Michael Herzfeld
Michael Herzfeld is Ernest E. Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University; IIAS Visiting Professor of Critical Heritage Studies Emeritus, Leiden University; and a member of the doctoral program in Beni Culturali, Formazione e Territorio, University of Rome “Tor Vergata.” Author of thirteen books (most recently Subversive Archaism: Troubling Traditionalists and the Politics of National Heritage, 2022 and Lo Stato nazione e i suoi mali, 2024) and numerous articles and reviews, and producer of two ethnographic films, he has served as editor of American Ethnologist (1995-98) and Journal of Modern Greek Studies (2023-24), and has just joined the editorial collective of HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. He is also editor-at-large (responsible for “Polyglot Perspectives”) at Anthropological Quarterly, and is co-editor of “Asian Heritages” (Amsterdam University Press) and “New Anthropologies of Europe” (Berghahn). His research (primarily in Greece, Italy, and Thailand) has addressed historic conservation and gentrification, the dynamics of nationalism and bureaucracy, crypto-colonialism, and the ethnography of knowledge.
Films
"Monti Moments: Men's Memories in the Heart of Rome"
Produced by Michael Herzfeld.
39 min. Color. 2007.
Available as: VHS and DVD
Books
Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome; University of Chicago Press; March 2009.
Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece; Austin: University of Texas Press. 1982. Paperback reprint, Pella (New York), 1986; Greek edn., Athens: Alexandria.
The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1985. Paperback edn., 1988.
Anthropology Through the Looking-Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1987. Paperback ed., 1989. Greek edition, Athens: Alexandria; Portuguese edition, Lisbon: Difel; Croatian edition in preparation). J.I. Staley Prize
A Place in History: Monumental and Social Time in a Cretan Town; Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1991.
The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy; Oxford: Berg.1992. Paperback reprint, The University of Chicago Press. 1993.
Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State; New York: Routledge.1997.
Italian edition, Naples, L’Ancora. 2001. 2nd, revised U.S. edition. 2005. Serbian edition, Belgrade, XX Vek.
Portrait of a Greek Imagination: An Ethnographic Biography of Andreas Nenedakis;
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1997.
Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society; Oxford: Blackwell; Paris: UNESCO. 2001. Polish and Chinese editions in preparation.
The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value; Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2004.