Paul A. Silverstein
Professor of Anthropology
Education
Ph.D., Anthropology, University of Chicago, 1998
M.A., Anthropology, University of Chicago, 1994
A.B., Anthropology, Princeton University, 1992
Research and Teaching Interests
Immigration, race/ethnicity, nationalism, colonialism/post-coloniality, cultural politics, sport, urban anthropology, historical anthropology, practice theories, Marxian and post-Marxian theory, Islam, Berber activism, France, North Africa, Middle East.
Selected Publications
Monographs:
• Postcolonial France: Race, Islam, and the Future of the Republic. London: Pluto Press, 2018.
• Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
Edited Works:
• Uprooting: The Crisis of Traditional Agriculture in Algeria, Pierre Bourdieu and Abdelmalek Sayad. Translated by Susan Emmanuel. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020.
• Bourdieu in Algeria: Colonial Politics, Ethnographic Practices, Theoretical Developments. Edited with Jane Goodman. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.
• Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa. Edited with Ussama Makdisi. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Special Journal Issue:
• The Mediterranean Redux: Ethnography, Theory, Politics. Edited with Naor Ben-Yehoyada. History and Anthropology 31(1) (2020).
Journal Articles (selected):
• Introduction: Remapping the Mediterranean. History and Anthropology 31 (1): 1-21 (2020) (with Naor Ben-Yehoyada and Heath Cabot).
• Sport, Bodily Habitus and the Subject(s) of the Middle East. International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 51(2): 482-48 (2019).
• Minority Politics in the Mediterranean World. History and Anthropology 28(5): 653-662 (2017).
• Rethinking Colonialism and Decolonisation in Algeria, 60 Years Later. On Bourdieu's Algerian Sketches and Camus' Algerian Chronicles. European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology 2(2): 89-121 (2015).
• The Diaspora and the Cemetery: Emigration and Social Transformation in a Moroccan Oasis Community. Journal of North African Studies 20(1): 92-108 (2015).
• The Pitfalls of Transnational Consciousness: Amazigh Activism as a Scalar Dilemma. Journal of North African Studies 18(5): 768-778 (2013).
• In the Name of Culture: Berber Activism and the Material Politics of "Popular Islam" in Southeastern Morocco. Material Religion 8(3): 330-353 (2012).
• A New Morocco? Amazigh Activism, Political Pluralism, and Anti-Anti-Semitism in the Wake of Tahrir. Brown Journal of World Affairs 18(2): 129-140 (2012).
• Masquerade Politics: Race, Islam, and the Scales of Amazigh Activism in Southeastern Morocco. Nations and Nationalism 17(1): 65-84 (2011).
• Mi-Sauvage, Mi-Barbare: The Modern Politics of Berber Autochthony. Etnofoor 22(2): 13-29 (2010).
• The Context of Antisemitism and Islamophobia in France. Patterns of Prejudice. 42(1): 1-26 (2008).
• Immigrant Racialization and the New Savage Slot: Race, Migration, and Immigration in the New Europe. Annual Review of Anthropology 34: 363-384 (2005).
• The New Barbarians: Piracy and Terrorism on the North African Frontier. CR: The New Centennial Review 5(1): 179-212 (2005).
• On Rooting and Uprooting: Kabyle Habitus, Domesticity, and Structural Nostalgia. Ethnography 5(4): 553-578 (2004).
• Martyrs and Patriots: Ethnic, National, and Transnational Dimensions of Kabyle Politics. Journal of North African Studies 8(1): 87-111 (2003).
• France's Mare Nostrum: Colonial and Postcolonial Constructions of the French Mediterranean. Journal of North African Studies 7(4): 1-22 (2002).
• An Excess of Truth: Violence, Conspiracy Theory, and the Algerian Civil War. Anthropological Quarterly 75(4): 641-672 (2002).
• Sporting Faith: Islam, Soccer, and the French Nation-State. Social Text 65: 25-53 (2000).
