Joshua Barker

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.

Research Interest

Socio-Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology; Urban Anthropology; Political Anthropology; Media and Technology: Crime; Policing