Herve Varenne
· Gardner Cowles Professor of Anthropology and EducationColumbia University · Curriculum & Teaching
Active 1974–2022
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About
Hervé Varenne is a professor associated with the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. His work focuses on culture theory, particularly as it relates to culture production in history, and he has interests in anthropology and education, including issues related to Corona. Varenne's expertise encompasses discourse and conversational analysis, ethnomethodology, and the intersections of anthropology and education, with a particular emphasis on America in the United States and around the world. His activities include engaging with topics on anthropology, education, and culture through various platforms such as a blog, and he is involved in teaching courses related to these fields. His research and professional activities reflect a deep concern with understanding cultural processes, educational practices, and their historical contexts.
Research topics
- Sociology
- History
Selected publications
Designing, Animating, and Repairing a Suitable Do-it-Yourself Biology Lab
2019-04-17 · 4 citations
book-chapterSenior authorThe idea of contemporary Do-it-Yourself Biology (DIYbio) may have appeared in the 1950s. In the many tellings of its origin myths, the DIYbio, movement surfaced with the new century. Within a few years, iterations of DIYbio labs appeared in New York, Boston, Manchester, and Paris. There is much variation in their actual organization, but the principal movers and advocates acknowledge each other even as they continue to debate where the movement should go. In the everyday life of the lab, design…
The Question of European Nationalism
2019-03-08 · 4 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingIn any event, at the height of classical European nationalism, from Co. Clare on the West Coast of Ireland, and for a long way eastward, "nationality" was a matter of local concern. For nationalism, particularly in that part of the world where it originated and was first inscribed in history, is not only an academic question for social scientists wondering about its applicability as a model of or for human behavior, in Europe or anywhere else. It is also a political question among thos…
2018-11-22 · 2 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingThis introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents an investigation of who and what are involved in the eventual evaluation of a life as a success or failure in school terms. It explores the implication for research of looking at success and failure as two rooms within the same house that many people inhabit and are at work maintaining, reconstructing, and, it is hoped, remodeling. The book is about "the School Ame…
Normals, Emerging, and Diverging
2019-04-17 · 1 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingThis chapter aims to develop the grounds for the rationale for paying close attention to the temporal unfolding, or emergence, of order. It explains the grounds for the argument that maintaining an order, repairing an order, or establishing a new order requires not only instructions or injunctions, but also a much broader set of activities that can be well summarized as “education.” The world of experience, the one we live in, is mostly ordinary, normal—in the most common sense, routine, normal…
2018-11-22 · 1 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingThis chapter begins with the discussion of theories of culture and their use in the ethnography of the American School by offering two brief examples from the literature on physical disability. It discusses two works from the classical period in anthropology. These are Erik Erikson's Childhood and Society and Oscar Lewis's The Children of Sanchez. Erikson studied how being a child in different cultures would lead to the development of different adult personalities and different "identities.…
Frequent coauthors
- 5 shared
Ray McDermott
Stanford University
- 4 shared
Jill Koyama
Arizona State University
- 4 shared
Michael Scroggins
University of California, Los Angeles
- 4 shared
Sarah Wessler
Fairfield University
- 3 shared
Jennifer Van Tiem
Iowa City VA Health Care System
- 3 shared
Daniel Souleles
Copenhagen Business School
- 3 shared
Sunanda Samaddar Corrado
- 3 shared
Juliette de Wolfe
Education
- 1968
B.A.
Université d'Aix-Marseille
- 1972
M.A.
University of Chicago
- 1972
Ph.D.
University of Chicago
Awards & honors
- George and Louise Spindler Award for lifetime achievement fr…
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