Duke University Center for African and African American Research

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    Charles Piot

  • Charles Piot

  • Professor of Cultural Anthropology

  • Overview

    Charlie Piot, Ph.D. University of Virginia 1986, Chair and Professor of Cultural Anthropology and African and African American Studies, does research on the political economy and history of rural West Africa. His first book, Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa (1999), attempted to retheorize a classic out-of-the-way place as within the modern and the global. His recent book, Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War (2010), explores shifts in Togolese political culture during the 1990s, a time when the NGOs and charismatic churches take over the biopolitical, reorganizing social and political life in the absence of the state.  His current project is on Togolese who apply for and attempt to game the US Diversity Visa Lottery. 

  • Education

    • Ph.D., University of Virginia 1986
    • M.A., University of Virginia 1982
    • B.A., Princeton University 1973

  • Awards and Honors

    • Graduate Student Mentoring Award. Unknown., 2012
    • Teaching evaluations in top 5% of Duke undergraduate instructors. Unknown., 2010

  • Professional Activities

    • Presentation
      • Remote and Edgy. December 2, 2012
      • African Colonialism Reconsidered. December 2, 2012
      • Kinship By Other Means. December 2, 2012
      • Nostalgia For the Future. November 25, 2011
      • Nostalgia For the Future. November 25, 2011
      • Hedging the Future. November 25, 2011
      • Hedging the Future: Togo's Visa Lottery. December 5, 2010
      • Pentecostal and Development Imaginaries in West Africa. December 5, 2010
      • The ‘Right' to be Trafficked. December 5, 2010
      • Nostalgia For the Future: Pentecostal and Development Imaginaries in West Africa. December 5, 2010
    • Service to the Profession
      • Financial Futures. November 25, 2011
      • Writing Culture @ 25. November 25, 2011
      • SSRC Selection Committee. 2009 - 2011

