Dr Laurent Berger

Laurent Berger is a Fyssen Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. He is carrying out a research project entitled "Cognitive Anthropology of Ritual Policies". He has conducted fieldwork in Mali on possession cults and initiatory societies and in Northern Madagascar on divine kingship. He has graduated in Psychology (B.A, Paris VIII), in African Languages (Manding, INALCO), and in Anthropology (Master & PhD, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 2006). He has taught as Temporary Lecturer at the University of Lille (Institute of Sociology and Anthropology) in addition to lecture series at the Vienna University, University of Northern Madagascar and Lille Charles de Gaulle University. His interdisciplinary project is an attempt to explore and explain links between political power, social stratification/organization, religious knowledge and human cognition, by articulating the New Cognitive Science of Religion and the World-System Analysis, on the basis of an extended case method approach. He's moreover interested in writing a new history and epistemology of anthropological knowledge.

Selected Publications:

In progress. The Graves of Wrath. A Malagasy Sacred Kingship in the World-Economy (17th-21st).

Forthcoming. Les nouveaux ethnologues. Courants et chantiers. Volume II. Paris: Armand Colin.

Forthcoming. Toward an Archaeology and Genealogy of Anthropological Knowledge. Anthropological Theory.

2006 Les voix des ancêtres et les voies du développement. Les populations de l'Ankaraña en butte à la mondialisation. Etudes Rurales 178: 129-160.

2005 L'expert, l'entrepreneur et le roi. Chronique d'une négociation conflictuelle autour de l'implantation d'un site industriel sur des terres ancestrales sacrées (Madagascar). In Patrimoines naturels au Sud. Territoires, identités et stratégies locales, Marie-Christine Cormier-Salem & al. (eds). Paris: IRD, pp. 135-175.

2005. (with Olivier Branchu) L'Islam à l'épreuve de l'ancestralité dans les villes et campagnes du nord de Madagascar. In L'Islam politique au sud du Sahara. Identités, discours et enjeux, Muriel Gomez-Perez (ed). Paris: Karthala, pp. 69-117.

2004. Les nouvelles ethnologies. Enjeux et perspectives. Volume I. Paris: Armand Colin.

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