Sullivan Galleries Conference Room
33 South State Street, 7th Floor
Lunch Provided
This talk begins with the premise that "global" encounters are always more than meets the eye. Drawing on ethnographic examples among transmigrants, port workers and those displaced by the redevelopment of global free trade zones, I explore different empirical possibilities, beyond journalistic or positivist "observation," for attending to the pervasive ghostly forms of "the global" in everyday life. From computer-mediated container ports to emigrant villages emptied of working-age adults, how does one study and capture the many absent presences of contemporary globalized life? Arguing for a more robust understanding of "the empirical" in global encounters, this talk proposes a shift in sensory registers in field-based research and representation for tracking the shadowy, ghostly and nonrational forms of "the global" in what we might call a mode of "gothic ethnography."
Sponsored by: Diversity Advisory Group International Affairs, Multicultural Affairs, Academic Affairs
