• Professor Emeritus, SAS
  • Specialization: Political and economic anthropology, cultural politics, political satire, social movements, democracy, politics of development, land tenure, research methods; Africa, U.S.
  • Degree and University: PhD, Northwestern U, 1984

Angelique Haugerud has served as editor-in-chief of two scholarly journals: American Ethnologist (2011-2015) and Africa Today (1996-1999). She has conducted extensive field research in East Africa and the United States and has received fellowships and grants from the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, American Council of Learned Societies, American Philosophical Society, and Rockefeller Foundation. Her scholarship addresses the cultural politics of wealth inequality, satirical political activism, economic neoliberalism, critical development studies, land tenure, globalization, and social movements. She is the author of the book No Billionaire Left Behind: Satirical Activism in America (Stanford University Press, 2013); coeditor (with Marc Edelman) of The Anthropology of Development and Globalization: From Classical Political Economy to Contemporary Neoliberalism (Wiley Blackwell, 2005), coeditor (with M. Priscilla Stone and Peter D. Little) of Commodities and Globalization: Anthropological Perspectives (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), author of The Culture of Politics in Modern Kenya (Cambridge University Press, 1995), and coproducer (with Joe Locarro) of a short documentary film, No Billionaire Left Behind (2013, available free on Vimeo). In addition to her scholarly articles, Haugerud has contributed pieces on political satire and wealth inequality to the Huffington Post and Stanford University Press blog, and she has been interviewed about both Kenyan politics and her U.S. scholarship on National Public Radio (New York City and Philadelphia). She has been elected to the executive boards of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology, Society for Economic Anthropology, the American Anthropological Association’s General Anthropology Division, and the African Studies Association.

In addition to writing about contemporary U.S. political culture, Haugerud continues long-term research in Kenya, focusing on the cultural politics of wealth inequality as revealed in part through family histories, multi-generational patterns of economic mobility, the cultural economy and micropolitical economy of migrants’ urban lives and their return stays in rural locales, and in moral sentiments expressed among family and friends as well as in the public sphere. Multiple ethnographic research stays in Kenya after she completed her first book on that country afford her the unusual opportunity to monitor social change through repeated visits with the same families in a study that now spans town and countryside and that has become transnational and richly multi-generational.

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Former Editor-in-Chief, American Ethnologist, July 2011-2015.
http://www.americanethnologist.org

National Public Radio (NPR) interview (available as podcast):
Leonard Lopate Show, WNYC, March 15, 2016 -- "Primary Emotions: How Frustration Generates Satire and Political Protest." Dr. Haugerud talks about her book, No Billionaire Left Behind: Satirical Activism in America and what her research reveals about protests and the 2016 election cycle.

Documentary Film: No Billionaire Left Behind (28 minutes), available free on Vimeo.

No Billionaire Left Behind by Angelique HaugerudNo Billionaire Left Behind: Satirical Activism in America.  Stanford University Press, 2013.

Book Description (from Stanford University Press website):

Growing economic inequality, corporate influence in politics, an eroding middle class. Many Americans leave it to politicians and the media to debate these topics in the public sphere. Yet other seemingly ordinary Americans have decided to enter the conversation of wealth in America by donning ball gowns, tiaras, tuxedos, and top hats and taking on the imagined roles of wealthy, powerful, and completely fictional characters. Why? In No Billionaire Left Behind, Angelique Haugerud, who embedded herself within the "Billionaires" and was granted the name "Ivana Itall," explores the inner workings of these faux billionaires and mines the depths of democracy's relationship to political humor, satire, and irony.

No Billionaire Left Behind is a compelling investigation into how satirical activists tackle two of the most contentious topics in contemporary American political culture: the increasingly profound division of wealth in America, and the role of big money in electoral politics. Anthropologist and author Angelique Haugerud deftly charts the evolution of a group named the Billionaires—a prominent network of satirists and activists who make a mockery of wealth in America—along with other satirical groups and figures to puzzle out their impact on politics and public opinion. In the spirit of popular programs like The Colbert Report and The Daily Show, the Billionaires demonstrate a sophisticated knowledge of economics and public affairs through the lens of satire and humor. Through participant observation, interviews, and archival research, Haugerud provides the first ethnographic study of the power and limitations of this evolving form of political organizing in this witty exploration of one group's efforts to raise hope and inspire action in America's current political climate.

