Akhil Gupta
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Akhil Gupta | |
|---|---|
 Akhil Gupta in 2020 | |
| Born | 1959 |
| Occupation(s) | anthropologist, university professor |
| Known for | Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. |
Akhil Gupta (born 1959) is an Indian-American anthropologist whose research focuses on the anthropology of the state, development, as well as on postcolonialism. He is currently a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a former president of the American Anthropological Association.[1]
Education
[edit]Gupta attended St. Xavier's School in Jaipur and graduated in 1974. Gupta did his undergraduate studies in Mechanical Engineering from Western Michigan University, following that with a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[2] Gupta then spent the next eight years getting a Ph.D. in Engineering-Economic Systems from Stanford University.[citation needed]
Career
[edit]Research
[edit]In 1992, while still at Stanford, Gupta along with fellow Stanford anthropologist James Ferguson wrote the well-known and oft-cited essay, "Beyond 'Culture': Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference."[3] which argued that the analytic concept of culture had remained largely unproblematized by anthropological discourse, and that anthropologists of the day had failed to recognize and analyze the politics of cultural difference, how such differences were produced, and how such differences were used and abused by the state and by capital. The article argues for the examination of cultural anthropology as an unconscious mechanism of neo-imperialism.[citation needed]
Gupta has done extensive work in rural North India. In his book, Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India, Gupta analyzes if and how post-colonial theory can be applied to subaltern rural places. He attempts to understand the growth of modern India through its agricultural sector. Most of his work has taken place in the western part of the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Gupta has also tried to understand the ethnography of the state - as lived, understood and discussed in rural India.[citation needed]
He is also a leading figure in the anthropology of the state, and is the co-editor of a book of collected essays called The Anthropology of the State: A Reader.[4]
Tenureship controversy
[edit]Gupta was unanimously approved for tenure in 1996 at Stanford, but was then denied tenure by the dean John Shoven. However, in the face of outcry from across the academy as well as mobilization by students, the dean's decision was overturned.[5][6][7]
Selected publications
[edit]- Postcolonial Developments: Agriculture in the Making of Modern India, 1997
- Editor, The Anthropology of the State: A Reader (with Aradhana Sharma), 2006
- Editor, Caste and Outcast (with Gordon Chang and Purnima Mankekar), 2002
- Editor, Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology (with James Ferguson), 1997
- Editor, Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science (with James Ferguson), 1997
References
[edit]- ^ "AAA Past Presidents - Connect with AAA". www.americananthro.org. Retrieved 17 February 2023.
- ^ "Well-known Anthropologist visits UCT". University of Cape Town. 15 August 2011. Retrieved 21 May 2024.
- ^ Gupta, Akhil; James Ferguson (February 1992). "Beyond "Culture": Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference". Cultural Anthropology. 7 (1): 6–23. doi:10.1525/can.1992.7.1.02a00020. JSTOR 656518.
- ^ Aradhana Sharma; Gupta, Akhil (2007). The anthropology of the state : a reader ([Nachdr.] ed.). Malden: Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-1467-7.
- ^ "Tenure decision on anthropologist to be reconsidered (5/97)". news.stanford.edu. Archived from the original on 20 August 2022. Retrieved 6 July 2021.
- ^ "Faculty Board grants tenure to anthropologist Gupta (8/97)". news.stanford.edu. Archived from the original on 10 September 2022. Retrieved 6 July 2021.
- ^ Ann Gibbons, "Cultural Divide at Stanford", Science 20 June 1997: Vol. 276, Issue 5320, pp. 1783-1784.
