Social Theory and Cultural Inquiry seeks to ground ethnographic investigation in anthropological theory. Faculty and students pursue research that contributes to understanding specific cultures, to analyzing human behaviors across cultures, and to theory building. The program encourages its graduate students to acquire a strong background in methodology, ethnography, and theory. Faculty are drawn from sociocultural, linguistic, and medical anthropology and archaeology and have expertise in the U.S. and Canada, Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Representation and meaning are central to social life and cultural practice and to complex processes of structural reproduction and transformation. The interconnected issues that we pursue thread across the landscapes of everyday life, systems of belief, and formations of self and identity in relationship to social environments, community arrangements, and ethnic traditions. These broad themes are explored in the diverse contexts of everyday life, religious practices, expressive and performative genres, popular cultural traditions, scientific and medical ideologies, and statist and governmental discourses. Our various projects of inquiry and critique draw on postcolonial, poststructuralist, subaltern and transnational studies to explore the dynamic order of things and the ways in which discourses and practices shape the textures of everyday existence and inform the lives of individuals and communities across the socioeconomic spectrum.

Key topical and theoretical frames Subjectivity, identity, and self Race and Ethnicity Religion and ritual Narrative, discourse, performance Body, space, place, landscape Art and expressive culture Popular culture Science and medicine Governmentality Population movement Materiality Representation, symbol, meaning, thought Colonialism and postcoloniality

Research methods Discourse analysis Symbolic interpretation Autobiography, biography, and life history Graphic analysis Historical-textual and archival study, ethnohistory Performative and dramaturgical analysis Reflexive interpretation Participant observation Material analysis

Faculty hold joint appointments and serve as core and consulting faculty in numerous area and research centers at Michigan State University, including: African Studies Center; American Indian Studies Program; Asian Pacific American Studies Program; Asian Studies Center; Canadian Studies; Center for the Advanced Study of International Development; Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life-Sciences; Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies; College of Human Medicine; Michigan State University Museum; Muslim Studies Program; Women in International Development.

• Sean Brotherton: Social governmentality, post-coloniality, Cuba
• John Davis:
• Elizabeth Drexler: Wow societies address legacies of past violence, Aceh, Indonesia; East Timor
• Najib Hourani:
• Linda Hunt: Health and health care among Latinos, race/ethnicity and health, bioethics
• Susan Applegate Krouse: Women's leadership in urban American Indian communities
• Mara Leichtman: Transnational religious institutions, conversion to Islam, Middle East, Africa
• Andrea Louie:
• Mindy Morgan:
• John Norder: Landscape history and contemporary indigenous identity
• Brandt Peterson: Race and political subjectivity; state violence; environment; Latin America
• Kristin Peterson: Pharmaceuticals, AIDS policies, Nigeria
• Judy Pugh: Religious pluralism, Hindu-Muslim interactions, South Asia

• ANP 815 Transnational Processes and Identities
• ANP 820 Language and Cultural Meaning
• ANP 822 Religion and Ritual
• ANP 824 Writing Ethnography
• ANP 829 Research Methods in Cultural Anthropology
• ANP 833 Ethnographic Analysis
• ANP 839 Age and Gender