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MICHAEL M.J. FISCHER | Publications

BOOKS

2004
  Mute Dreams, Blind Owls, and Dispersed Knowledges. (Duke University Press)
2003
  Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice. (Duke University Press)
2003

  2nd edition Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution. (University of Wisconsin Press).
1999   2nd Edition. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences (with George Marcus). University of Chicago Press. 228pp.
1990   Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues between Tradition and Postmodernity (with Mehdi Abedi). University of Wisconsin Press. 564 pp.
1986   Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences (with George Marcus). University of Chicago Press. 205 pp.
1980   Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution. Harvard University Press. 314 pp.

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

2007   "The Geoid." In Sherry Turkle, ed. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. MIT Press.
2007   "To Live With What Would Otherwise Be Unendurable: Return(s) to Subjectivities" In Biehl, Joao, Byron Good, and Arthur Kleinman, ed. The Anthropology of Subjectivity. Cal.
2006   "Dialogue with Meron Benveniste and Salim Tamari." in City of Collision: Jerusalem and the Principles.
2006   "Culture and Cultural Analysis," "Sciences, Technology and Society," "Persian Poesis". in Mike Featherstone, ed. Problematizing Global Knowledge. Sage.
2005   "Deep Play, Violence, and Social Reconstruction," in R.A. Shweder and B. Good, ed. Clifford Geertz by His Colleagues. University of Chicago Press.
2003   "Husayn ibn Ali Talib" and "Hasan ibn Ali Talib" in Martin, Richard, ec. Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World. New York: Macmillan Reference.
2001   "Filmic Judgment and Cultural Critique: The Work of Art, Ethics and Religion in Iranian Cinema." In Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber, ed. Religion and Media. Stanford University Press.
2000   "Before Going Digital/Double Digit/Y2000, A Retrospective of Late Editions." Late Editions, 8. Zeroing In on the Year 2000. ed. G. Marcus. U. Chicago Press.
2000   "Calling the Future(s) with Ethnographic and Historiographic Legacy Disciplines: STS @ the Turn []000 .mit.edu" Late Editions, 8. "Zeroing In on the Year 2000. University of Chicago Press.
2000   "Calling the Futures(s)", abbreviated version. In R. Reid and S. Traweek, ed. Culture + Science. Routledge.
2000   "With a Hammer, A Gouge and a Wood Block": The Work of Art and Medicine in the Age of Social Re-Traumatization: The Texas Wood-Cut Art of Dr. Eric Avery." In G. Marcus, ed. Para-Sites (Late Editions 7). University of Chicago Press
2000   "If Derrida is the Gomez-Pena of Philosophy, What are the Genres of Social Science? Just Gaming: The Y2K Computer Bug and Other Uncertainties -- A Critical Simulation Game." In G. Marcus, ed. Para-Sites (Late Editions 7) University of Chicago Press.
1999   "Emergent Forms of Life: Anthropologies of Late or Post Modernities." Annual Reviews of Anthropology, 28:455-78.
1999   "Worlding Cyberspace: Towards an Ethnography in Time, Space and Theory" In G. Marcus, ed. Critical Anthropology Now. School for American Research.
1998   "Filmic Judgment and Cultural Critique: Postcommunist Polish & Postrevolution- ary Iranian Film." in Dimitra Gefou-Madianou, ed., Recent Trends in Anthropological Theory and Ethnography. Athens: Ellinika Grammata. (in Greek)
1997   "Functionalism," "Structuralism," "Interpretive Anthropology," "Critical Anthropology," "Postmodern Anthropology." In Thomas J. Barfield, ed., Dictionary of Anthropology. London: Blackwell's.
1997   "Filming Poland: the Ethnographic (Documentary, Narrative) Films of Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz." in G. Marcus, ed. Cultural Producers in Perilous States (LateEditions, Volume 4). University of Chicago Press.
