Stuart Kirsch

Professor of Anthropology

skirsch@umich.edu

Office Information:

207-A West Hall, 1085 S. University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1107
phone: 734.764.2292
hours: Tuesdays 4:15-6:00pm with sign up link or by appointment via email

Sociocultural ; Anthropology

Education/Degree:

PhD University of Pennsylvania, 1991

About

Stuart Kirsch addresses questions about globalization and development in his research, especially concerns about the environment and sustainability. His scholarly interests include climate change, the corporation, design ethnography, engaged anthropology, political ecology, property, and social movements. He is the author of Reverse Anthropology: Indigenous Analysis of Social and Environmental Relations in New Guinea (Stanford University Press 2006); Mining Capitalism: The Relationship between Corporations and their Critics (University of California Press 2014); and Engaged Anthropology: Politics beyond the Text (University of California Press 2018).

Professor Kirsch has worked extensively as an engaged anthropologist, including long-term research and advocacy with people living downstream from the Ok Tedi copper and gold mine in Papua New Guinea and political refugees from West Papua, Indonesia. He has consulted for the Nuclear Claims Tribunal in the Marshall Islands; on conservation in Papua New Guinea; on indigenous land rights in Guyana, the Solomon Islands, and Suriname; and with an engineering firm that designs machinery for the mining industry. He has held visiting research appointments at the University of Cambridge, Goldsmiths (University of London), Notre Dame, and Yale.

Professor Kirsch is currently working on the five-year research project Transitions: Pathways to a Post-Carbon Future supported by the NOMIS Foundation in Switzerland. He teaches courses on the Anthropocene, environmental anthropology, indigenous political movements, and the anthropology of property. He is a one of the convenors of ethnography lab for postfieldwork students writing their dissertations.

Research topic(s)

climate change
corporations
design ethnography
engaged anthropology
indigenous movements
political ecology
property

Affiliation(s)

Anthropology & History
Program in the Environment
Human Rights Center
Science, Technology, & Society
Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Award(s)

2023 EHESS Visiting Professorship
2020 NOMIS Foundation
2018 UM Faculty Recognition Award
2016 Kellogg Institute for International Studies
2010 American Council of Learned Societies
2009 Michigan Humanities Award
2008 ESRC-SSRC
2007 Program in Agrarian Studies
2000 University of Cambridge
1998 Royal Anthropological Institute
1996 National Endowment for the Humanities
1996 Wenner-Gren Foundation
1990 Fulbright-Hays
1989 National Science Foundation

Highlighted Work and Publications

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Engaged Anthropology: Politics beyond the Text

Stuart Kirsch

Does anthropology have more to offer than just its texts? In this timely and remarkable book, Stuart Kirsch shows how anthropology can—and why it should—become more engaged with the problems of the world. Engaged Anthropology draws on the author’s experiences working with indigenous peoples fighting for their environment, land rights, and political sovereignty. Including both short interventions and collaborations spanning decades, it recounts interactions with lawyers and courts, nongovernmental organizations, scientific experts, and transnational corporations. This unflinchingly...

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Mining Capitalism: The Relationship between Corporations and their Critics

Kirsch. Stuart

Corporations are among the most powerful institutions of our time, but they are also responsible for a wide range of harmful social and environmental impacts. Consequently, political movements and nongovernmental organizations increasingly contest the risks that corporations pose to people and nature. Mining Capitalism examines the strategies through which corporations manage their relationships with these critics and adversaries. By focusing on the conflict over the Ok Tedi copper and gold mine in Papua New Guinea, Stuart Kirsch tells the story of a slow-moving environmental disaster and the...

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Reverse Anthropology: Indigenous Analysis of Social and Environmental Relations in New Guinea

Stuart Kirsch

While ethnography ordinarily privileges anthropological interpretations, this book attempts the reciprocal process of describing indigenous modes of analysis. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research with the Yonggom people of New Guinea, the author examines how indigenous analysis organizes local knowledge and provides a framework for interpreting events, from first contact and colonial rule to contemporary interactions with a multinational mining company and the Indonesian state.This book highlights Yonggom participation in two political movements: an international campaign against the Ok...