Advance Reviews of No Billionaire Left Behind:

"In this pathbreaking book Angelique Haugerud presents a highly original account of novel forms of activism and engagement that seek to redefine the parameters of the political. It is difficult to imagine a more important or timely contribution to the comparative study of politics."—David Nugent, Emory University

"This brilliant study of the 'Billionaires for Bush' explains how and why irony has become such a powerful vehicle of political sincerity in the age of neoliberal monology. Whether or not one believes that satire is capable of reopening the terms of political discourse in the West by itself, we would all do well to heed Haugerud's persuasive argument that parody has potential to 'defamiliarize the familiar' by surfacing and inverting our conventions of understanding the world. Activists like the Billionaires have generated political effects, she shows us, by occupying the language of power."—Dominic Boyer, Rice University

"Angelique Haugerud's accessible and engaging book is important reading for anyone interested in the optimism of political satire, the hope that motivates activism, the clarity of critique, and the beauty of great ethnography. In No Billionaire Left Behind, Haugerud deftly combines economic anthropology, activism, performance, and the literature from news and journalism to build her powerful portrait of what The Billionaires are trying to accomplish and why."—Catherine Besteman, Colby College

"This hilarious book addresses today's most pressing issues—social justice, skewed distributions of wealth and income, movements for change—and brilliantly reveals how whacky activists challenge the establishment and overly serious protest movements. Haugerud's book is a welcome addition to the appallingly dry corpus of much social movement scholarship."—Marc Edelman, Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center

American Anthropologist Review of No Billionaire Left Behind

"No Billionaire Left Behind is an absorbing and entertaining account of the rise of political satire in the United States....The ethnography connects the [satirical] Billionaires to earlier experiments in which activists used irony and parody to get their points across. It also examines the work of other activists who have creatively employed humor....To round out the analysis, Haugerud includes the voices of real billionaires....In 2006, she interviewed William Gates, Sr....[Her] methods allow Haugerud to develop a rich, fine-grained ethnography....In the concluding chapter, Haugerud provides a fascinating comparison between another 'unsettling' movement--Occupy Wall Street- and the [satirical] Billionaires. Haugerud relies upon theoretical perspectives from a range of disciplines.... The ethnography is theoretically sophisticated yet extraordinarily accessible. It will appeal to anyone interested in political or economic anthropology, social movements, or comparative political studies. Several books published in the wake of the financial crisis have documented how anthropology can illuminate urgent economic and political issues....Angelique Haugerud's excellent ethnography fits squarely within this growing body of critical and relevant work."  --Roberto J. Gonzalez, American Anthropologist

Publisher's Weekly review of No Billionaire Left Behind

"The activists profiled in Haugerud's lively study of political satire don tuxedos and furs for rallies and hold champagne flutes as protest props. Under fictive, ultra-rich personas like 'Alan Greenspend' and 'Robin Eublind', the Billionaires question 'the compatibility of wealth and democracy' through a polished form of 'political street theater' . . . Behind-the-scene details like prank-day jitters or the hours of improvisation and mannerism practice needed to get into 'billionaire shape' should charm fans of Stephen Colbert's satirical comedy, while grassroots organizations from any political bent will appreciate Haugerud's analysis of the efficacy of parody and image marketing. A danger of their theatrics is that details of the issues they champion can get lost among the irony-deficient. Nevertheless, Haugerud successfully illuminates America's staggering wealth inequality at the core of the Billionaire's message while investigating the comedic possibilities and limitations of their methods. "—Publisher's Weekly


Anthropology of Development and Globalization: From Classical Political Economy to Contemporary Neoliberalism, Marc Edelman and Angelique Haugerud, editorsIn Blackwell Publishers series, Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Anthropology of Development and Globalization: From Classical Political Economy to Contemporary Neoliberalism, Marc Edelman and Angelique Haugerud, editors, 2005.

From the back cover of The Anthropology of Development and Globalization (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, November 2004):

"Anthropology is nothing unless also concerned with contemporary social and political questions. Edelman and Haugerud's set of readings and wide-ranging, authoritative introduction will be indispensable to scholars and practitioners alike." --Ralph Grillo, University of Sussex

"Enhanced by the editors' knowledgeable introduction, which draws attention to anthropology's silences as well as engagements with classical and contemporary political economy, this comprehensive anthology will be of great value to scholars, students, and practitioners." --Sara Berry, Johns Hopkins University

Development - is it a powerful vision of a better life for the half of the world's population who subsist on two dollars a day? Or is it a failed Enlightenment legacy, an oppressive "master narrative"? Such questions inspire a field newly animated by theories of globalization, modernity, cultural hybridity, and transnationalism. The Anthropology of Development and Globalization is a collection of readings that provides an unprecedented overview of this field that ranges from its classical origins to today's debates about the "magic" of the free market.

The volume is framed by an encyclopedic introduction that will prove indispensable to students and experts alike. Subsequent readings range from classics by Weber and Marx and Engels to contemporary works on the politics of development knowledge, consumption, environment, gender, international NGO networks, the International Monetary Fund, campaigns t o reform the World Bank, the collapse of socialism, and the limits of "post-developmentalism." Explicitly designed for teaching, The Anthropology of Development and Globalization fills a crucial gap; no available text so richly mingles historical, cultural, political, and economic perspectives on development and globalization, and none captures such a wide variety of theoretical approaches and topics as does this exciting collection.