1996   "Critical Anthropology," (with G. Marcus) in David Levinsdon and Melvin Ember, ed. Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology. New York: Henry Holt & Col.
1995   "Qum," and "Bazaar" in John Esposito, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World. Oxford University Press.
1995   "Eye(I)ing the Sciences and their Signifiers (Language, Tropes, Autobiographers):InterViewing for a Cultural Studies of Science and Technology." in G. Marcus, ed. Technoscientific Imaginaries. ( Late Editions, Volume II). Univ. of Chicago Press.
1995   "Film as Ethnography and Cultural Critique in the Late Twentieth Century." in
Diane Carson and Lester Friedman, ed. Shared Differences: Multicultural Media and Practical Pedagogy. University of Illinois Press.
1995   "Starting Over: How, What, and for Whom Does One Write about Refugees? The Poetics and Politics of Refugee Film as Ethnographic Access in a Media-Saturated World." in E. Valentine Daniel and John Chr. Knudsen, ed. Mistrusting Refugees. University of California Press.
1994   "Autobiographical Voices (1,2,3) and Mosaic Memory: Experimental Sondage in the (Post) Modern World." In Kathleen Ashley, Leigh Gilmore, & Gerald Peters, ed.. Autobiography and Postmodernism. University of Massachussets Press.
1993   "Six to Eight Characters in Search of Armenian Civil Society amidst the Carnivalization of History." in G. Marcus, ed. Perilous States (Late Editions, I), U. Chicago Press.
1993   "Working through the Other: The Jewish, Spanish, Turkish, Iranian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and German Unconscious of Polish Culture; or, One Hand Clapping: Dialogue, Silences, and the Mourning of Polish Romanticism." in G. Marcus, ed. Perilous States (Late Editions, I). Univ. of Chicago Press.
1993   "An Iranian Village Boyhood." (with Mehdi Abedi). in Edmund Burke III, ed. Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East. Univ. of California Press.
1993   "Five Frames for Understanding the Iranian Revolution." In Kenneth Kulman, ed. Critical Moments in Religious History. Mercer Press.
1992   "Reading for the Ethnography" in D.W. Cohen and E.S. Atieno-Odhiambo. Burying S.M. Heinemann.
1990   "Qur'anic Dialogues: The Poetics and Politics of Islam for Muslims and for Us." in Tullio Maranhao, ed., The Interpretation of Dialogue. University of Chicago Press.
1990   "Sacred Circles: Iranian (Zoroastrian and Shi'ite Muslim) Feasting and Pilgrimage Circuits" in J.S. Scott and P. Simpson-Housley, eds., Sacred Spaces and Profane Places. Greenwood Press.
1989   "Legal Postulates in Flux: Justice, Wit & Hierarchy in Iran." in D. Dwyer, ed., Law and Politics in the Middle East. J.F.Bergin. September.
1987c   "Repetitions in the Revolution." In Shi'ism, Resistance, Revolution. Martin Kramer, ed. Westwood Press.
1986   "Ethnicity and the Postmodern Arts of Memory." In Writing Culture: the Politicsand Poetics of Ethnography. J. Clifford and G. Marcus, eds. University of California Press.
1985   (with Mehdi Abedi). "Foreword" to A Clarification of Questions by Ayatollah S. Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeni, E.T.J. Boruderdi. Westview Press.
1983   "Imam Khomeini: Four Ways of Understanding." in John Esposito, ed., Voices of Islamic Resurgence. Oxford University Press.
1981   `"Supporting the Evolution of Modern Civil Society from a Traditional Base." In Raymond Gastil, ed., Freedom in the World: Political Rights and Civil Liberties. Greenwood Press.
1980   "Competing Ideologies and Social Structures in the Persian Gulf." In A.J. Cottrell, ed., The Persian Gulf States. Johns Hopkins.
1980   "Introduction" to E. Bacon, Central Asians Under Russian Rule. Cornell.
1978   "On Changing the Concept and Position of Persian Women." In L.Beck and N. Keddie, eds. Women in the Muslim World. Harvard University Press.
1977   "Persian Society: Transition & Strain." In H. Amirsadeghi & R.W. Ferrier, ed. Twentieth Century Iran. London: Heinemann.

