A university is not a factory
Keir Martin and Thomas Hylland Eriksen Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo This article was translated into Norwegian and published online at morgenbladet.no on 17 January 2019.…
Author: thomashyllanderiksen
Anthropology in Norway – a potted history
Taking a few steps back, I used the invitation to write an essay about anthropology in Norway as a pretext for delving slightly more deeply into the beginnings…
Boomtown
Here’s a short extract from my new book Boomtown: Runaway Globalisation on the Queensland Coast, which is now available from Pluto Press and your favourite bookshop. Very proud…
Hurdal Ecovillage as an Alternative Ecological Space
Co-written with Hugo Ferreira and published electronically by Tvergastein at https://tvergasteinjournal.weebly.com/ferreira-and-eriksen.html# The stories from Hurdal are Hugo’s, as he has carrie…
Overheating: The TEDx version
In October, 2017, I spoke about Overheating at the annual TEDx event in Trondheim, central Norway. The TED format is ideally short, pithy, eye-catching and jaw-dropping. In other…
A planet afflicted by a high fever
The world is ‘overheated’. Too full and too fast; uneven and unequal. It is the age of the Anthropocene, of humanity’s indelible mark upon the planet. In short, it…
Clashing scales of Brexit
Mainstream newspapers, politicians and commentators across Europe instantly expressed dejection and bitterness in the face of the Brexit outcome, and avid Brexiteers have typically been portrayed as x…
From national icon to neoliberal monument
This text began as a radio essay on BBC Radio 4 in November 2015, later developed into a web essay at Versopolis. It chronicles the shift from the mid…
It’s the culture, stupid! Or is it?
The events in Cologne have sparked controversies across Europe. This time, the topic is not the economic and social costs of the refugee crisis, but questions concerning culture…
The Paris massacre and the Syrian refugee crisis
Two dramatic events, one unfolding over the last several years, the other a sudden shock, currently eclipse all other issues. Syrians desperate to escape their broken country enter…
A prize for Edward Snowden
But will he be able to travel to Norway? A few months ago, it was as if everybody wanted to be Charlie (Hebdo). This gesture was laudable enough…
Sex and temperament: Mead, Bateson and Fortune, New Guinea, 1933.
It was the most complicated of things, a love triangle involving young professionals who were meant to collaborate, and who did, but whose contrasting personalities and diverging agendas immediately…
What´s wrong with the Global North and the Global South?
Originally published by the Global South Study Centre in Cologne, along with a handful of other reflections on the concept of the Global South As a young schoolboy…
Open Access and the academic gift economy
No, I’m not arguing that everything should be free. Just academic articles. And I mean really free, in most senses of the word. Last week, the University of…
She prefers simplicity to paradoxes, answers to dilemmas
‘Yet, one cannot help being disturbed by the fuzzy utopianism and smug righteousness permeating Naomi Klein’s books.’ I’ve been reading Naomi Klein’s new book This Changes Everything…
Whatever happened to prog?
Progressive rock can be seen as a barometer of the Zeitgeist of its time. Not only was there optimism, but there was also a widespread belief that it…
Fossil addiction: Is there a road to recovery?
Published in Norwegian in Dagbladet, 30 October 2014 There is no shortage of knowledge about global environmental and climate problems. It is necessary, therefore, to ask: Why is…
About Progress
Last Saturday, I published a post in Norwegian about the populist Progress Party, currently a junior partner in a Conservative-led government around here. It hadn’t occurred to me that…
Hardcore frihet
Det er anarkisten Lill-Ann Chepstow-Lusty, med bakgrunn blant annet som fotograf i Gateavisa, som sammen med Svein Gullbekk er kurator for Kulturhistorisk museums jubileumsutstilling om frihet, og det…
Abu Nidal and his children
Some years ago, I found myself in the passenger seat of a car trying to make its way through the city centre of Lahore. The traffic was confusing.…