The Catholic University of America

Jon W. Anderson, Department Chair

Dr. Jon W. Anderson (PhD, University of North Carolina, 1979)
Ordinary Professor
Office: 8 Marist
Phone: 202-319-5080
Email: anderson[at]cua.edu

CURRENT COURSES | PUBLICATIONS ON-LINE

Dr. Anderson is an anthropologist who has done research on tribalism in Afghanistan, Islamic cosmology in Pakistan, Catholics in the Bible Belt South and now on the information revolution in the Middle East, where he has studied Internet pioneering in Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.  He's lectured widely - recently at the universities of Westminster and Durham in the UK, Lund in Sweden, Lyon in France, MIT, Stanford, George Washington and Georgetown, where he is co-director of the Arab Information Project of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.  His current interests are civil society, cyberculture and globalization in the Internet age, which are reflected in a keynote address on Blogging, Networked Publics and the Politics of Communication for a symposium of the University of Arizona's School of Journalism.

He has served as editor of the multidisciplinary Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, Program Chair of the American Anthropological Association, chair of its Advisory Group on Electronic Communication, President of the Middle East Section of the AAA, on an SSRC Steering Committee for Information Technology & International Cooperation and is currently on the international board of the World Congress of Middle East Studies (WOCMES).

Some recent publications:

  • "Electronic Media and New Muslim Publics" in The New Cambridge History of Islam, Vol. 6 Muslims & Modernity (2009)
  • "Nouveaux médias et nouveaux publics dans le monde Arab" in Les Arabes parlant aux Arabes: La révolution de l'information dans le monde arabe edited by Yves Gonzalez-Quijano & Tourya Guaaybess (2009)
  • "Des communautés virtuelles? Vers une théorie techno-pratique d'Internet dans le monde arabe" Maghreb-Machrek (Winter 2004)
  • "New Media, New Publics: Reconfiguring the Public Sphere of Islam" Social Research (Fall 2003)
  • "Globalizing politics and religion in the Muslim world" Journal of Electronic Publishing (September 1997)
  • "The Middle East & North Africa" Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology (1996)
  • 'Cybarites', Knowledge Workers and New Creoles on the Information Superhighway" Anthropology Today (August 1995)

 
A sample of earlier ones:

  • "There are no Khans anymore: economic development & social change in tribal Afghanistan" The Middle East Journal (1978)
  • "Social structure & the veil: comportment & the composition of interaction in Afghanistan" Anthropos (1982)
  • "Khan and khel: dialectics of Pakhtun tribalism"  In The Conflict of Tribe & State in Iran & Afghanistan, 1800-1980, edited by Richard Tapper (1983)
  • "How Afghans define themselves in relation to Islam"  In Revolutions & Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives, edited by M. Nazif Shahrani & Robert L. Canfield (1984)
  • "Popular mythologies and subtle theologies: the phenomenology of Muslim identity in Afghanistan" In Discourse and the Social Life of Meaning, edited by Phyllis Chock & June Wyman (1986)
  • "Reinventing the shape of meaning: ambiguities in the ontology of ethnography" Anthropological Quarterly (1986)
  • "Ethnic dilemmas in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan"  In Soviet-American Relations with Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, edited by Hafeez Malik (1987)
  • "Poetics & politics in ethnographic texts: a view from the colonial ethnography of Afghani­stan"  In Writing the Social Text: Poetics & Politics in Social Science Discourse, edited by Richard H. Brown (1991)
  • "Rhetorical Objectivity" In Postmodern Representations: Truth, Power & Mimesis in the Human Sciences and Public Culture, edited by Richard H. Brown (1995)
  • "Conspiracy Theories, Premature Entextualization & Popular Poltical Analysis" Arab Studies Journal  (Spring 1996)
  • "Interpretation in Middle East Ethnography" American Ethnologist (February 1997)

Dr. Anderson's Books