Cornell University Emblemthe department of Anthropology
Faculty
Andrew Willford
Office: McGraw 211
Phone: (607) 255-2686
Andrew Willford is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Asian Studies at Cornell University. He is also the Associate Director of Cornell's Southeast Asia Program. Andrew's previous research has focused upon various forms of Tamil and Hindu displacement, revivalism, and identity politics in Malaysia. During the last three years, Andrew has conducted research upon Tamil plantation communities facing the uncertainties of retrenchment and relocation. This research subsequently led him to investigate manifestations of ethnic consciousness in squatter areas and low-cost housing schemes within the context of state-sponsored nationalist ideologies of development.

Selected Publications

2006 Cage of Freedom: Tamil Identity and the Ethnic Fetish in Malaysia (University of Michigan Press, 2006)
  "The 'Already Surmounted' yet 'Secretly Familiar': Malaysian Identity as Symptom" (Cultural Anthropology, Vol 21. Issue 1, 2006)
2005 Spirited Politics: Religion and Public Life in Contemporary Southeast Asia, Andrew Willford and Kenneth George, eds. (SE Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, 2005)
2003 "The Modernist Vision from Below: Malaysian Hinduism and the ‘Way of Prayers’," (forthcoming, Spirited Politics: Public Life and Religion in Contemporary Southeast Asia, George and Willford, eds. SEAP Publications, 2003)
  "Possession and Displacement in Kuala Lumpur's Ethnic Landscape" (International Social Science Journal N.175, 2003)
2002 "Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia"
The Encyclopedia of Urban Cultures. Ember and Ember, eds. Grolier.
  "‘Weapons of the Meek’: Ecstatic Ritualism and Strategic Ecumenism among Tamil-Hindus in Malaysia’," (Identities 9(2) 2002)
2001 "Anthropology (and Nationalism)"
The Encyclopedia of Nationalism. Alexander Motyl, ed. Academic Press.
2000 "Hierarchy and the Unmodern," Indonesia (no 69, April 2000).