Theodore Park

Graduate Student

Division:

Sociocultural

Adviser(s):

Paul Kockelman

Degree(s):

MPhil in Sociocultural Anthropology, Yale University; BA in Social Anthropology, Cambridge University

theodore.park@yale.edu

What happens if the rites of transition, the moments through which we move from one stage of our life to the next, never take place? Youth in the developed world experience many of the markers of adult life later, if at all. Fewer people marry or have children. When they do, this takes place later than ever before. They pursue higher levels of education than previously, and encounter difficulty in finding stable rather than flexible work. Residence patterns as well as access to housing have shifted. In Italy and beyond, I study the transformative effects of economic stagnation on kinship, and the creation of the luxuriously precarious.

From 2019 to 2022, I carried out fieldwork in Lombardy with the support of the National Science Foundation’s Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant.

Publications

2021: “I ‘resti’ del colonialismo: categorie per riflettere sull’Italia postcoloniale” [The remnants of colonialism: categories for reflecting on postcolonial Italy] in CIRMiB MigraREport 2021 (ed.) Maddalena Colombo. Milan: Vita e Pensiero. (peer reviewed)

2020 “Verso una antropologia post-moderna” [Towards a post-modern anthropology] in Figure e percorsi dell’antropologia culturale (ed.) Anna Casella Paltrinieri. Milan: I.S.U Università Cattolica