Department of Anthropology

Andrew Willford
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Asian Studies

Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, 1998

acw24@cornell.edu
607-255-2686
Office: McGraw 211

Research Interests: ethnicity; nationalism, globalization; psychoanalysis; religious revivalism; Malaysia; India

Andrew Willford is associate professor of anthropology and Asian studies at Cornell University, where he is also chair of the Anthropology Department. His previous research focused on various forms of Tamil and Hindu displacement, revivalism, and identity politics in Malaysia. He is currently preparing a book manuscript on the subject of Tamil plantation communities facing the uncertainties of retrenchment and relocation in Malaysia. His recent publications include Cage of Freedom: Tamil Identity and the Ethnic Fetish in Malaysia (University of Michigan Press, 2006), Clio/Anthropos: Exploring the Boundaries Between History and Anthropology (Stanford University Press, 2009), co-edited with Eric Tagliacozzo, and Spirited Politics: Religion and Public Life in Contemporary Southeast Asia, co-edited with Kenneth George (Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2005).

Selected Books

2009     

• Clio/Anthropos: Exploring the Boundaries between History and Anthropology. Andrew Willford and Eric Tagliacozzo, eds. (Stanford University Press, 2009)

2006     

• Cage of Freedom: Tamil Identity and the Ethnic Fetish in Malaysia (University of Michigan Press, 2006)

2005     

• Spirited Politics: Religion and Public Life in Contemporary Southeast Asia, Andrew Willford and Kenneth George, eds. (SE Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, 2005)

Selected Articles, Chapters, and Reviews

2009     

• "'The Figure of the Tamil in Modern Malaysia” from Clio/Anthropos, Willford and Tagliacozzo, eds. (2009)

2008     

• “Ethnic Clashes, Squatters, and Historicity in Malaysia,” in Rising India and Indians in East Asia, A. Mani and P. Ramasamy, eds., Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Press: Singapore (2008).

2007     

• ‘“The Truest Belief is Compulsion”: Othering and the Unconscious as an Object of Ethnographic Inquiry” (Review essay) American Ethnologist, Vol 34 N4 (Nov. 2007)

2006     

• “The Locus of the Goddess’s Power: Tamils and the Ethnic Uncanny” ( Sociology of Diaspora, Brij Maharaj ed., Rawat Publications, New Delhi, 2006)
• "The 'Already Surmounted' yet 'Secretly Familiar': Malaysian Identity as Symptom" (Cultural Anthropology, Vol 21. Issue 1, 2006)

2003     

• "The Modernist Vision from Below: Malaysian Hinduism and the ‘Way of Prayers’," (forthcoming, Spirited Politics: Public Life and Religion in Contemporary Southeast Asia, George and Willford, eds. SEAP Publications, 2003)

2002     

• "Possession and Displacement in Kuala Lumpur's Ethnic Landscape" (International Social Science Journal N.175, 2003)
• "Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia" The Encyclopedia of Urban Cultures. Ember and Ember, eds. Grolier.
• "‘Weapons of the Meek’: Ecstatic Ritualism and Strategic Ecumenism among Tamil-Hindus in Malaysia’," (Identities 9(2) 2002)

2001     

• "Anthropology (and Nationalism)" The Encyclopedia of Nationalism. Alexander Motyl, ed. Academic Press.

2000     

• "Hierarchy and the Unmodern," Indonesia (no 69, April 2000).