Paper short abstract

The relation between literature and anthropology was a core theme in Eriksen’s work. Although he early-on stressed the necessary differentiation between the two, he eventually experimented with ‘ethnographic fiction’, introducing his distorted alter ego Tommy as a vehicle for (self-)exploration.

Paper long abstract

Among Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s more than sixty books, his two novels are rarely mentioned, and even discarded. The first one, the ambitious Siste dagers heldige (2000) was generally badly received, not to say scorned, by literary critics (Hemer 2012). The second novel, Veien til Barranquilla (2002), was hardly received at all, but the few reviews were appreciative of its literary quality. Yet, Thomas did not proceed on the novelist track. But the relation between literature and anthropology was a core theme in his work, and in our collaboration over more than 30 years. A keen reader, often inspired by literature, he warned aspiring anthropologists of too willingly adopting literary ambitions and inadvertently confirming the mocking epithet as ‘failed novelists’ (Eriksen 1994:194.) Yet, in our discussions, he later on admitted to having nuanced, if not abandoned, his earlier rather categorical standpoint about the necessary fundamental differentiation between literature and anthropology (Hemer 2020:4). And in his last major project, which partly also was our last collaboration project, he even embarked on exploring the trans-genre ‘ethnographic fiction’, introducing his alter ego Tommy as a semi-fictional character (Eriksen 2023; 2024). The distorted third-person Tommy can be regarded as a late comment in the margin to the still on-going ‘Writing Culture’ debate and arguably adds an interesting subject-position – a vehicle for (self-)exploration – to Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s entire work.

Paper short abstract

Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s entry onto the Norwegian public stage was as sudden as it was seismic, but it would have been short-lived without content that never ceased to take the audience by surprise. Key to this was unrestrained comparison. What role does comparison play in public anthropology today?

Paper long abstract

Sociocultural anthropology grew out of comparisons. First, highly speculative cherry-picking, then gradually more systematic as the quality of ethnography forced a reorientation from attempts at grand synthesizing to more modest inquiries into the workings of individual societies and the principles of their reproduction and processes of change. Still, comparison retained its potential as a tool for reflexivity.

In the history of Norwegian public anthropology, Fredrik Barth used comparison extensively in the 1979 tv series “The lives of others – and our own”, where the Verfremdungseffekt was used with great effect to emphasize the key message: All things human might have been different. When Thomas Hylland Eriksen burst onto the national stage in the early '90s, it was with an even more distilled version of this message, conveyed with eloquence at improbable speed: Other worlds are not only possible, they are real, and there is a lot to be learned from them. The impact of his free-ranging comparisons was palpable. To those of us who had grown up in a world that had seemed determined by the iron curtain, his approach was liberating, both in the way it radically extended our spheres of perceived relevance and in the creativity these connections triggered.

As one who follows in Barth’s and Eriksen’s public anthropology footsteps, I find that neither broad nor piecemeal comparisons are as admissible as they were to them. Is this merely a sign of our insular times, or does it also say something about anthropology’s relationship with cross-cultural comparisons?

Paper short abstract

This paper examines Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s approach to Public Anthropology. What is often overlooked is his never-ending engagement to promote Anthropology in schools. His legacy may inspire us to advocate for more diversity-sensitive education systems at the European level.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines Thomas Hylland Eriksen’ approach to Public Anthropology which is well known in Applied Anthropology. However, what is often overlooked in his many publications is his outstanding commitment to schools. He was never too busy to visit a school in Norway and elsewhere whenever invited, and had a lasting impact on curricula with the school books he co-edited.

In a globalized world of increasing mobility, poly-cultural societies and – at the same time – growing polarization as well as authoritarian resistance against diversity, it is high time for anthropologists to become more engaged, take a clear stance and contribute to inter-cultural understanding starting at an early age. Eriksen’s work with school children proved to be most successful in this regard and is widely practiced in Norwegian high-schools today. What has been applied in Norway may serve as a role model to other countries. The paper explores the possibilities for concerted action on a European level.

Paper short abstract

Accelerated authenticity manifests amidst the dynamics of speed, visibility, and competition. By referencing Eriksen's notion of overheating, we can characterize its expressions as common practices that seem essential and empowering but that are persistently draining and never entirely fulfilled.

Paper long abstract

This paper develops the concept of accelerated authenticity to describe how subjects in late-stage capitalism pursue a notion of a true, or real self in a world that is rushed and overheating, drawing on Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s anthropological framing. Such a pursuit occurs under the duress of ever-shortening time and market logics that combine to form ‘market time’, in which constant verification and displaying of the self in a hyper-surveillance reality has become an almost intrinsic practice for many. Eriksen’s work describes a world that is for many both local and globalized, shaped by simultaneous crises of environment, economy and identity. Global processes are intensified and sped up in ways that produce clashes, or what Eriksen has called ‘clashing scales’ between global systems and local lives, spaces and places.

An autoethnographic and conceptual analysis reveals how market time and platform affordances render authenticity both a normative expectation and a fluctuating objective, intensifying the paradoxes of the now: information overload, the lack of slow time and the sense of a contraction of the present. By referencing Eriksen’s notion of overheating and Harmut Rosa’s framework of social acceleration, this paper partly explores South African transitions post-1994 to demonstrate how global acceleration interacts with local narratives of categorization and acknowledgment. Accelerated authenticity functions as an identity technology, one that engenders fatigue, competition, and ongoing self-surveillance, despite its promise of empowerment. I conclude by proposing 'cooling' strategies that recalibrate attention, re-time practices, and reintegrate identity work into slower, relational, and collective modalities.

Paper short abstract

In The Tyranny of the Moment, Eriksen argues that intensified information flows, multitasking, and constant connectivity produce an “extreme hurriedness” that results in the compression of temporality. My research among users of Social Virtual Reality platforms suggests a more nuanced perspective.

Paper long abstract

Thomas Eriksen was an exceptionally prolific anthropologist and a polymorphous public intellectual, writer and musician whose research continues to generate scholarly debate. In this paper, I focus on one aspect of his work, namely The Tyranny of the Moment, in which he advances the idea that contemporary society is characterized by social acceleration driven largely by the expansion of new technologies, an analytical concern that underpins his later reflections on “overheating”. More specifically, I seek to enter into dialogue with Eriksen’s thoughts on the relationship between time and technology. In this book, Eriksen argues that intensified information flows, multitasking, and constant connectivity produce a condition of “extreme hurriedness” that results in the compression of temporality. While acknowledging the force of this diagnosis, my own research with users of Social Virtual Reality platforms (VRchat) suggests a more nuanced perspective. In these digital environments, acceleration does not appear to be the primary organizing principle of communication and interaction. Rather, participants devote extended periods to conversation, relationship-building and practices of self-exploration. They take time to become acquainted with one another, engage in prolonged exchanges, and privilege experiences of presence, freedom, and identity experimentation. Although temporality in these spaces may seem condensed in certain respects, they constitute enclaves in which slow rhythms of sociality and subjectivity emerge in the midst of the accelerating world.