Amy Levine

Most broadly, my research and teaching address how people recognize, affect, and anticipate change.  As an anthropologist, I think that ethnography is an invaluable method for doing all of these things.  More specifically, I look at the foundational role of pragmatism, hope, and crisis for activists, lawyers, social designers and ethnographers.

My dissertation, "The Hope and Crisis of Pragmatic Transition: Politics, Law, Anthropology and South Korea,"  examines the pragmatist foundations of a handful of Seoul-based civil groups, NGOs and NPOs during the Roh Moo Hyun era (2003-2008) .  My argument is that crisis is everyday and routine for these organizations. being practical is an indefinite placeholder, and hope takes the form of scaling and re-scaling ideas, people, and agency.  South Korean Civil Movement Organisations: Hope, Crisis and Pragmatism in Democratic Transition was published in Februrary 2016 as part of the New Ethnographies series at Manchester University Press (http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719090493/).

More recent work explores caregiving. For an early, short, academic diary post see: https://www.thesociologicalreview.com/blog/a-partial-night-in-the-life-of-a-t1d-parent.html.