6th Annual Heritage Lecture

Material Ghosts: Resurgent Social Relations and the Organization of Lived Space

Professor Michael Herzfeld

Ernest E. Monrad Research Professor, Harvard University IIAS Professor of Critical Heritage Studies Emeritus, Leiden University

This lecture was given on Thursday 9th March 2023 at Jesus College, Cambridge

A recording of the lecture can be found on our Resources Page

About the lecture

Conventional anthropology treats the presence of ghosts as a question of belief and ritual, while heritage studies tend to treat it as a matter of narrative and thus of intangible heritage. There is, however, an alternative view that rejects the tangible-intangible binary as unnecessarily parochial, and treats spectrality as the result of the persistence of older forms of social life in the physical structures, not only of cities and buildings, but also of habitual arrangements of live bodies in meetings and other encounters. In this talk, we will examine that perspective in the context of Bangkok and Rome, two cities where the varied fortunes of older constructions have left traces that continue to influence the lives of present-day inhabitants.

About our speaker

Michael Herzfeld is Ernest E. Monrad Research Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and IIAS Professor of Critical Heritage Studies Emeritus at Leiden University. His twelve books include Siege of the Spirits: Community and Polity in Bangkok (2016) and Subversive Archaism: Troubling Traditionalists and the Politics of National Heritage (2021). His current research addresses heritage politics, cryptocolonialism, and artisans’ practices of competition and cooperation.