Professor Dimitrios Theodossopoulos is a Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Kent, known for his contributions to political anthropology, with expertise in the anthropology of Latin America and Southeast Europe. This includes theoretical, conceptual and empirical contributions on resistance, populism, authenticity, indigenous representation, exoticism, austerity and crisis; solidarity; environmentalism; indigenous modernities and reflexivity. His engagement with these topics brings forward invisible local perspectives, is ethnographically inspired and attempts to reconfigure social theory from the grassroots.
Dimitrios is also interested in creative ethnographic mediums, such as ‘graphic ethnography’, a new visual subfield that relies on sketches, drawings, photography and cartoons – not merely to illustrate – but, more importantly, to generate social analysis. He is leading collaborative initiatives that aim to establish graphic anthropology as a multimodal representational lens that forces textuality and images to engage in a productive dialectic. See Graphic Anthropology on the Rise and Graphic Ethnography.
His experimentation with graphic anthropology has led Dimitrios to a reconsideration of ethnographic reflexivity beyond its redemptive or self-centred referents—examples of which are visible in Exoticisation Undressed. Dimitrios argues that an honest self-reflexive dialectic can provide new and empowering representational angles for the re-evaluation of anthropology as a political project. See Solidarity dilemmas in times of austerity.
Austerity, populism, non-hegemonic politics
A uniting thread in Professor Dimitrios Theodossopoulos’s published work is a commitment to making visible the rationality and nuanced critical views of local social actors, particularly in non-hegemonic politics. He has engaged anthropologically with political processes that range from environmental issues to local discontent with globalisation, from ethnic stereotyping and nationalism to the anthropological theory of resistance, and, more recently, anti-austerity discourse and populism.
Dimitrios is also interested in the relevance of the work of Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall for contemporary anthropological theory. From the latter he learnt to appreciate the value of conjunctural analysis, which provides scope to expand anthropology’s traditional sensitivity to contextual considerations, but with added attention to the articulation of power with intersectional parameters, such as class, but also generation (see, Thinking about generations, conjuncturally, The Sociological Review).
Indigenous and ethnographic representation, ethnographic nostalgia
Dimitrios is also concerned with cultural representation, in particular among indigenous groups, such as the Emberá in Panama. He works with an Emberá community that receives visitors on a regular basis and specialises in indigenous tourism. Its inhabitants have developed a remarkable representational self-awareness, claiming their right to be both indigenous and modern. He explores the issue of indigenous modernities in his recent (2016) monograph Exoticisation Undressed, an experimental ethnography that reveals the many layers through which our understandings of indigenous cultures are filtered and the inherent power to distort understanding.
Dimitrios is also working towards developing a general theory for understanding exoticisation and self-exoticisation, and their role for shaping local and global identities. See in particular a recent monograph, Against Exoticism, which he edited with Bruce Kapferer.
His work on exoticism has led him to critique a particular nostalgic approach in anthropological writing: the tendency to pursue nostalgic connections between a present social reality and what other authors – or even we ourselves – have said about a particular society before. Dimitrios has introduced the analytic concept ‘ethnographic nostalgia’ to capture the representational and political challenges structured by this type of nostalgic predilection.
In the last 24 years, Professor Theodossopoulos has conducted anthropological fieldwork in urban, rural and rainforest contexts in Greece and Panama.
Current PhD students
PhD students who have received their doctorate under Dimitrios' supervision:
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