Staffan L枚fving
Research
I am interested in the tropes of cultural identity and diversity, in fields ranging from education and urban planning to managing social and political conflict. My long-term research engagement could perhaps best be summarized in terms of three partly overlapping themes:
- Time and visual anthropology In this area, my work deals with photography as a visual technology of social and political memory, the capacity of the photograph to authenticate (or falsify) past experiences, and ways in which discourses and practices of a visual heritage tap into processes of social formation and identitarian politics of different kinds.
- Theorization of displacement and emplacement. I have engaged critically with the conceptual and bureaucratized boundaries between labour mobility and politically motivated forced migration. I have done ethnographic work on this theme in Colombia and Guatemala, and I am presently involved in various research ventures in the two interconnected European contexts of Sweden and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- Economic anthropology and labour. In an ongoing exploration of the social dynamic of economic and political crises and a series of publications, I try to develop plausible contributions to an anthropological understanding of precarious labour and the capitalism of affect and communication.聽
Teaching
- Intercultural communication, 15 ECTS
- Intercultural Studies: Urbanity and Migration, 7,5 ECTS
- Intercultural Studies: Conflict and Communication, 7,5 ECTS
- Intercultural Studies III: Theory and Method, 7,5 ECTS
- Intercultural Studies III: Intercultural Research, 7,5 ECTS
- Intercultural Studies III: Essay, 15 ECTS
Collaboration
Since January 2023, Visiting Associate Professor with the , University of Johannesburg, South Africa - see and . I am also involved in course and program development in the context of聽, with the Universities of Mons, Belgium, and Cantabria, Spain.
Selected publications
Forthcoming 2025. Maiming Monuments: Iconoclasm in Visual Culture After Yugoslavia. In Brenda Schmahmann (ed.),聽Contemporary Approaches to Commemorative Public Art: Monumental Developments. Chapter 13. London and New York: Routledge.
2017. The Gift of Labor: The Town, the Union and the Corporate State in the Demise of the Swedish Car Industry. In E. Paul Durrenberger (ed.),聽 Pp. 61-86. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
2009.聽The Paramilitary Function of Transparency in Latin America and Beyond. In Bruce Kapferer and Bj酶rn Enge Bertelsen (eds.), Pp. 187-209. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books.
2008. (editor with Stef Jansen) Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books.
2007.聽Liberal Emplacement: Violence, Home, and the Transforming Space of Popular Protest in Central America. Focaal: European Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 49, No. 1.:45-61.
2007.聽Movement, Violence, and the Making of Home. (Journal theme section, co-edited with Stef Jansen)
2006.听The Guerrilla Army of the Poor. In Thomas Leonard (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Developing World. Pp. 726-728. London and New York: Routledge
2006.听Uppsala and Stockholm: Uppsala University and Almqvist & Wiksell International.
2006.听War as Field and Site: Anthropologists, Archaeologists, and the Violence of Maya Cultural Continuities. In Ton Otto, Henrik Thrane and Helle Vandkilde (eds.), Pp. 469-479. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press
2005.聽Silence & the Politics of Representing Rebellion: On the Emergence of the Neutral Maya in Guatemala. In Paul Richards (ed.), Pp. 77-97. Oxford and Athens, Ohio: James Currey and Ohio University Press.
2004.聽Paramilitaries of the Empire: Guatemala, Colombia and Israel. Social Analysis, Vol. 48, Issue 1, Spring 2004. pp. 156-160 [also published in Bruce Kapferer (ed.), Pp. 159-166. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books]
2004.聽Om krigets konturer. In Ulf Hannerz (ed.), Antropologi/Journalistik: Om s盲tt att beskriva v盲rlden. Sid. 115-141. Lund: Studentlitteratur [Swedish]
2004.聽Ungdom, marginalitet og statsborgeskab: Et perspektiv fra det sydlige Afrika og Centralamerika. (Co-authored with Michael Barrett) In Simon Turner (ed.), Vrede unge m忙nd? Globalisering, marginalisering og mobilisering. Den Ny Verden, 氓rg. 37, nr. 3.:39-48. [Danish]
2002. Banners of Belonging: The Politics of Indigenous Identity in Bolivia and Guatemala (editor with Charlotta Widmark) Leuven and Uppsala. ULRiCA, Uppsala-Leuven Research in Cultural Anthropology.
2002.听An Unpredictable Past: Guerrillas, Mayas, and the Location of Oblivion in War-Torn Guatemala. Dissertation. Uppsala: Uppsala University.
Evaluations
2010. Fortalecimiento de la sociedad civil para la construcci贸n de la paz en Colombia. Evaluaci贸n del apoyo de Asdi a la Consejer铆a de Proyectos (PCS), Enero 2006 鈥揘oviembre 2009. Versi贸n final 6 de abril de 2010 [Sida evaluation, Spanish, co-authored with Adriana Gutierrez and Jocke Nyberg]聽
2008. Swedish Democracy Promotion through NGOs in Bolivia, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Peru: Outcome Oriented Evaluation of Diakonia鈥檚 Latin America Programme. Stockholm: Sida [co-authored with Roddy Brett, Miguel Gonz谩lez, Victor Caballeros, Cecilia Salazar, Fernanda Soto and Charlotta Widmark]
Other
With a background in photography and a research interest in visual culture and curatorial practices, I have collaborated with museums and associations in Sweden, South Africa, and Bosnia and Herzegovina on exhibitions and other projects related to visual storytelling.
Late Bosnian artist Sasa Bukvic curated my photographs from the siege of Sarajevo in聽 in . The selection has since been to the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a sample is published on the website of of Dzemil Hodzic. I have exhibited photographs from Guatemala at Ethnografiska Museet in Stockholm, collaborated with and In 2023, I curated聽 of the work of 20th-century Swedish artist Hugo L枚fving at 脰lands Museum Himmelsberga, Borgholm.
Publications
- Staffan L枚fving, 2017