Book Chapters (selected):
• A De/Radicalised Future. In Radicalisation in Belgium and the Netherland: Narratives of Violence and Security. Ed. Nadia Fadil, Francesco Ragazzi, and Martijn de Koning. Pp. 283-288. London: I.B. Tauris, 2019.
• The Amazigh Movement in a Changing North Africa. In Social Currents in the Maghreb. Ed. Osama Abi-Mershed. Pp. 73-91. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
• Sounds of Love and Hate: Sufi Rap, Ghetto Patrimony, and the Concrete Politics of the French Urban Periphery. In Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam. Ed. Michael Frishkopf and Federico Spinetti. Pp. 255-280. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018.
• Anthropologies of Middle Eastern Diasporas. In A Companion to the Anthropology of the Middle East. Ed. Soraya Altorki. Pp. 282-315. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015.
• A Transnational Generation: Franco-Maghribi Youth Culture and Musical Politics in the Late Twentieth Century. In Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Richard Ivan Jobs and David M. Pomfret. Pp. 283-305. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
• The Anthropologist and the Activist. In Encountering Morocco: The Anthropological Experience of a Muslim Society. Ed. David Crawford and Rachel Newcomb. Pp. 116-130. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.
• The Pragmatics and Politics of Anthropological Collaboration on the North African Frontier. In Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa: Into the New Millennium. Ed. Sherine Hafez and Susan Slyomovics. Pp. 63-78. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.
• Le Patrimoine du ghetto: Rap et racialisation des violences urbains en France. In L'Atlantique Multiracial. Ed. James Cohen, Andrew Diamond, and Philippe Vervaecke. Pp. 95-118. Paris: Karthala, 2012.
• The Fantasy and Violence of Religious Imagination: Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism in France and North Africa. In Islamophobia/Islamophilia: Beyond the Politics of Enemy and Friend. Ed. Andrew Shryock. Pp. 141-171. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.
• The Local Dimensions of Transnational Berberism: Racial Politics, Land Rights, and Cultural Activism in Southeastern Morocco. Berbers and Others: Shifting Parameters of Ethnicity in the Contemporary Maghrib. Pp. 83-102. Ed. Katherine Hoffman and Susan Gilson Miller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.
• Introduction: Bourdieu in Algeria. In Bourdieu in Algeria: Colonial Politics, Ethnographic Practices, Theoretical Developments. Ed. Jane Goodman and Paul Silverstein. Pp. 1-64. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009 (with Jane Goodman).
• Kabyle Immigrant Politics and Racialized Citizenship in France. In Citizenship, Political Engagement, and Belonging: Immigrants in Europe and the United States. Ed. Deborah Reed-Danahay and Caroline B. Brettell. Pp. 23-42. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008.
• Thin Lines on the Pavement: The Racialization and Spatialization of Violence in Postcolonial (Sub)Urban France. In Gendering Urban Space in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. Ed. Kamran Ali and Martina Rieker. Pp. 169-205. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2008.
• The Maghrib Abroad: Immigrant Transpolitics and Cultural Involution in France. In The Maghrib in the New Century: Identity, Religion, and Politics. Ed. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman and Daniel Zissenwine. Pp. 235-264. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2007.
• Guerilla Capitalism and Ghettocentric Cosmopolitanism in the French Urban Periphery. In Frontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Reflections on the New Economy. Ed. Melissa Fisher and Gregory Downey. Pp. 282-304. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.
• Introduction: Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa. In Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa. Ed. Ussama Makdisi and Paul Silverstein. Pp. 1-24. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006 (with Ussama Makdisi).
• 'Why Are We Waiting to Start the Fire?': French Gangsta Rap and the Critique of State Capitalism. In Black, Blanc, Beur: Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture in the Francophone World. Ed. Alain-Philippe Durand. Pp. 45-67. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002.
• Stadium Politics: Sport, Islam, and Amazigh Consciousness in France and North Africa. In With God on their Side: Sport in the Service of Religion. Ed. Tara Magdalinski and Timothy Chandler. Pp. 37-70. London: Routledge, 2002.
