Pál Nyíri

Professor of global history from an anthropological perspective at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Pál Nyíri has doctorates in history from Moscow and in sociology from Budapest. He has also studied chemistry in New Jersey and Asian studies in Oregon and held research fellowships in Oxford, Budapest, Berlin, and Singapore. His current research focuses on the nexus between Chinese migration and ideas of development, particularly in Southeast Asia. His latest books are Mobility and Cultural Authority in Contemporary China and, with Joana Breidenbach, Seeing Culture Everywhere … from Genocide to Consumer Habits (both University of Washington Press). See his blog.

Against culturalism.

This new collection of eminent French anthropologist Jean-Loup Amselle’s essays, along with the Comaroffs’ Ethnicity, Inc., Peter Geschiere’s The Perils of Belonging, and Seeing Culture Everywhere by Joana Breidenbach and this reviewer, ...

05.03.2012

Evaluating Academia.

There is a growing body of literature and events critiquing the spread of ‘audit cultures’[1] in Western research institutions. In brief, these audit cultures imply the assignment of numerical values to the ...

12.07.2010

Extraterritoriality.

Dear Rector, Ladies and Gentlemen,A few years ago, Liu Jianjun, a former official from the city of Baoding, near Peking, achieved a measure of fame in China’s media through his efforts to ...

23.11.2009

French Perspectives on Tourism: Act 2.

The social sciences have long been reluctant to take tourism seriously. Despite tourism’s obvious prominence as a social practice in the lives of hundreds of millions, when American sociologist Dean MacCannell wrote ...

24.04.2006

Das Erbe der Menschheit.

The concept of “heritage” arose as from nineteenth-century efforts by emergent modern Western nation-states to endow their landscapes and built environments with national significance. Today, however, some of the central activists of ...

22.09.2005