Hugh Gusterson (PhD, Stanford University, 1991) has a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and the Anthropology Department at UBC.  Before coming to UBC in 2020, he taught at MIT, George Mason University, George Washington University, and the Georgia Institute of Technology.  He is past president of the American Ethnological Society (2016-17) and has served on the executive boards of the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Social Studies of Science.

Gusterson’s research and teaching interests center on militarism, the anthropology of science, neoliberalism, ethics, counterinsurgency, securitization, nuclear policy, drones, the polygraph, and drug policy.

Gusterson’s is the sole author of the books Nuclear Rites, People of the Bomb, and Drone (winner of the Roy Palmer Civil Liberties Prize).  He has also co-edited the books Cultures of Insecurity, Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong, The Insecure American, Life by Algorithms, The Militarization Reader, and The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual.

Gusterson has also published widely for more popular audiences.  His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune, the Boston Review, Nature, Science, American Scientist, and the Sciences.  He has also had a regular column for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and Sapiens.

Gusterson has held visiting fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.  His research has been funded by the Guggenheim Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Militarism, anthropology of science, neoliberalism, counterinsurgency, securitization, nuclear policy, drones, the polygraph, drug policy

Recent Academic Publications

I Was Wrong When I Studied Russian Nuclear Weapons Scientists.  American Ethnologist 1:1-6.  

I Just Naloxoned Someone on the Street (Guest editorial). Anthropology Today 42(5): 1-2. 

It’s All Lavender in Gaza. Anthropology Today 40(6):1-2. 

Homework: Toward a Critical Ethnography of the University. American Ethnologist 44(3):435-450. 2017

From Brexit to Trump: Anthropology and the Rise of Nationalist Populism.  American Ethnologist 44(2):209-214

Recent Public Writing

Keeping Canada’s Options Open on Nuclear Weapons is Not as Simple as it Sounds (with Allison Macfarlane).  Toronto Globe and Mail, February 13.  https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-keeping-canadas-options-open-on-nuclear-weapons-is-not-as-simple-as-it/#comments

Opiates and the Masses: Populist Oligarchy and the Totalitarion Itch in the U.S., February 2024
https://www.todaystotalitarianism.com/opiates

Without norms, societies fall apart.  Sapiens, December 16, 2020   https://www.sapiens.org/column/conflicted/durkheim-trump/

Will U.S.University Students Spread Covid-19?  Sapiens, July 20, 2020 https://www.sapiens.org/column/conflicted/will-u-s-university-students-spread-covid-19/

COVID-19 and the Turn to Magical Thinking.  Sapiens, May 12, 2020.  https://www.sapiens.org/column/conflicted/covid-19-magic/

The Problem of Imagining the Real.  Sapiens, April 10, 2020.  https://www.sapiens.org/column/conflicted/coronavirus-risk-perception/

What’s Wrong With “the Chinese Virus”?  Sapiens, March 23, 2020.  https://www.sapiens.org/column/conflicted/coronavirus-name/

Why Targeting Heritage is a Crime Against Humanity.  Sapiens.  January 16, 2020.  https://www.sapiens.org/column/conflicted/bombing-cultural-sites/