Henrietta L. Moore
is the William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.
This paper suggests an alternative understanding of the Internet and its role in contemporary politics. Rather than taking it as a tool or a space for politics, the paper concpetualises the Internet as a set of interactions in process that constitute the political, and indeed the social and the economic. As such it is not a tool or a space to enable life, but life itself. More »
Watch the trailer for Henrietta L. Moore’s new book “Still Life: Hopes, Desires and Satisfactions” (Polity Press) More »
Professor Moore discusses the work of Margaret Mead for the BBC Four series Great Thinkers: In Their Own Words (first broadcast in August 2011). More »
The family is in transition. A generation is growing up with multiple parents and a host of half siblings. Are family structures falling apart or growing into exciting new possibilities? And is family essential to human well-being, and if so why? More »
When we extend ourselves into the virtual where do we, ourselves, end? Watch Henrietta Moore talking about this question (recorded @ Hay Festival 2011) More »
Listen to this discussion between Henrietta L. Moore, Laurie Taylor, Steven Lukes and Conor Gearty of the relationship of culture and morality in the debate on a universal notion of human rights. More »
In the Indian call centre or ‘outsourcing’ industry, workers are trained to emulate the American or British workers which they have replaced. BBC Radio 4′s Laurie Taylor is joined by Henrietta Moore to talk to Shehzad Nadeem about the hybrid culture these Asian employees have created. More »
Prophets of the future are being ostracised from the canon. Is this reluctuance to accept speculation in the arts a symptom of decline, as we no longer wish to imagine new possibilities for culture and our lives? Or is fantasising about the future a childish past-time which avoids real engagement with human nature? Join fantastical novelists Nick Harkaway and Justina Robson and Henrietta L. Moore imagining a brave new world on 5 June at this year’s philosophy and music festival at Hay on Wye ! More »
It is a decade since the debut of the landmark Global Civil Society yearbook. During that time, as the yearbook has attempted to debate, map and measure the shifting contours of this contested phenomenon, relationships between state and society have shifted. On both sides promises have been made and broken, expectations raised and shattered, partnerships brokered and roles reversed. Moreover, from the instigation of the International Criminal Court by a coalition of NGOs to the mass protests of civilians across North Africa, the influence of non-state actors has become impossible to discount. More »
In this piece for openDemocracy.net Henrietta L. Moore and Sabine Selchow introduce their reconceptualisation of the Internet as a set of interactions in process, turning away from mainstream understandings of it as a ‘tool’ and / or ‘space’ that enables political action. This reconceptualisation means that questions about what is happening ‘on’ the Internet, and how the internet is used, by whom, and with what impact on the ‘actual’ world no longer have sufficient analytical purchase. More »
@moorehlRanging from African initiation rituals to Japanese anime, and from sex in virtual worlds to Schubert songs, ‘Still Life’ focuses on how best we might approach the relationship between critical thought and politics, as well as the dynamics of intimacy and meaning in contemporary cultural and social life. By taking up what we might mean by, and what we can learn from, the analysis of hopes, desires, and satisfactions, Moore provides alternative ways of approaching some of the major challenges facing social theory. More »
What makes art valuable? Why in times of crisis do people buy contemporary art? Henrietta L. Moore discussed @ the ‘Fantasy and Markets’-Conference in NYC whether or not investment in art can ever be seen as rational, and how the contemporary art market is expanding to include not just works of art, but art as a form of cultural practice. More »
We often imagine the brain as a sort of high-powered, superbly engineered evolutionary computer. But it is actually a wonderfully baroque structure, made up of incompletely integrated units. And despite what we might assume about what we are born with, our brains are more shaped by interaction with the world than we think. Read Moore’s Prospect-article on neuroscience’s bold claims about human culture. More »