Application

James Peacock

Kenan Professor of Anthropology
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Department of Anthropology
Globalization, Place Based Identity, and Conflict Resolution in Southeast Asia and at World Peace Centers
United States

James L. Peacock is Kenan Professor of Anthropology, Professor of Comparative Literature, and Director, University Center for International Studies at the University of North Caroline at Chapel Hill. He received his B.A. in Psychology from Duke University and his Ph.D. in Social anthropology from Harvard. His fieldwork includes studies of proletarian culture in Surabaja, Indonesia, of Muslim fundamentalism in Southeast Asia, and of Primitive Baptists in Appalachia.

In addition to his academic work, Dr. Peacock was chair of the Anthropology Department from 1975-1980 and 1990-91, and Chair of the Faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill, 1991-1994. He was President of the American Anthropological Association form 1993-1995. In 1995, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The American Anthropological Association awarded him the prestigious Boas Award in 2002.

Selected Publications

The Anthropological Lens. Cambridge University Press, 2001. (Revision in press.)
Pilgrims of Paradox. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institutions, 1989.
Muslim Puritans. University of California Press, 1978.
Rites of Modernization. University of Chicago Press, 1968

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Globalization, Place-based Identity, and Conflict Resolution in Southeast Asia and at World Peace Centers

The area I wish to explore, in research and in writing, is the relationship among globalization, place-based identity, and conflict. Place-identity is the key variable. On the one hand, identity with place, whether a region or a country, is often associated with particularistic identities such as ethnic and religious and frequently generates conflict through a defense of bounded entities. On the other hand, globalization allegedly corrodes place-identity. The question I propose to address is: What effects do conscious efforts at promoting globalization have on place-based identities?

I plan to work on two case studies in approaching this question: Southeast Asia and the new Rotary International Peace Centers. My regional focus will be Singapore, an intentionally multicultural state, with possible comparison to neighboring Thailand and Indonesia . I have previously researched the Muslim movements Muhammadiyya, in Indonesia, and Ahmadiyya, in Singapore. Globalization is explicitly an aim of Singapore, whose society includes Malays, Indians, and smaller minorities such as Arabs in addition to the Chinese majority. Religious pluralism--Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam-accompanies this ethnic diversity. Globalization also seems to be a specific aim of the Peace Centers, located around the world (in North Carolina and California in the United States, and in Argentina, Japan, England, Australia, and France). Each center exemplifies links between peace studies and globalization. Drawing on these two cases-- the one regional, the other global-- I will explore the relationship between globalization and conflict among particularized identities, asking how globalization might, at least in some cases, diminish conflict just as it seems itself to have become a target, as in the attack on the World Trade Center or the battles in Seattle.

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