Ph.D. Stanford 1988

Specialties

Political economy; political ecology and environmental issues; historical anthropology; science studies; kinship, gender, and sexuality.

Kath Weston’s current work focuses on political economy, political ecology and environmental issues, historical anthropology, and science studies.  She has also published widely on kinship, gender, and sexuality.  Before coming to the University of Virginia, she taught at Harvard University and Arizona State University.  She has also served as a Visiting Professor at Cambridge University, the University of Tokyo, Brandeis University, Wellesley College, and Olin College.

Dr. Weston has conducted fieldwork and archival research in North America, India, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.  She is a longtime member of the National Writers Union and the author of multiple books.

Selected Publications

Historical Anthropology and the History of Anthropology
"'Real Anthropology’ and Other Nostalgias”
“Vectors and Limits: Imagining the Offshore as Incarceration”
“Escape from the Andamans: Tracking, Offshore Incarceration, and Ethnology in the Back of Beyond”
“A Political Ecology of ‘Unnatural Offences’: State Security, Queer Embodiment, and the Environmental Impacts of Prison Migration”

Political Ecology
“Political Ecologies of the Precarious”
“A Political Ecology of ‘Unnatural Offences’: State Security, Queer Embodiment, and the Environmental Impacts of Prison Migration”
“Water and War”

Political Economy
“Lifeblood, Liquidity, and Cash Transfusions: Beyond Metaphor in the Study of Finance”
“Biosecuritization: The Quest for Synthetic Blood and the Taming of Kinship”
“The Homeless Readers of Tokyo”
“The Moveable Feast of Economy and Biology: Sex/Gender Four Decades On”

Science Studies
“Entanglement, Really: Taking Scientific Metaphors in the Social Sciences Seriously”
“Biosecuritization: The Quest for Synthetic Blood and the Taming of Kinship”
“Now Where’s the Beef? The National Animal Identification System, Biosecurity, and Emerging Forms of State Surveillance”