Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria
Department of Anthropology
Brandeis University
P.O. Box 549110, MS 006
Waltham, MA 02454-9110
janjaria@ucsc.edu
(781) 736-2210
AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION
Cultural anthropology, urban studies, the state, informal economy, transnational processes; South Asia.
Background and Description
Jonathan Anjaria is a cultural anthropologist whose research interests include urban studies, anthropology of the state, informal economy and transnational processes. In particular, he is interested in the ways conflicts over the mundane uses of public space index larger questions relating to urban development and desires for world-belonging in postcolonial contexts. His dissertation, “Mumbai Modern: Street vendors, public space and the making of a global city” is based on fieldwork conducted in Mumbai, and investigates the everyday politics and practices of street vending, the mundane operations of the municipality, and elite civic activism which seeks to ‘take back’ the city from the poor. His essay, “On Street Life and Urban Disasters: Lessons from the ‘Third World’” is forthcoming in the edited volume Exploring the Urban After Katrina: Place, community, connections and memory (Eds. Phil Steinberg and Rob Shields, University of Georgia Press) and his essay “The Mall and the Street: Practices of public consumption in Mumbai” is forthcoming in the edited volume The Lived Experiences of Public Consumption (Ed. Daniel Cook, Palgrave). He has taught in the anthropology departments at Stanford University and University of California, Santa Cruz, and is currently a dissertation completion fellow with Mellon/ American Council of Learned Societies. He received his B.A. from Harvard in 2001, and is expected to receive his PhD from UC Santa Cruz in 2008. He currently lives in Cambridge with his partner and two children.