• The Kabyle Myth: The Production of Ethnicity in Colonial Algeria. In From the Margins: Historical Anthropology and Its Futures. Ed. Brian Keith Axel. Pp. 122-155. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
Short Articles, Reviews, etc. (selected):
• Essential Readings: North African France. Jadaliyya. October 24, 2018.<http://www.jadaliyya.com/
• Morocco’s Palestine Politics. Middle East Report 282: 10-13 (2017) (with Zakia Salime).
• Review of Imaginative Geographies of Algerian Violence: Conflict Science, Conflict Management, Antipolitics, Jacob Mundy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 48 (3): 594-596 (2016).
• Éloge de la naïveté. Middle East Report Online, March 30, 2016. <https://merip.org/2016/03/
• Review of Le Proche et le lointain: Une siècle d'anthropologie au Maroc. Hassan Rachik (Marseille: Editions Parenthèses/MMSH, 2013). Journal of North African Studies 19(3): 440-443 (2014).
• Review of Norbert Elias and Modern Sociology: Knowledge, Interdependence, Power, Process, Eric Dunning and Jason Hughes (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). H-France Review 13(November): 1-6 (2013).
• Review of Empire's Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies. Emmanuelle Saada (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). French History 28(1): 127-129 (2013).
• Review of We Share Walls: Language, Land, and Gender in Berber Morocco, Katherine E. Hoffman (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008). Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 22 (1): 120-121 (2012).
• Weighing Morocco's New Constitution. Middle East Report Online, July 5, 2011. <http://www.merip.org/mero/
• Review of The Harkis: The Wound that Never Heals, Vincent Crapanzano (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Anthropological Quarterly 84(4): 1035-1038 (2011).
• Review of Le Meunier, les moines et le bandit. Des vies quotidiennes dans l'Aurès (Algérie) du xxe siècle, Fanny Colonna (Arles: Sindbad/Actes Sud, 2010) and Traces, désir de savoir et volonté d'être. L'Apres-colonie au Maghreb, eds. Fanny Colonna and Loïc Le Pape (Arles: Sindbad/Actes Sud, 2010). Journal of North African Studies 16(3): 491-493 (2011).
• The Tragedy and Farce of French Football Politics. Periscope Web Forum on the World Cup. Social Text, July 2010. <www.socialtextjournal.
• Review of Village Matters: Knowledge, Politics, and Community in Kabylia, Algeria, Judith Scheele (Oxford: James Currey, 2009). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 16: 429-430 (2010).
• The Veil Controversy in France: Review Essay of The Politics of the Veil, Joan Scott (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006) and Why the French Don't Like Headscarves, John R. Bowen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). Middle East Studies Bulletin 42(1-2): 120-122 (2009).
• Review of Policing Paris: The Origins of Modern Immigration Control Between the Wars, Clifford Rosenberg (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). American Journal of Sociology 113(6): 1787-1790 (2008).
• Entry on "Colonialism, Overview." Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
• States of Fragmentation in North Africa. Middle East Report 237: 26-33 (2005).
• Review of Affirmative Exclusion: Cultural Pluralism and the Rule of Custom in France, Jean-Loup Amselle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003). American Anthropologist 107(3): 509-510 (2005).
• Review of Generous Betrayal: Cultural Pluralism in the New Europe, Uni Wikan (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002). American Ethnologist 32(1): 1036-1037 (2005).
• Amazigh Activism and the Moroccan State. Middle East Report 233: 44-48 (2004) (with David Crawford).
• 'No Pardon': Rage and Revolt in Kabylia. Middle East Insight 16 (4): 61-65 (2001).
Courses
Anth 211: Introduction to Anthropology - Syllabus PDF
Anth 355: Anthropology of Colonialism - Syllabus PDF
Anth 361: The Middle East: Culture and Politics - Syllabus PDF
Anth 380: Anthropology of Class - Syllabus PDF
Anth 461: Theories of Practice
LBST 556: Race and the Immigrant Experience