Speaker: Michael Herzfeld (Harvard University, the United States)

Date: June 13, 2014 – Friday

Time: 10:00

Venue: England Hall, Hongkou Campus

Language: English

Summary: Greece and Thailand are the key examples of what the speaker has called “crypto-colonialism” – the process whereby Western colonial powers have dominated weaker countries by means of cultural control and a version of nation-state identity that presents a form of hegemony as national independence. Recent events in these two countries reveal the lingering effects of this condition of “dominion in disguise.”  Although the current situations of Greece and Thailand are strikingly different, their partially parallel trajectories have explanatory power in seeing how differently they have evolved over the past half-century and understanding the very different crises that afflict each of them today.

Speaker Biography: Michael Herzfeld is the Ernest E. Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences and the Curator of European Ethnology in the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. Hewas educated at the Universities of Cambridge (B.A. in Archaeology and Anthropology, 1969), Athens (non-degree program in Greek Folklore, 1969-70), Birmingham (M.A., Modern Greek Studies, 1972; D.Litt., 1989); and Oxford (Social Anthropology, D.Phil., 1976). Before moving to Harvard, he taught at Vassar College (1978-80) and Indiana University (1980-91) (where he served as Associate Chair of the Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies, 1980-85, and as Chair of the Department of Anthropology, 1987-90). Lord Simon Visiting Professor at the University of Manchester in 1994, he has also taught at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (1995), Paris, at the Università di Padova (1992), the Università di Roma “La Sapienza” (1999-2000), and the University of Melbourne (intermittently since 2004), and has held a visiting research appointments at the Australian National University and the University of Sydney (1985), at the University of Adelaide, and at the Université de Paris-X (Nanterre) (1991).