Sverker Finnström
Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor at Institutionen för kulturantropologi och etnologi; Kulturantropologi; Anställda
- Telephone:
- +46 18 471 73 71
- Mobile phone:
- +46 70 425 05 07
- E-mail:
- Sverker.Finnstrom@antro.uu.se
- Visiting address:
- Thunbergsvägen 3 H
- Postal address:
- Box 631
751 26 Uppsala
Associate professor at Institutionen för kulturantropologi och etnologi; Kulturantropologi; Anställda
- Mobile phone:
- +46 70 425 05 07
- Visiting address:
- Thunbergsvägen 3 H
- Postal address:
- Box 631
751 26 Uppsala
- ORCID:
- 0000-0002-5835-1706
More information is available to staff who log in.
Short presentation
I am Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology. I have conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in wartime and postwar northern Uganda. In my research, I chart conjunctures of vulnerability, resourcefulness and war, in Africa and beyond. I am also interested in theoretical approaches to vulnerability that can help complement widespread yet one-dimensional and damaging stories of war, suffering and loss.
Biography
I am Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology (2009; tenured senior lecturer in 2012). After studies and a PhD in cultural anthropology (2003, Uppsala University), and besides teaching at Uppsala University, I have worked at Gulu University (in periods, 2005-2007, teaching and research) and Stockholm University (2007-2009, mainly teaching and student supervision). From 2009 to 2012 I held a research position in political violence and genocide studies, the Hugo Valentin Centre, a multi-disciplinary centre of Uppsala University. I was the chair of the Swedish Anthropological Association from 2013 to 2015.
Starting from 1997, and with a focus on young adults coming of age in the shadows of civil war, I have conducted recurrent fieldwork in Acholiland, northern Uganda, where the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and other groups have been fighting the Ugandan government.
As an advisory board member of the Engaging Vulnerability research program at Uppsala University, I foucs on vulnerability and resourcefulness as qualities that are differentially distributed. I document contexts and relations that make some beings (human and non-human) and some things more vulnerable than others, in times of both war and peace, and examine what this mean in terms of ethical engagement and practical response. I am also interested in theoretical approaches to vulnerability and resourcefulness that can help complement wide-spread yet one-dimensional and damaging stories of suffering and loss.
I am the author of Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda (Duke University Press, 2008), for which I received the distinguished Margaret Mead Award, offered jointly by the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology. Read/download here.
With Neil L. Whitehead I have edited Virtual War and Magical Death: Technologies and Imaginaries for Terror and Killing (Duke University Press, 2013). Read/download here.
Research keyterms (themes that I teach/supervise as well):
Displacement; globalisation; media, representation, and propaganda; war and peace; vulnerability, suffering and loss; anthropology of violence; terror and counterinsurgency; international interventions; justice and injustice; cosmology and meaning.
Research
For a complete list of my publications, go to the DiVA online database. You can also visit me at ResearchGate, Academia.edu, or Google Scholar. There you will find articles, and also interviews and talks, both print and recorded. Or check my ORCID iD.
Media
This text is not available in English, therefore the Swedish version is shown.
Några korta intervjuer:
Döden, livet och de smutsiga krigen genom tid och rum. Intervju, 2023.
Forskning i krigets skugga. Intervju, 2012.
Han för Uganda närmare oss. Om Margaret Mead Award. Intervju, 2010.
Publications
Recent publications
- Att läsa böcker och följa förfädernas spår (2023)
- Brokers and breakers of war stories in Acholiland, northern Uganda (2020)
- I mangoträdets skugga (2020)
- Review of Holly Porter's After Rape: Violence, Justice, and Social Harmony in Uganda (London: International African Institute and Cambridge University Press) (2018)
- Lord’s Resistance Army No More (2016)
All publications
Articles
- Att läsa böcker och följa förfädernas spår (2023)
- Brokers and breakers of war stories in Acholiland, northern Uganda (2020)
- I mangoträdets skugga (2020)
- Review of Holly Porter's After Rape: Violence, Justice, and Social Harmony in Uganda (London: International African Institute and Cambridge University Press) (2018)
- Lord’s Resistance Army No More (2016)
- Review of Sarah M. H. Nouwen, Complementarity in the Line of Fire: The Catalysing Effect of the International Criminal Court in Uganda and Sudan (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013) (2016)
- War stories and troubled peace (2015)
- Comment on Media Legacies of War: Responses to Global Film Violence in Conflict Zones, by Victor MF Igreja (2015)
- 2014. Disillusion, embodiment and violent reconciliations: Engaged anthropology on Rwanda, El Salvador, and Peru (2014)
- Review of Susan Thomson, An Ansoms and Jude Murison, eds., Emotional and Ethical Challenges for Field Research in Africa: The story behind the findings (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) (2013)
- Review of Nicolas Argenti and Katharina Schramm, eds., Remembering Violence: Anthropological Perspectives on Intergenerational Transmission (Berghahn Books, 2010). (2013)
- Review of David H. Price’s Weaponizing Anthropology (Counterpunch and AK press, 2011) (2012)
- KONY 2012, Military Humanitarianism, and the Magic of Occult Economies (2012)
- Review of Krijn Peter’s War and the Crisis of Youth in Sierra Leone (Cambridge UP, 2011) (2012)
- Review of Kamari Maxine Clarke’s Fictions of justice: The International Criminal Court and the challenge of legal pluralism in sub-Saharan Africa (Cambridge UP, 2009) (2011)
- Review of Neil Kodesh, Beyond the Royal Gaze (2010)
- Political bodies, local realities and institutional structures of (in-)justice (2010)
- The tide of war and the mango trees of Uganda (2010)
- Pillars of the Nation (2010)
- Uganda's moment for peace (2006)
- Besvärliga andar och västerländsk psykiatri (2006)
- Ord av vikt mellan världarna (2006)
- Ingen säker resa (2006)
- Survival in war-torn Uganda (2006)
- Review of In Sierra Leone by Michael Jackson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004) (2006)
- Peace talks with Kony are worth everything (2006)
- NGOs part of northern Uganda war (2006)
- Först fred - sedan rättvisa (2006)
- Wars of the past and war in the present (2006)
- Realists in Juba hold hope for northern peace (2006)
- Sluta dalta med president Museveni! (2006)
- Review of Carolyn Nordstrom, Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004) (2005)
- No-peace-no-war in Uganda (2005)
- No fundamental change for northern Uganda (2005)
- Bakhåll! (2003)
- Morality and HIV in war-torn Uganda (2002)
- In and out of culture (2001)
- Ambush! (2001)
- Niloter (2001)
- Acholi (2001)
- In and out of culture (2000)
Books
- Virtual war and magical death (2013)
- Living With Bad Surroundings (2003)
- Ugandan Experiences in a Changing World (1999)
Chapters
- O Anthropology, Where Art Thou? (2016)
- War (2015)
- Today he is no more (2013)
- Introduction (2013)
- Humanitarian death and the magic of global war in Uganda (2012)
- Uganda och den dubbelt haltande politiken (2010)
- Reconciliation grown bitter? (2010)
- An African hell of colonial imagination? (2010)
- Meaningful rebels? (2006)
- For God and My Life (2005)
Conferences
Reports
Other
- “Kony 2012″ Is a Springboard for the US Military (2012)
- "Kony 2012" är en språngbräda för USA:s militär (2012)
- “KONY 2012” and the Magic of International Relations (2012)
- Krig och det humanitära biståndets moment 22 (2006)
- Afrikas pärla i skuggan av den 11:e september (2006)
- Postcoloniality and the postcolony (1997)
