Duke Cultural Anthropology

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For more information please contact: Pat Bodager
 

  • Kevin B. Sobel-Read

  • Cultural Anthropology
  • Friedl Building
  • Phone: (919) 606-3369
  • Curriculum Vitae

  • Specialties

    • Legal Anthropology

  • Research Description

    My ongoing research examines relationships between capital flows, sovereignty, and globalization. As such, my work bridges the continuum between the tangible practices of on-the-ground legal transactions and the complex theories of global commerce and community. In particular, I am interested in national law as the link between local legal action, whether judicial or regulatory, and global phenomena, ranging from nationalist sentiment to the global marketplace. My research and academic writing are likewise informed by my experience as a litigator, including representation of some of the largest corporations in the world in matters expressly affecting, and directly impacted by, international commerce. My work in this area builds on my doctoral research in and around Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, and the small nation-state of the Cook Islands, as well as on preliminary research among the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. My resulting dissertation describes several significant contributions that stem from this research. Specifically, given the economic interdependence of all contemporary nation-states, ideas of so-called “sovereignty” and “globalization” are not separate concepts but are in fact mutually constitutive phenomena. Each therefore cannot be properly understood without the other. In this light my dissertation provides a model of sovereignty that illustrates how contemporary nation-state sovereignty is made up of two components, one that is an interface mechanism, largely identical across all states, and the other that is subjective and thus unique to each group. I simultaneously offer a model of globalization that goes beyond the simple movement of people, goods, capital, and ideas to explain the conceptual transformations that have made today’s globalization possible, the processes that drive it, and the role of the nation-state as a necessary component of globalization itself.
  • African Fabric