Campus
- Downtown Toronto (St. George)
Fields of Study
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Sociocultural Anthropology
- Oceania
- South Asia
Areas of Interest
Research Keywords: Socio-Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology; Urban Anthropology; Political Anthropology; Media and Technology: Crime; Policing
Research Region: Indonesia; Southeast Asia
Biography
Joshua Barker’s research has focused on developing an analysis of power relations that recognizes the complex but systematic ways in which violence, institutional structures, discourses, and technologies combine into more or less stable apparatuses. He is interested in how these apparatuses serve to structure human action and expression, while allowing for the capture of value. In Indonesia, where he conducts his research, such apparatuses often straddle the formal/informal divide, so understanding this divide has been central to his approach. He has conducted ethnographic field research among a range of groups: the police and civilian guards, engineers and entrepreneurs, old and new media journalists. In this work he has often been drawn to the people and practices that escape or reconfigure structures of power in unexpected and novel ways, whether through literature, technology, everyday interactions, or self-conscious political practice.
Education
PhD, Cornell University, 1999
Publications
2014. Barker, Joshua. Epilogue: Ethnographies of State-Centrism. Oceania Vol. 83, 3: 259-64.
2013. Barker, Joshua, Erik Harms, and Johan Lindquist (Eds.). Figures of Southeast Asian Modernity. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. 302 pp.
2013. Barker, Joshua, Sheri Gibbings, and Mieke DeGelder. Special Issue: Figuring the Transforming City. City & Society 25, 2.
2012. Barker, Joshua. The Ethnographic Interview in the Age of Globalization. In Richard Fardon, Olivia Harris et al (Eds.). The SAGE Handbook of Social Anthropology. London: Sage Publications, pp. 54-68.
2009. Barker, Joshua. Introduction: Street Life. City & Society Vol. 21, 2 (December): 155-62.
2009. Barker, Joshua. Introduction: Ethnographic Approaches to the Study of Fear. Anthropologica Vol. 51, 2: 267-272.
2009. Barker, Joshua and Johan Lindquist et al. Figures of Indonesian Modernity. Indonesia Vol. 87 (April): 35-72.
2009. Barker, Joshua and Gerry van Klinken. Reflections on the State in Indonesia. In Gerry van Klinken and Joshua Barker (Eds.). State of Authority: State in Society in Indonesia. Ithaca, NY: SEAP Publications, pp. 17-46.
2009. Barker, Joshua. Negara Beling: Street-Level Authority in an Indonesian Slum. In Gerry van Klinken and Joshua Barker (Eds.). State of Authority: State in Society in Indonesia. Ithaca, NY: SEAP Publications, pp. 47-72.
2009. Klinken, Gerry van and Joshua Barker (Eds.). State of Authority: State in Society in Indonesia. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University. 218 pp.
2009. Barker, Joshua. Special Section: Street Life. City & Society Vol. 21, 2 (December): 155-267.
2009. Barker, Joshua and Tania Li, Gavin Smith. Thematic Section: Ethnographic Approaches to the Study of Fear. Anthropologica Vol. 51, 2: 267-366.
2008. Barker, Joshua. “Beyond Bandung: developmental nationalism and (multi)cultural nationalism in Indonesia.” Third World Quarterly 29(3): 521-540.
2008. Barker, Joshua. “Playing with publics: Technology, talk and sociability in Indonesia.” Language and Communication 28: 127-142.
2005. Barker, Joshua. “Engineers and Political Dreams: Indonesia in the Satellite Age.” Current Anthropology vol 46 no 5 (December), Pp.703-727.
2004. Barker, Joshua. “Whose Path to Modernity? Nationalism and the Christian Minority Elite.” Indonesia 77 (April). Pp.157-165.