Didier Fassin

                                Photo Andrea Kane

Didier Fassin
Coordinator of the Program

Didier Fassin is the James D. Wolfensohn Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study of Princeton and Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Anthropologist, sociologist and physician, he is the founder of the Interdisciplinary Research Institute for Social Sciences (CNRS – Inserm – EHESS – University Paris North), which he directed from 2007 to 2010. He conducted research in public health in Tunisia and France, and in medical anthropology in Senegal, Congo and Ecuador. More recently, Professor Fassin developed the field of political and moral anthropology, with empirical studies on Aids and memory in South Africa, disaster and aid in Venezuela, immigration and asylum in France, as well as theoretical inquiries on witnessing and testifying in Palestine, social suffering and trauma in France, and the humanitarian reason from a global perspective. Within the program, his fieldwork is concentrated on the police, the prison, and the National Court of Asylum.

Selected Recent Publications

Compassion and Repression. The Moral Economy of Immigration Policies in France, Cultural Anthropology, 2005, 20 (3), 362-387

De la Question Sociale à la Question Raciale ? Représenter la Société Française (with Eric Fassin, La Découverte, 2006)

When Bodies Remember. Experience and Politics of AIDS in South Africa, (University of California Press, 2007) – French version at La Découverte

Les Politiques de l’Enquête. Épreuves Ethnographiques (with Alban Bensa, La Découverte, 2008)

Les Economies Morales Revisitées, Annales. Histoire, sciences sociales, 2009, 64 (6): 1237-1266

The Empire of Trauma. An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood (with Richard Rechtman, Princeton University Press, 2009) – French version at Flammarion

Ethics of Survival. A Democratic Approach to the Politics of Life. Humanity. 2010, 1 (1): 81-96

Contemporary States of Emergency. The Politics of Military and Humanitarian Interventions (with Mariella Pandolfi, Zone Books, 2010)

Les Nouvelles Frontières de la Société Française (La Découverte, 2010)

La Raison Humanitaire. Une Histoire Morale du Temps Présent (Hautes Etudes-Gallimard-Seuil, 2010) – English version forthcoming at University of California Press