John Comaroff

John Comaroff

Hugh K. Foster Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology
On Leave
John Comaroff

Research and Teaching Interests

The anthropology of crime and policing; the anthropology of the colonial and postcolonial state; contemporary African political and legal systems; the historical anthropology of colonialism; the anthropology of modernity; anthropological theory; Southern Africa.

John Comaroff is the Hugh K. Foster Professor of African and African-American Studies and of Anthropology, and Oppenheimer Research Scholar, at Harvard University. Before joining the Department of African and African American Studies, John Comaroff was the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. He is also an Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town, and an Affiliated Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation. His current research in South Africa is on crime, policing, and the workings of the state, on democracy and difference, and on postcolonial politics. His authored and edited books include, with Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution (2 vols), Ethnography and the Historical ImaginationModernity and its MalcontentsCivil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa, Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of NeoliberalismLaw and Disorder in the PostcolonyEthnicity, Inc.,  Zombies et Frontières A l'Ere NéolibéraleTheory from the South: or, how Euro-America is evolving toward Africa, and The Truth Abouth Crime: Policing and the Metaphysics of Disorder.  With Jean Comaroff he is currently completing The Return of Khulekani Khumalo, Zombie Captive: Law, Imposture, and Personhood in Postcolonial South Africa, and co-editing Chiefship and the Customary in Contemporary Africa

Curriculum Vitae

Articles and interviews

Interview with Jean and John Comaroff, Interviews With Leading Thinkers, Kalman Applebaum (interviewer)

 

Contact Information

Tozzer Anthropology Building 206
21 Divinity Ave.
Cambridge MA 02138