ARTICLES IN REFERRED JOURNALS

2007   "Four Genealogies for a Recombinant Anthropology of Science and Technology" Cultural Anthropology, 22(3): 539-614.
2007   "Ptolemaic Jouissance and the Anthropology of Kinship: A Commentary on Ager 'The Power of Excess: Royal Incest and the Ptolemaic Dynasty.' Anthropologia.
2007   "Culture and Cultural Analysis as Experimental Systems." Cultural Anthropology, 22(1): 1-65.
2006   "Changing Palestine-Israel Ecologies: Narratives of Water, Land, Conflict and Political Economy, Then, Now and Life to Come." Cultural Politics. Summer..
2006   "Culture and Cultural Analysis" in Theory, Culture and Society, 23 (2-3):340-344.
2006   "Persian Poesis," TCS.
2006   "Science, Technology and Society," TCS.
2005   "Technoscientific Infrastructures and Emergent Forms of Life: A Commentary." American Anthropologist, vol. 107(1).
2001   "In the Science Zone: the Yanamamo and the fight for representation." Anthropology Today. 17(4): 9-14; 17(5):10-13.
2001   "Ethnographic Critique and Technoscientific Narratives: The Old Mole, Ethical Plateaux, and the Governance of Emergent Biosocial Polities." Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry.
1997   "Raising Questions about Rouch" The American Anthropologist. 99(1):140-43.
1994   "Is the Public Sphere Unspeakable in Chinese?" (with Leo Lee and Wang Hui). Public Culture.
1993   "Thinking a Public Sphere in Arabic and Persian." (with Mehdi Abedi). Public Culture, 6(1): 2l9-30.
1993   "Is there a Difference between Public Culture 1789 and 1989? -- A Reply to Greg Urban's Kantianism." Public Culture.
1992   "Reflections on Debating Muslims, A Collaboration in the Humanities and the Social Sciences." Knowledge. 14(1): 124-31.
1991   "Anthropology as Cultural Critique - Inserts for the 1990s: Cultural Studies of Science, Visual-Virtual Realities, and Post-Trauma Polities," Cultural Anthropology 6(4):525-37.
1991   "Uses of Life Histories," Anthropology & Humanism Quarterly, 16(1):24-27.
1991   "Okiek Portraits," American Anthropologist, March; reprinted in Passages, Apr.
1990   "Qur'anic Dialogues," (abbreviated). Translation Perspectives (State University of New York)
1990   "Bombay Talkies, the Word & the World: Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses." Cultural Anthropology, 5(2).
1989   "Museums and Festivals," Cultural Anthropology, Spring 1989.
1988   "Scientific Theory and Critical Hermeneutics." Cultural Anthropology. 3(1).
1987   "Aestheticized Emotions and Critical Hermeneutics" Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. Special Issue: Illness and Healing in the Middle East. M.J. Good, B. Good and M. Fischer, eds.
1985   "Da Antropologia Interpretativa a Antropologia Critica." Anuario Antropologico 83. 55-72.
1985c   "Ima Khomeini: quatro niveis de compreensao (biografia, imagem, politica, gnose)." Religiao e Sociedade. 11(1):21-48.
1984   "Towards a Third World Poetics: Seeing Through Short Stories & Film in the Iranian Culture Area." Knowledge & Society. 5:171-241.
1982   "Islam and the Revolt of the Petit Bourgeoisie." Daedalus. 111(1): 101-25.
1982   "Portrait of a Molla: the Autobiography and Bildungsreman of Aqha Quchani (1875-1943). Persica 10:223-57.
1980   "Becoming Mullah: Reflections on Iranian Clerics in a Revolutionary Age." Iranian Studies. 13(1-4): 83-117.
1977   "Interpretive Anthropology." Reviews in Anthropology. 4(4): 391-404.
1974   "Value Assertion & Stratification: Religion and Marriage in Rural Jamaica." Caribbean Studies. 14(1-2).

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

2007   "Capturing Emergent Forms: Response to Vincent Crapanzano." Anthropos 102: 101-103.
2005   "Changing Ecologies: Narratives of Water, Land, Conflict, and Political Economy, Then and Now, and Life to Come" In Stuart Schoenfield, ed. Palestinian and Israeli Environmental Narratives: Proceedings of a Conference Held in Association with the Middle East Environmental Futures Project. Toronto: York University Center for International & Security Studies, pp. 13-27.
2005   "Persian Minatures: I. Bahs (Debate) in Qum: II. Simulation in Tehran." New Initiative for Middle East Peace (NIMEP) Insights, Vol. 1: 14-24.
2004   Contribution to "The Research Object and the Objectivity of the Researcher." Forum for Anthropology and Culture (St. Petersburg, Russian & Oxford England).
2004   "Introduction" (With Mary-Jo Good) to Issue on Middle East, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 28(3): 251-53.
2003   "Obituary: Lily Kay" Isis. (with S. Jansen and C. Weiner).
2001   "Deep Play and Social Responsibility in Vienna" Keynote Address. Newsletter of the European Association for the Social Study of Science and Technology (EASST).
1998   "The New Media and Human Rights" FDL-AP Quarterly (Forum of Democratic Leaders in the Asia-Pacific Quarterly) [Web site publication]
1997   "Cutting Globalization Down to Size: (How) Do Localization and Culture Matter?" Proceedings, US-Arab Relatinos & The Challenge of Globalization. Casablanca Conference. Foundation on Democratization and Political Change in the Middle East.
1996   "Response to Pnina Werbner's 'Allegories of Imperfection: Magic, Hermeneutics and Passion in The Satanic Verses." Current Anthropology, February, 37(Supplement):71-73.
1996   "Commentary: Science in Anthropology" American Anthropology Newsletter, March, 37(3):48-49, 52; April, May, September.
1996   "Quibbles with the 'Balkan View': response to E.A. Hammel's 'Science and Humanism in Anthropology." American Anthropology Newsletter 36(8):50,52.
1993   "South Asia -- Rewriting the Language of Rights." The State of the Peoples: A Global Human Rights Report on Societies in Danger. Cultural Survival. (Beacon Press).
1992   "Islam and Postmodernity." New Perspectives Quarterly.
1992   "Orientalizing America: Beginnings and Middle Passages." Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP)
1989   "Iranian Revolutionary Posters," Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP)
1982   "From Interpretive to Critical Anthropologies," Trabalhos de Ciencias Socias. Serie Antropologia Social No. 34. (Fundacao Universidade de Brasilia).
1980   "Islam and Islamic Justice," Middle East Executive Reports. January.
1979   "Protest & Revolution in Iran." Harvard International Review. 1(2):1-6.
1978   "In Defense of Ayesha: Women in Iran." New Society.44(818): 537-38, June 8.
1967   "97,98,99...A Gentle Critique," "95,96,97...A Not So Gentle Addition." (Undergraduate education at Johns Hopkins & the LSE), The Vector. 21(2).