Ordering Information available from Blackwell Publishing


Culture of Politics in Modern Kenya by Angelique Haugerud The Culture of Politics in Modern Kenya (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

From the back cover of The Culture of Politics in Modern Kenya:

"An exceptionally rare and powerful combination of analytical sophistication joined to a scrupulous, historically-grounded account of politics, social practice, and material life."
--James C. Scott, Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science, Yale University

"A model of clarity... Only rarely is anthropological knowledge as skillfully grounded in transdisciplinary theory."
--Joan Vincent, American Anthropologist

"Enormously stimulating...an innovative and important study of Kenyan politics combining anthropology, history and political economy to produce a suggestive and often orginal account of the relationship between state and society, high and deep politics, political culture and institutions, and the accumulation of wealth and poverty...This is a book that should stimulate discussion and further research in Kenya and elsewhere."
--Bruce Berman, Journal of African History


Commodities and Globalization Commodities and Globalization explores topics such as how an object is transformed from curiosity or rare luxury to common necessity; the cultural categories and political and economic relationships embodied in commodities; and the effeLcts of global capital in agricultural commodity chains. This volume contributes to a globalization literature that had often been less attentive to the particular circumstances of the farmers, herders, popular musicians, artists, traders, and others whose activities power global flows.


KENYA CRISIS, 2008
Haugerud's National Public Radio Interview on Kenya's 2008 post-election crisis, January 16, 2008, WHYY, Philadelphia.
"Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane." 
http://www.whyy.org/91FM/radiotimes.html

"Kenya: Spaces of Hope," by Angelique Haugerud, January 23, 2008, London:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/kenya_spaces_of_hope/


PUBLICATION WORKSHOPS

Haugerud offers workshops on academic publishing, drawing on her experience as editor-in-chief of two scholarly journals and as author or coeditor of books published by Stanford University Press, Cambridge University Press, John Wiley and Sons, and Rowman and Littlefield. She has presented publishing workshops at the University of Amsterdam, Rutgers University, University of Washington (Seattle), Washington University (St. Louis), and Yale University, as well as at annual meetings of the American Ethnological Society and American Anthropological Association. Workshop themes include topics such as demystifying peer review, and how to manage revisions and rejections, communicate with journal editors, select journals or other publication outlets, make time to write, edit by ear, and write a compelling abstract.


SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

[under review] “Title Deed Limbo: Temporality, Tenure, and Uncertain Agrarian Land Relations in Highland Kenya.” Coauthored with Caroline P. Mwangi.

2024. "Pandemic Dispatches (East Africa - North America)," in Reflections on the Pandemic: Covid and Social Crises in the Year Everything Changed, ed. by Teresa Politano. Rutgers University Press.

2021 “Afterword: Axioms of Violence.” Anthropological Forum: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology 31(3): 335-338. Forum on “Emergent Axioms of Violence,” guest-edited by Stavroula Pipyrou and Anthony Sorge.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00664677.2021.1964067

2020. Angelique Haugerud, Dillon J. Mahoney, and Meghan Ference.  pdf "Satire, Social Media, and Cultures of Resistance," (8.80 MB) pp. 269-282. In The Oxford Handbook of Kenyan Politics, coedited by Nic Cheeseman, Karuti Kanyinga, and Gabrielle Lynch. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198815693.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780198815693-e-18

2019. “On Writing: Four Tips for Hurried (or Harried) Academics,” American Ethnologist website, Feb. 18. http://americanethnologist.org/features/professionalization/on-writing-four-tips-for-hurried-or-harried-academics

 2018 pdf “Activism (104 KB) .” In The Wiley-Blackwell International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by Hilary Callan. Oxford: John Wiley and Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1977

2018. "Beyond Fake News." Items: Insights From the Social Sciences, October 2. New York: Social Science Research Council.  https://items.ssrc.org/insights/beyond-fake-news/

2018. “Imagining an End to Poverty: New UN Sustainable Development Goals and the United States.” American Anthropologist website, September 25.
https://www.americananthropologist.org/deprovincializing-development-series/imagining-an-end-to-poverty-new-un-sustainable-development-goals-and-the-united-states

2017 "In Conversation With Sindre Bangstad About the Anthropology of Politics, Neoliberalism, and Satire.” In Anthropology Of Our Times: An Edited Anthology of Public Anthropology, edited by Sindre Bangstad. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

2017  “The 2016 Brexit Referendum and U.S. Presidential Election,” coedited forum introduction with Jeanette Edwards and Shanti Parikh. American Ethnologist, May.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/amet.12467/full

2017 “Afterword: Economic Temporalities.” Ethnographies of Austerity: Temporality, Crisis, and Affect in Southern Europe, edited by Daniel M. Knight and Charles Stewart, pp. 134-140. Routledge.