  • Selected Publications

  • Allison, A, & Piot, C. (2015, November 23). Editing the Times. Cultural Anthropology , 30 (4), 525-530.
  • Allison, A, & Piot, C. (2014, November 10). Editors’ Farewell. Cultural Anthropology , 29 (4), 599-601.
  • Harms, E, Hussain, S, Newell, S, Piot, C, Schein, L, Shneiderman, S, Turner, T, & Zhang, J. (2014, June 30). Remote and edgy: New takes on old anthropological themes. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory , 4 (1), 361-361.
  • Piot, C, & Allison, A. (2014, May 19). Editors’ Introduction: Open Access. Cultural Anthropology , 29 (2), 201-202.
  • Allison, A, & Piot, C. (2014, February 3). Editors’ Note on “Neoliberal Futures”. Cultural Anthropology , 29 (1), 3-7.
  • ALLISON, ANNE, & PIOT, CHARLES. (2013, August). EDITORS' NOTE. Cultural Anthropology , 28 (3), 369-371.
  • ALLISON, ANNE, & PIOT, CHARLES. (2012, May). EDITORS’ NOTE. Cultural Anthropology , 27 (2), 191-192.
  • Allison, A, & Piot, C. (2012, February). EDITORS' NOTES. CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY , 27 (1), 1-2.
  • ALLISON, ANNE, & PIOT, CHARLES. (2011, November). EDITORS’ STATEMENT. Cultural Anthropology , 26 (4), 511-513.
  • ALLISON, ANNE, & PIOT, CHARLES. (2011, May). EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION. Cultural Anthropology , 26 (2), 157-157.
  • ALLISON, ANNE, & PIOT, CHARLES. (2011, February). NEW EDITORS’ GREETING. Cultural Anthropology , 26 (1), 1-5.
  • Piot, C. (2010). The 'Right' To Be Trafficked. Indiana Journal of Global Studies , 18 (1), 1-12.
    • (Academic Article)
  • Piot, C. (2007). KC's World. Transforming Anthropology , 15 (2), 158-166.
    • (Academic Article)
  • Piot, C, Geschiere, P, & Goheen, M. (2007). Introduction: Marginal Gains Revisited. African Studies Review, Special Issue on Jane Guyer's Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa , 50 (2), 37-41.
    • (Academic Article)
  • Piot, C. (2006). Jeux de frontières : La Loterie des Cartes Vertes au Togo. Politique Africaine , 101 , 171-80.
    • (Academic Article)
  • Piot, C. (2006). Asylum and Culture: Comments on Khanna and Noll. Texas International Law Journal , 41 (3), 503-506.
    • (Academic Article)
  • Piot, C. (2004). An African Postcolony in the Age of Empire. Antropologi [Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society] , 29 (1), 20-27.
    • (Academic Article)
  • Piot, C. (2003). Heat on the Street: Video Violence in American Teen Culture. Journal of Postcolonial Studies , 6 (3), 351-365.
    • (Academic Article)
  • Piot, C. (2002). Des cosmopolites dans la brousse. Les Temps Modernes , 57 (620-21), 240-260.
    • (Academic Article)
  • Piot, C. (2001, April). Expectations of modernity myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt. ANTHROPOLOGICAL QUARTERLY , 74 (2), 89-90.
  • Piot, C. (2001). Réponse Aux Critiques. Politique Africaine , 82 , 206-210.
  • Piot, C. (2001). Of Hybridity, Modernity and their Malcontents: Reflections on John and Jean Comaroff’s "Of Revelation and Revolution". Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 2 , 3 , 112-118.
    • (Academic Article)
  • Piot, C. (2001). Editorial: "Of Revelation and Revolution". Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies , 3 , 1-4.
    • (Academic Article)
  • Piot, C. (2001). Atlantic aporias: Africa and Gilroy's 'Black Atlantic'. SOUTH ATLANTIC QUARTERLY , 100 (1), 155-170.
  • Piot, C. (2000, December). The mask of anarchy: the destruction of Liberia and the religious dimension of an African civil war. JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE , 6 (4), 745-746.
  • Piot, C. (1999, February). The modernity of witchcraft: Politics and the occult in postcolonial Africa. AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST , 26 (1), 247-248.
  • Piot, C. (1998, September). Perspectives on Africa: A reader in culture, history, and representation. AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST , 100 (3), 812-813.
  • Piot, C. (1998, September). Readings in African popular culture. AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST , 100 (3), 812-813.
  • Piot, C. (1996). Of slaves and the gift: Kabre sale of kin during the era of the slave trade. JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORY , 37 (1), 31-49.
  • Piot, CD. (1993, June). Secrecy, Ambiguity, and the Everyday in Kabre Culture. American Anthropologist , 95 (2), 353-370.
  • Piot, C. (1992, February). Wealth production, ritual consumption, and center/periphery relations in a West African regional system. American Ethnologist , 19 (1), 34-52.
  • Piot, C. (1991, September). Of Persons and Things: Some Reflections on African Spheres of Exchange. Man , 26 (3), 405-424.
  • Tambiah, S. (1989). "Comment" on "Bridewealth and Dowry Revisited: The position of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa and North India". Current Anthropology , 30 , 430-431.
    • (Academic Article)
  • Piot, C. (1988). Fathers and Sons: Domestic Production, Conflict and Social Forms Among the Kabre. Research in Economic Anthropology , 10 , 269-285.
    • (Academic Article)
  • Geentz, C. (1985). Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. Journal of Speech Quarterly , 71 , 390-392.
    • (Academic Article)
  • Book Section
  • Piot, C. (2010). Border Practices. In B Buggenhagen, S Jackson & A-M Makhulu (Eds.), Hard Work, Hard Times: Ethnographies of Volatility and African Being-in-the-World University of California Press.
  • Piot, C, & Amselle, JL. (2007). Ethnicity: Western Africa. In New Encyclopedia of Africa (pp. 342-344).
  • Piot, C. (2006). Representing Africa in the Kasinga Asylum Case. In R Abusharaf (Ed.), Female Circumcision: Multicultural Perspectives University of Pennsylvania Press.
  • Piot, C. (2006). Togolese Cartographies: Re-mapping Space in a post-Cold War City. In P Konings and D Foeken (Eds.), Crisis and Creativity: Exploring the Wealth of the African Neighborhood Leiden: Brill Press.
  • Piot, C. (2005). Fractal Figurations: Homologies and Hierarchies inKabre Culture. In M Mosko and F Damon (Eds.), On the Order of ’Chaos’: Social Anthropology and the Science of Chaos Blackwell.
  • Book
  • Piot, C. (1999). Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa. University of Chicago Press.

  • Selected Grants

    • JHFYS Program 2010
    • jhfys immersion 1