Michael Fischer

Michael M.J. Fischer is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, and Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies at MIT, as well as Lecturer in Social Medicine in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School.  He trained at Johns Hopkins, the London School of Economics, and the University of Chicago (PhD).  He has taught at Chicago, Harvard, Rice, and MIT, serving as Director of the Center for Cultural Studies at Rice, and Director of the Program in Science, Technology and Society at MIT.  He has done fieldwork in the Caribbean, Iran, India, and currently in Southeast Asia on new initiatives in the biosciences and biotechnologies

He works in four primary areas:

(1) The anthropology of the biomedical sciences and technologies  He has worked with the Genome Institute of Singapore and the Human Geonome Organization (HUGO) on social and ethical issues associated with genomics and with capacity building in the Asia-Pacific region; and with the MIT- Indian Department of Biotechnology project to establish a Translational Medicine Institute in New Delhi on the MIT Health Science and Technology (HST) model.  He has also helped the National University of Singapore to establish an STS cluster, and is engaged at the new Singapore University of Technology and Design to do the same.  He co-edited A Reader in Medical Anthropology:  Theoretical Trajectories and Emergent Realities (with Byron Good, Mary Jo Good, and Sarah Willen). 

(2)  The anthropology of media circuits, with foci of regional attention to the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia.  He has authored three books on Iran (Iran from Religious Dispute to Revolution, on the training of religious leaders in the seminary town of Qum; Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues between Postmodernity and Tradition (with Mehdi Abedi) on oral, literate and visual media in Iran; and Mute Dreams, Blind Owls and Dispersed Knowledges in the Transnational Circuitry (2004) on interpretations of the national epic, the Shahnameh, and the films of social repair after the Iran-Iraq war. More recently he has been tracking the explosion of arts and media in Singapore and Asia.

(3) Anthropological methods for the contemporary world with specially attention to the interface between science and technology and anthropology.   He has publishedAnthropology in the Meantime (2018), Anthropological Futures (2009), Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice (2003), and (with George Marcus)Anthropology as Cultural Critique (1986, 2nd ed. 1999). He edits a book series (with Joe Dumit) on Experimental Futures: Technological Lives, Scientific Arts, and Anthropological Voices, which has 42 volumes out as of fall 2020    

(4) Anthropology of comparative religions: stratification and Protestants in Jamaica (“Value Assertion and Stratification: Religion and Marriage in Rural Jamaica”); Zoroastrians, Shi’ites, Jews and Baha’is in Iran (Zoroastrian Iran: Between Myth and Praxis); class-linked religiosities in Iran (Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution) and the Muslim world (“Islam and the Revolt of the Petite Bourgeoisie”); interpretive debate and cultural critique in Shi’ism and Iran (Debating Muslims); autobiographical genres of religious leaders in Islam, Judaism, Jainism (“Portrait of a Mullah”; “Imam Khomeini: Four Ways of Understanding”; "Autobiographical Voices (1,2,3) and Mosaic Memory: Experimental Sondage in the (Post)Modern World” [al-Hallaj and Massignon; R. Nachman of Breslau and Arthur Green; Shabbatai Zvi and Gershom Scholem; Jain social worker Santabalji and Minister of State Navalbahi Shah).  

Michael has been a wonderful friend since our undergraduate days at Johns Hopkins University in the mid-60’s. He advised me on many matters while I directed the Institute, from the applicability of the IRB process to the social sciences when we prepared our students for research abroad to helping to prepare and lead two distinctive, unique student delegation trips, one to Iran, another to Israel and the West Bank.