[Ideas] Thomas Hylland Eriksen: Coping With Fast Change

The world is overheated – and we aren’t just referring to climate change. It’s too full, too fast and developments are uneven and unequal. Everything takes place faster and change is more comprehensive than ever before. “It’s globalisation, but not as we know it!” Leading Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen discusses accelerated change and its long-term implications for us, while dissecting the three major crisis of globalisation – economy, climate, and identity.

Is there any alternative to this great acceleration? Can we live slower? Can we get out of the corner into which we have painted ourselves? There is no simple answer, and yet tackling the unintentional side effects of modernity is the single most important question of our times. 

WORK EVENT | People On The Move

As Zygmunt Bauman said at the turn of the century, ‘nowadays, we are all on the move’. But while tourists sunbathe on Lampedusa, hundreds of refugees approach the shore. The contrast between these forms of mobility seems to brutally epitomise the clash of lives brought together in a more integrated world. Thomas Hylland Eriksen held a lunch talk discussion in Brussels, examining these two forms of mobility in particular, migration and tourism, their sometimes dramatic unintended consequences, and offered much needed tools to understand them.

Teen Talk | Why anthropologists have the answer

During his short visit, Thomas Hylland Eriksen held a vibrant interactive session with Brussels teenagers, on the impacts of the world’s accelerating change and how anthropology can help us understand and deal with them. Full Circle Teen Talks are an opportunity for young audiences (aged 14-18yrs) to interact with – listen and talk – inspiring and innovative thinkers and do-ers from around the world, on subjects relevant to them, in relaxed context.

ABOUT

Thomas Hylland Eriksen is among the most distinguished anthropologists of our times. He is currently Professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, and leads the Overheating project funded by the European Research Council. A prolific writer, he has authored many books and has contributed considerably to popularising social anthropology through his work. He writes and talks in many genres about the contemporary world, what it means to be human and how the world can be made a better place. When not teaching, writing, or speaking around the world, you can find him absorbed in people watching in Trinidad or Mauritius.

GOOD READS 

Overheating: an anthropology of accelerated change (2016)

Globalization, the key concepts (2014)

A history of anthropology (2013)

A world of insecurity (2010)

Small places, large issues (2010)

What is anthropology? (2004)

Tyranny of the moment: fast and slow time in the information age (2001).

KEY LINKS

Eriksen’s blog, www.thomashyllanderiksen.net

Overheating, The three crises of globalisation: An anthropological history of the early 21st century