REVIEWS

2006   N. Fazeli. Politics of Culture in Iran: Anthropology, Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century. International Journal of Middle East Studies.
2006    M. Strathern. Commons and Borderlands: Working Papers on Interdisciplinarity, Accountavility, and the Flow of Knowledge. American Anthropologist. 108(2): 440-41.
2005    "Biosciences and Biotechnologies as Deep Play and Ethical Plateaus" (review of M. Lock, A. Young, A. Cambrosio, ed. Living and Working with the New Medical Technologies." American Anthropologist. 106(2): 389-91.
2004   T. J. Misa, P. Brey, & A. Feenberg, ed. Modernity and Technology. Anthropological Quarterly.
2004   R.T. Antoun. Understanding Fundamentalism: Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Movements. International Journal of Middle East Studies. May.
2004   M. Lock, A. Young, A. Cambrosio, ed. Living and Working with the New Medical Technologies. American Anthropologist.
1997   D. Haraway. Modest Witness@Second Millenium.FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse. American Anthropologist.
1997   B. Knauft. Genealogies for the Present in Cultural Anthropology. AJS.
1993   A. Ahmed. Islam and Postmodernism. Man.
1992   C. Delaney, The Seed and the Soil: Gender and Cosmology in Turkish Village Society. Choice.
1991   C. von Furer-Haimendorf, Life among Indian Tribes: The Autobiography of an Anthropologist, Choice, April.
1989   M. Caffrey, Ruth Benedict: Stranger in this Land. Choice: November.
1989   R. Fox, Gandhi. Choice.
1988   Ingold, Tim. The Appropriation of Nature: Essays on Human Ecology and Social Relations. Choice: January.
1988   Nettler, Ronald. Past Trials and Present Tribulations: A Muslim Fundamentalist's View of the Jews. Choice: March.
1988   Munson, Henry. Islam and Revolution in the Middle East. Choice, October.
1988   Ackerman, Robert. J. G. Frazer: His Life and Work. Choice, July-August.
1987   Grace Goodell, Elementary Forms of Political Life. Economy and Cultural Change.
1987   Sharma, Ursula. Women's work, class, and the urban household: a study of Shimla, North India. Choice: February.
1987   Jacobson, J. Studies in the Archaeology of India and Pakistan. Choice: March.
1987   Kenny, M. The Passion of Ansel Bourne: multiple personality in American Culture. Choice: May.
1986   N. Charlesworth. Peasants and Imperial Rule: agriculture and agrarian society in the Bombay presidency, 1850-1935. Choice: March.
1986   F. Marglin. Wives of the God-King: the rituals of the devadasis of Puri. Choice.
1986   G. Possehl. Kulli, an exploration of ancient civilization in Asia. Choice: October.
1985   Sorush Irfani. Revolutionary Iran. International Journal of Middle East Studies.
1984   Martin Southwold. Buddhism in Life. Choice: July-August.
1984   J. Finn, ed. Global Economics & Religion. Choice: March.
1984   Nancy & Richard Newell. The Struggle For Afghanistan. Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 18(1).
1983   N. Keddie, ed. Religion & Politics in Iran. The Muslim World. 73(2).
1983   V. Turner, ed. Celebration. Choice: January.
1983   Loring Danforth. The Death Rituals of Rural Greece. Choice: May.
1983   Mahmud Taliqani. Society & Economics in Islam. Choice: June.
1983   Maurice Bloch & Jonathan Parry. Death and Regeneration of Life. Choice: Sept.
1983   G.W. Azoy. Buzkashi: Game & Power in Afghanistan. American Anthropologist. 85(2): 680-81.
1982   Kevin Avruch. American Immigrants in Israel. Ethnohistory.
1982   Hamid Algar. Islam & Revolution: Writings & Declarations of Imam Khomeini. Iranian Studies.
1979   M. Boyce. A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism. Iranian Studies.
1979   A. Green. The Tunisian Ulema 1873-1915. MESA Bulletin.
1977   Traditionelle u. moderne Formen der Landwirschaft in Iran, E. Ehlers, with contribution G. Goodell (vol. 64, Marburger geographische Schriften), Iranian Studies.
1977d   R. Hair Dekmejian. Patterns of Political Leadership: Lebanon, Israel, Egypt. (SUNY 1975). American Journal of Sociology. July.

