Norwegian social anthropologist. He has published a handful of international standard works (at Pluto Press and elsewhere), the best-know of which is Small Places, Large Issues (1995). Since 2012 he has led the research project ‘Overheating: The three crises of globalisation’ for the European Research Council. Eriksen was the editor of the Norwegian literary magazine Samtiden for many years.
Our slowed-down, cooled-down, scaled-down lives during the pandemic are evidence that quality of life does not depend on high productivity and frantic consumption. Suddenly, it has become respectable – and realistic – to talk about reforming society and the economy.
Mainstream literature on globalization tends not to take the uniqueness of each locality seriously enough, says Thomas Hylland Eriksen. He explains how the anthropology of climate change is responding to the need for an analysis of the global situation seen from below.