2016  “Year in Review, Public Anthropology, 2015: Charlie Hebdo, Black Lives Matter, Migrants, and More.American Anthropologist 118(3): 585-601.

2014  "Satire and Soleminity in the People's Climate March," Stanford University Press Blog, October 22, 2014.
http://stanfordpress.typepad.com/blog/2014/10/satire-and-solemnity-in-the-peoples-climate-march-.html

2014 "Activism: Provocation." Fieldsights - Field Notes, Cultural Anthropology Online,
May 04, 2014, https://culanth.org/fieldsights/activism-provocation

2013  “Public Anthropology and the Financial Crisis.” Anthropology Today 29(6):7-10.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8322.12070/abstract

2013 “The Desire for Relevance.” Co-authored with Catherine Besteman as introduction to co-edited special issue on public anthropology, Anthropology Today 29(6):1-2.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8322.12068/abstract

2013  "Jon Stewart Returns to The Daily Show--Why Satire Matters."  Huffington Post, 9/5/13.

2013  "A Wealth Gap Video Goes Viral, and Why It Matters." Stanford University Press blog.

2012 "Satire and Dissent in the Age of Billionaires." Social Research: An International Quarterly, vol. 79. no.1, spring 2012. Special Issue on Politics and Comedy. http://www.newschool.edu/cps/social-research/

2012 "Watching The Daily Show in Kenya." Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, vol. 19, no. 2. Co-authored with Dillon J. Mahoney and Meghan Ference.  http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/1070289x.asp

2012 "Humor and Occupy Wall Street." Cultural Anthropology, Hot Spots: Occupy, Anthropology, and the 2011 Global Uprisings.

2010 "Neoliberalism, Satirical Protest, and the 2004 U.S. Presidential Campaign." In Ethnographies of Neoliberalism, Carol J. Greenhouse, ed.   University of Pennsylvania Press. 

2005 "'Leave No Billionaire Behind': Political Dissent as Performance Parody." Princeton Report on Knowledge, vol. 1, no. 1.
http://www.princeton.edu/prok/issues/1-1/inventions.xml

2005 Globalization and Thomas Friedman. In Why America's Top Pundits Are Wrong, Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson, eds., pp. 102-120. Berkeley: University of California Press. For more information on this book, see http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10323.html.

2004 " default The Art of Protest (643 KB) ," Anthropology News, vol. 45, no. 8 (November).

2004 Development. In A Companion to the Anthropology of Politics, David Nugent and Joan Vincent, eds., pp. 86-106. Oxford: Blackwell. Click here for a list of contributors to this volume, editorial reviews by Marshall Sahlins and Michael Burawoy, and ordering information. Click here for a list of contributors to this volume, editorial reviews by Marshall Sahlins and Michael Burawoy, and publication information.

2003 "Rethinking Boundaries," pp. 315-328, in Regional Modernities: The Cultural Politics of Development in India, K. Sivaramakrishnan and Arun Agrawal, editors. Stanford University Press.

2003 "The Disappearing Local: Rethinking Global-Local Connections," pp. 60-81, in Localizing Knowledge in a Globalizing World: Recasting the Area Studies Debates, Ali Mirsepassi, Amrita Basu, and Frederick Weaver, editors. Syracuse University Press.

1990 "Plants, Genes, and People: Improving the Relevance of Plant Breeding in Africa." Experimental Agriculture (Cambridge University Press), Vol. 26, pp. 341-362. Coauthor: Michael P. Collinson. 
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/experimental-agriculture/article/abs/plants-genes-and-people-improving-the-relevance-of-plant-breeding-in-africa/808C8D295CED4D5586CAE5DB8097EAA6

1989 "Land Tenure and Agrarian Change in Kenya." Africa 59 (1): 61-90.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/africa/article/abs/land-tenure-and-agrarian-change-in-kenya/6BB8B25CF463B7568B81B4B830E6FAD9

COURSES

pdf Fall 2019: Wealth and Culture (070:303) (112 KB)

pdf Spring 2017: Research Design and Methods in Cultural Anthropology (209 KB)

pdf Spring 2017: Political Anthropology (178 KB)

pdf Fall 2016: Rethinking Global Wealth Divide Honors Seminar (181 KB)

pdf Fall 2016: Wealth and Culture (163 KB)

Fall 2015: Wealth and Culture

Spring 2014: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, 101

Fall 2013: Wealth and Culture

Spring 2013: Research Design and Methods in Cultural Anthropology

Fall 2012: Wealth and Culture

Spring 2010: Culture, Wealth and Power in Africa

Spring 2010: Anthropology of Development