“Nobody has the answer, but we need some map, even to go into the unknown”: A Conversation with Arjun Appadurai on Research, Speculation and Future Thinking

Authors

  • Elis de Aquino Freie Universität Berlin
  • Luis Kliche Freie Universität Berlin

Keywords:

digital capitalism, education, youth, future

Abstract

Arjun Appadurai is a cultural- anthropologist born in Mumbai (1949) and based between New York, where he is Paulette Goddard Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, and Berlin, where he is currently Mercator Fellow at the International Research Training Group Temporalities of Future in Latin America at the Freie Universität Berlin, funded by the German Research Foundation DFG.

In this conversation, PhD candidates at the IRTG Elis de Aquino and Luis Kliche address some of the different and diverse themes that occupy Appadurai’s career, from digital capitalism to education, as well as Appadurai’s experience with Latin American researchers and institutions, in an exercise to imagine the possible future horizons at the global and local level.

This interview was carried out online in December 2020.

References

Appadurai, Arjun (2013): “The Future as Cultural Fact: Essay on the Global Condition”, in: Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, 54, 4, 651-673.

Appadurai, Arjun (2016): Banking on words: The failure of language in the age of derivative finance, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Borr, Néstor (ed.) (2020): Sopa de Wuhan, Pensamiento contemporáneo en tiempos de Pandemias, Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Zizek, Jean Luc Nancy, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Santiago Lopez Petit, Judith Butler, Alain Badiou, David Harvey, Byung- Chul Han, Raul Zibechi, Maria Galindo, Markus Gabriel, Gustavo Yanez Gonzalez, Patricia Manrique y Paul B. Preciado, Buenos Aires: ASPO (Aislamiento Social Preventivo y Obligatorio).

Cadahia, Luciana and Cano, Germán (2020): El Blackout de la crítica, Instituto de Estudios Culturales y Cambio Social (EECS), at: <https://www.ieccs.es/2020/04/06/ el-blackout-de-la-critica/> (Last access 26/01/2021).

Freie Universität Berlin: International Research Training Group Temporalities of Future, at: <https://www.lai.fu-berlin.de/ en/temporalities-of-future/index.html> (Last access 26/01/2021).

United Nations (2019): The Futures of Education: Learning to Become, at Youtube: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdJ5iX8DlBo&t=4231s> access 26/01/2021).

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Published

2021-02-11

How to Cite

de Aquino, E., & Kliche, L. (2021). “Nobody has the answer, but we need some map, even to go into the unknown”: A Conversation with Arjun Appadurai on Research, Speculation and Future Thinking. Critical Reviews on Latin American Research - CROLAR, 9(1). Retrieved from https://crolar.org/index.php/crolar/article/view/382