development agencies to multinational corporations. I am interested in the themes of contemporary capitalism, development, postcoloniality, globalization, and the state. My empirical research interrogates anthropological and social theory from its margins by paying attention to the experience of peasants and other groups of poor people in India. Combining cultural and sociological analyses of institutions and social life with questions raised by postcolonial theory, I use rigorous and intensive ethnographic research as a basis to rethink some major questions in social theory dealing with space, place, and temporality. I employ anthropology’s traditional emphasis on a deep understanding of a place or people as a vantage point from which to critique and expand received ideas in social theory. My interest in these themes is complemented by sustained attention to the rethinking and renewal of anthropological methods.
Degrees
Ph.D. Engineering-Economic Systems, Stanford University (1988)
Awards
2009 Visiting Professor, Ecole des Hautes Etudes En Sciences Sociales, Paris. May-June.
2008 Visiting Professor, Danish Research School of Anthropology and Ethnography, August-September.
2007 Goel Lecturer, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Grants
2009 American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Fellowship
Selected Publications
2012 Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India. Duke Univ. Press.
2010 The Indian State After Liberalization, (edited with K. Sivaramakrishnan), Routledge.
2006 The Anthropology of the State: A Reader (edited with Aradhana Sharma), Blackwell.
2002 Caste and Outcast (edited with Gordon Chang and Purnima Mankekar), Stanford Univ. Press.
1998 Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India, Duke University Press.
1997 Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology (edited with James Ferguson), Duke University Press.
1997 Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science (edited with James Ferguson), Univ. of California Press.
Research
Ethnography of information technology, the state and development, anthropology of food, environmental anthropology, space and place, history of anthropology, applied anthropology; India and South Asia
Current Courses by Term
Individual Studies in Anthropology
Previous Courses by Term
Culture, Power, Social Change
Anthropology of Food
Culture, Power, Social Change
Culture, Power, Social Change
Development Anthropology
Selected Topics in Anthropology
Selected Topics in Anthropology
Anthropology of Food
Selected Topics in Anthropology
Development Anthropology
Economic Development and Culture Change
Anthropology of Gender and International Development
Selected Topics in Anthropology
Anthropology of Food
Selected Topics in Anthropology
Individual Studies for USIE Facilitators
Selected Topics in Anthropology
Development Anthropology
Introduction to Development Studies: Economic Development and Culture Change
Core Seminar: Sociocultural Anthropology -- Scientific and Interpretive Frameworks in Contemporary Anthropology
Anthropology of Food
Development Anthropology
Introduction to Development Studies: Economic Development and Culture Change
Anthropology of Food
Development Anthropology
Introduction to Development Studies: Economic Development and Culture Change
Selected Topics in Social Anthropology
Core Seminar: Sociocultural Anthropology -- Scientific and Interpretive Frameworks in Contemporary Anthropology
Selected Topics in Social Anthropology
Selected Topics in Anthropology
Selected Topics in Cultural Anthropology
Selected Topics in Anthropology
Selected Topics in Cultural Anthropology
Selected Topics in Anthropology
Selected Topics in Cultural Anthropology
Comparative Political Institutions
Selected Topics in Anthropology
Selected Topics in Cultural Anthropology
Comparative Political Institutions
Previous Courses by Course
Culture, Power, Social Change
Anthropology of Food
2019 Winter Quarter
Development Anthropology
2018 Winter Quarter
Selected Topics in Anthropology
2017 Spring Quarter
2017 Winter Quarter
2016 Fall Quarter
2015 Spring Quarter
2015 Winter Quarter
2014 Fall Quarter
2010 Winter Quarter
2008 Fall Quarter
2008 Spring Quarter
2007 Fall Quarter
Anthropology of Food
2016 Fall Quarter
2015 Winter Quarter
2013 Winter Quarter
2010 Fall Quarter
Economic Development and Culture Change
2016 Winter Quarter
Development Anthropology
2016 Winter Quarter
2013 Fall Quarter
2011 Fall Quarter
2010 Fall Quarter
Anthropology of Gender and International Development
2015 Spring Quarter
Individual Studies for USIE Facilitators
2014 Fall Quarter
Introduction to Development Studies: Economic Development and Culture Change
Core Seminar: Sociocultural Anthropology -- Scientific and Interpretive Frameworks in Contemporary Anthropology
2013 Spring Quarter
2010 Spring Quarter
Selected Topics in Social Anthropology
2010 Spring Quarter
2010 Winter Quarter
Selected Topics in Cultural Anthropology
2008 Fall Quarter
2008 Spring Quarter
2008 Winter Quarter
2007 Spring Quarter
Comparative Political Institutions