Thomas M. Malaby
Office: Sabin 325
Phone: (414) 229-5247
e-mail: malaby@uwm.edu
Web Page: www.uwm.edu/~malaby/
Degree: Ph.D., Harvard University
Research Interests:
I arrived at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the Fall of 2001 after previously teaching at Amherst College and Harvard University. I am a cultural anthropologist with fieldwork experience in Greece, and my recently published book, Gambling Life: Dealing in Contingency in a Greek City (University of Illinois Press) explores human attitudes toward risk and chance through an examination of the practice of gambling in Crete. My principal research interest is in the relationships among modernity, globalization, and the management of time and indeterminacy. Other areas of interest include social theory, modernity and institutional legitimacy, urban criminality, and performance theory. My current projects include an examination of evasion and belonging under the seemingly novel conditions of the "New" Europe, and the social creation of indeterminacy in computer game development. I typically teach the large lecture course of Anthropology 102 each semester, and my other course is usually an upper-level course on a specific theoretical or ethnographic topic.
Selected Publications:
"The Currency of Proof: Euro Competence and the Refiguring of Value in Greece." Social Analysis 47(1):42-52, Spring 2003.
"Odds and Ends: Risk, Mortality, and the Politics of Contingency." Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 26(3):283-312, September 2002.
"Gambling Life: Dealing in Contingency in a Greek City." University of Illinois Press, 2003. Amazon Listing
