Purity, Danger & Violence: Torn Religions in the Contemporary World
Purity, Danger & Violence: Torn Religions in the Contemporary World
Michael M. J. Fischer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Monday, December 3, 2007, 2:00-3:30pm
Gervase Conference Room
Michael Fischer is Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies at M.I.T., and was Director of the Science and Technology Studies program. He has done anthropological fieldwork in the Caribbean (Jamaica), the Middle East (Iran), South Asia (India), and the U.S. on social change and religion (Protestants and Afro-Carribean religions in Jamaica; Zoroastrians, Shi'ites, Baha'is, Jews in Iran; Jains and Parsis in India); on bazaars, merchants, craftsmen, and agriculture in Iran, Jamaica, India, and Antwerp; on revolutionary processes in Iran; on cinema in Poland, India, and Iran; on communities of scientists, engineers, and physicians in India and the U.S. He teaches courses on social theory, ethnography, anthropology and film, social and ethical issues in the biosciences and biotechnologies, law and ethics on the electronic frontier. He has taught at the University of Chicago, Harvard, and Rice before coming to MIT. He's been a Fulbright Lecturer in Brazil, a CIES Fellow in India, and a Senior Fellow at the Smithsonian. He is the author of Zoroastrian Iran Between Myth and Praxis (PhD 1973); Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (1980), Anthropology as Cultural Critique (with George Marcus, 1986, 2nd edition 1999), Debating Muslims (with Mehdi Abedi, 1990), the award-winning Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice (2003), and Mute Dreams, Blind Owls, and Dispersed Knowledges: Persian Poesis in the Transnational Circuitry (2004). He is famed for his interpretive history of anthropology: “Culture and Cultural Analysis as Experimental Systems” Cultural Anthropology 2007 22(1): 1-65.
Co-Sponsored with the Anthropology Program, Georgetown University
This lecture series features well-known anthropologists of religion and politics, drawn from major universities. They are invited to explore the complex and changing nexus of religion and identity, drawing on diverse fieldwork from around the world. Sensitive issues of “race” and its politicization, multiculturalism, global and local media influence, colonial legacies, missionary activities, and “cultural clashes” are highlighted to enable the broader Georgetown community to consider the anthropology of religion in new ways.