Christian Krohn-Hansen
Krohn-Hansen's research interests include the anthropology of politics, economic anthropology, urban ethnography, studies of globalization and international migration, and anthropology and history. He has recently completed a monograph based on fieldwork among Dominican migrants in New York City: Making New York Dominican: Small Business, Politics, and Everyday Life (2013) is an investigation of international labour migration and contemporary forms of globalization. (For more on publications, see below.) He has previously carried out long term fieldwork in the southwestern Dominican Republic on the border with Haiti, and in northeastern Colombia. Currently, he devotes himself mainly to three tasks: First, he is developing new fieldwork-based research in the Dominican capital Santo Domingo -- an investigation of popular economic activities and survival strategies, in particular forms of small enterprises and commerce. The project will examine effects of political-economic restructuring and Dominicans' uses of money, credit relationships, and debt. Second, he continues to explore, and write about, the anthropology of politics. Third, he continues to be preoccupied with the history in part of the Caribbean and in part of Caribbean studies.
Krohn-Hansen is currenly the Department's Vice Chair and Head of the doctoral program -- and member of the steering committee of the interdisciplinary research area LEVE. He is member of the advisory board of Ethnos, and was from 2008 to 2012 co-editor of Norsk Antropologisk Tidsskrift (The Journal of the Norwegian Association of Social Anthropologists). He has been a visiting researcher at John Hopkins University (in 1994); at Queens College, City University of New York (in 2002); and at the University of Michigan (in 2005).
Academic Interests
Thematic: Power and violence, social hierarchies, anthropology and history, politics, the state, economic life, globalization, migration, ideas about race
Regional: Caribbean studies, Latin America, The Dominican Republic, New York
Publications
Selected Publications
Books
2013 Making New York Dominican: Small Business, Politics, and Everyday Life. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
2009 Political Authoritarianism in the Dominican Republic. New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan.
2005 State Formation: Anthropological Perspectives, co-edited with Knut G. Nustad. London: Pluto Press.
2001 Det vanskelige voldsbegrepet. Politisk liv i Den dominikanske republikk og andre steder (“The Difficult Concept of Violence: Political Life in the Dominican Republic and Other Locations” - a book in Norwegian on the anthropology of political life). Oslo: Pax Forlag A/S.
Selected articles and book chapters
Work in progress "Political Anthropology", International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Second Edition, edited by James D. Wright. Oxford: Elsevier Ltd.
2008 REPRINT / TRANSLATION “La masculinidad y lo político entre los dominicanos: ‘El tigre dominicano’”, in Marit Melhuus and Kristi Anne Stølen (eds.) Machos, putas, santas: El poder del imaginario de género en América Latina, pp.11-133. Buenos Aires: Editorial Antropofagia. (Spanish translation of “Masculinity and the Political among Dominicans: ‘The Dominican Tiger’”, 1996)
2007 “The Understanding of Migration and the Discourse of Nationalism: Dominicans in New York City”, in Holding Worlds Together: Ethnographies of Knowing and Belonging, edited by Marianne Lien and Marit Melhuus, pp. 77-102. Oxford: Berghahn Books
2005 “Introduction”, co-authored with Knut Nustad, in State Formation: Anthropological Perspectives, co-edited with Nustad, pp. 3-26. London: Pluto Press
2005 “Negotiated Dictatorship: The Building of the Trujillo State in the Southwestern Dominican Republic”, in State Formation: Anthropological Perspectives, co-edited with Nustad, pp. 96-122. London: Pluto Press
2005 “Dominikanere i New York og forståelsen av migrasjon” (“Dominicans in New York and the Understanding of Migration”), Norsk Antropologisk Tidsskrift (The Journal of the Norwegian Association of Social Anthropologists), 16 (2-3): 75-84
2003 “Into Our Time: The Anthropology of Political Life in the Era of Globalization”, Globalisation. Studies in Anthropology, edited by Thomas Hylland Eriksen, pp. 78–98. London: Pluto Press
2002 “Den hegemoniske norske tenkningen om ‘oss’ og ‘de andre’. En lesning av to bøker fra Maktutredningen” (”Hegemonic Norwegian Notions of ’Us’ and ’Them’. A reading of two books from the Report on Power and Democracy in Norway.”) Agora: Journal for Metafysisk Spekulasjon (Agora: Journal of Metaphysical Speculation), 20 (3/4): 176–192
2001 "A Tomb for Columbus in Santo Domingo: Political Cosmology, Population, and Racial Frontiers", Social Anthropology, 9 (2):165–192
2000 "Makt og symbolske former: perspektiver på politikk" (“Power and Symbolic Forms: Perspectives on Politics”), chapter on political anthropology, co-authored with Halvard Vike, in: Olaf Smedal and Finn Sivert Nielsen (eds.) Mellom Himmel og Jord: Tradisjon, Tendenser og Teorier i Sosialantropologien (“Between Heaven and Earth: Tradition, Tendencies and Theories in Social Anthropology” - an introductory book on anthropology), pp. 307–343. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget
1997 "The Construction of Dominican State Power and Symbolisms of Violence", Ethnos, 62 (3-4): 49–78
1997 "The Anthropology and Ethnography of Political Violence", Review Essay, Journal of Peace Research, 34 (2): 233–240
1996 "Masculinity and the Political among Dominicans: 'The Dominican Tiger'", in M. Melhuus and K.A. Stølen (eds.) Machos, Mistresses, Madonnas. Contesting the Power of Latin American Gender Imagery, pp. 108–133. London: Verso
1995 "Magic, Money and Alterity among Dominicans", Social Anthropology, volume 3 (2): 129–146
1995 "Resistance vs. Self-Inflicted Bonds vs. Tacit Understandings: Or an Essay on Legitimacy and Political Practice in Light of Bread and Circuses and Weapons of the Weak," Dialectical Anthropology, volume 20 (1): 71–94
1994 "The Anthropology of Violent Interaction", The Journal of Anthropological Research, volume 50 (4): 367–381