THESES

1973 Zoroastrian Iran between Myth and Praxis. PhD dissertation, Univ. of Chicago.
1969 Opposite Sets & Selected Masques from a Rural Jamaican Point of View. M.A. thesis, University of Chicago.

RESEARCH REPORTS

1980 The Social Impact of Development on Ethnic Minorities: Iran, Afghanistan, the Sudan, Brazil (with D. Maybury-Lewis, T.J. Barfield, J. Clay, R. Huntington, B. Pajackowski). Cambridge: Cultural Survival. 199pp.
1976 The Qum Report. (Chicago: mimeo, now incorporated into Iran, (Harvard 1980).
1967 A Report to the US-Mexico Joint Border Development Commission. (with others). Washington, D.C.: Engineer Agency for Resources Inventories.

INSTITUTIONAL REPORTS

1996 Whence From? -- Where To? Prospectus for the 1996 Retreat. A Self-Study Document. MIT: STS Program (http:stsfac.mit.edu/Core Course/Documents).
1994 Report of the External Review Committee, Institute for Liberal Arts, Emory.
1991 Rice Center for Cultural Studies: Application for Renewal of the Rockefeller Residency Fellowships.
1986 Rice Center for Cultural Studies: Application for Rockefeller Residency Fellowships

IN PRESS

  "Measuring the Figure of Old Age: The Geoid as Transitional Object" ms.
"To Live With What Would Otherwise Be Unendurable: Caught in the Borderlands of Palestine-Israel." In M.J. Good, and Sandra Hyde, ed. Postcolonial Disorders.
"Implicated, Caught in Between, Communicating with Mildly Cognitively Impaired: Toward Generative Antropological Figures -- A Response to J. Biehl" Social Text special issue edited by Arvind Rajagopal, Technologies of Perception.
  "Globalization and China: Challenging Cultural Boundaries" Institute for East Asian Studies, Berkeley. (Papers of 2001 Conference at Tufts, Program in Global Leadership)
  "Mapping the Culture/Cultural Impact of the Multinational Corporation" B. Mazlish, ed.
  "Cosmic Rays, Satellites, and Malarial Parasites: Tracking Science and Technology in India for what it can tell us about Science and Technology in the Middle East. In Samir Khalaf et al. Volume on Science and Technology in the Middle East. (AUB).

UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS

"Emergent Forms of (Un)Natural Life," In Without Nature: A New Condition for Theology University of Chicago Divinity School.
"Body Marks" In Ivan Crozier, ed. Cultural History of the Body, vol. 6. Berg.
  "Reshaping Three Cultures of Oil." Prepared for the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Rice University, November 15, 1997.
  "Three Cultures of Oil" Prepared for the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Rice University, Sept. 28, 1996.
  "Otobiotopographies: Anthropology in New Worlds of Science and Technology"
  "Otobiotopographies II: Descended from Galileo and Erasmus"
  "Figuring (Indian) Ads in Translocal Spaces: Towards a Transnational Anthropology of Advertising."
  "On Being Raised in the Middle East: Child development, Socialization, & the Socialization of Affect."
  "Persian Passion Playing." (with M.J. DelVecchio Good and Byron Good)
  "Female Voice Registers in Iran."

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