Photo: TheSilentPhotographer (talk) / CC BY 3.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Among the people I cover, Appadurai stands apart as a genuine intellectual heavyweight. A Mumbai-born, Chicago-trained anthropologist who became one of the defining theorists of globalization, he gave us a vocabulary for how people, goods and especially imagination flow across borders. What astonishes me is the foresight: decades before our hyper-connected social-media age, he was already mapping how imagination becomes a collective social practice. The Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is well earned. I find more romance in a thinker who quietly reshaped how we see the world than in most celebrities, and he is squarely that.
Overview
Arjun Appadurai FRAI (born 4 February 1949) is an Indian-American anthropologist who has been recognized as a major theorist in globalization studies. He is an elected fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. In his anthropological work, he discusses the importance of the modernity of nation-states and globalization.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Arjun Appadurai
- Name (Japanese)
- アルジュン・アパデュライ
- Reading
- あるじゅん・あぱでゅらい
- Born
- February 4, 1949 (age 77)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Aquarius / Ox
- Origin
- Mumbai, Bombay State, India
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- anthropologist / sociologist / academic / theorist / ethnologist
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- University of Chicago
Awards & achievements
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Sociologist — see all → · More people from India →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.