Prof. Robert G. Launay

Prof. Robert G. Launay
 

Short Biography
 

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https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hIPwHiUAAAAJ&hl=en

Robert G. Launay is Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University, USA, and a leading scholar in the fields of African anthropology, Islamic studies, and the history of anthropological thought. He received his B.A. from Columbia University and his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the historical ethnography of West Africa, Islam in African societies, Islamic education, and the intellectual history of anthropology.
 

Professor Launay has conducted extensive fieldwork in Côte d’Ivoire and has held visiting appointments at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris and the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin. He is the author and editor of several influential books, including Traders Without Trade, Beyond the Stream: Islam and Society in an African Town, Foundations of Anthropological Theory, and Writing Boards and Blackboards: Islamic Education in Africa. His publications have appeared in leading journals and reference works such as Africa, Economy and Society, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Cultural Anthropology, and The New Cambridge History of Islam.
 

Among his most influential publications is Savages, Romans, and Despots: Thinking about Others from Montaigne to Herder (University of Chicago Press, 2018), which explores the historical development of European ideas about cultural difference and otherness, tracing intellectual and anthropological thought from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. The book offers a significant contribution to understanding the genealogy of cross-cultural thinking through its engagement with classical and early modern European texts.
 

Professor Launay is a recipient of the Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology and has served on the editorial boards of numerous international journals. He currently serves as Executive Editor of Journal of Religion in Africa. His scholarship has made significant contributions to the study of Islam in Africa, anthropological theory, and comparative understandings of religion, identity, and social change.
 

Published Articles:
 

1. "Transactional Spheres and Inter-Societal Exchange in Ivory Coast" Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 72, XVIII-4, 1978, pp. 561-573.

2. "Africa by the Lake: Remembering Melville Herskovits (1895-1963)"  Arts & Sciences, Spring 1988, pp. 6-9.

3. "Warriors and Traders: the Political Organization of a West African Chiefdom," Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, XXVIII 3-4, 1988, pp. 355-73.

4. "Pedigrees and Paradigms:  Scholarly Credentials Among the Dyula," in D. Eickelman and J. Piscatori, eds., Muslim Travellers:  Pilgrimage, Migration and the Religious Imagination, Routledge, 1990, pp. 175-99. 

5. "Representations and Misrepresentations: Is There Life After Positivism?" Reviews in Anthropology, 1992, vol. 21, pp. 181-92.

6. "Dyula," Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Volume 9,  Human Relations Area Files, Boston: G.K. Hall, 1995.

7. "La trahison des clercs? the 'Collaboration' of a Suwarian calim," In J. Hunwick and N. Lawler Wilks, eds.,  The Cloth of Many Colored Silks: Papers on History and Society Ghanaian and Islamic in Honor of Ivor Wilks, Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1996, pp. 297-318.

8. "Spirit Media: The electronic media and Islam among the Dyula of northern Côte d’Ivoire", Africa 67, 3, 1997, pp. 441-53.

9. "Knowledgeable Muslims," Reviews in Anthropology, 27, 1998, pp. 379-91.

10. "Stereotypic Vision: the "moral character" of the Senufo in colonial and postcolonial discourse", Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, 154, XXXIX-2, 1999, pp. 271-92.

11. With Benjamin P. Soares, "The formation of an ‘Islamic Sphere’ in French Colonial West Africa", Economy and Society, 28, 4, 1999, pp. 497-519.

12. With Marie Miran, "Beyond Mande Mory:  Islam and Ethnicity in Côte d’Ivoire", Paideuma, 46, 2000, pp. 63-84.

13. "Montesquieu: The Specter of Despotism and the Origins of Comparative Law", in Annelise Riles, ed., Rethinking the Masters of Comparative Law, Oxford: Hart Publishers, 2001, pp. 24-40.

14. "Writes of Passage: the Cape of Good Hope in late seventeenth century narratives of travel to Asia", in Maghan Keita, ed., Conceptualizing/Re-conceptualizing Africa: The Construction of African Historical Identity, International Studies in Sociology and Social Anthropology, Vol LXXXIII, Leiden: Brill, 2002, pp. 89-106.

15. "Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, Anthropology, Mary Kline Horowitz, ed., New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 2005, pp. 2265-2267.

16. "Person, Idea of the", Mary Kline Horowitz, ed., New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 2005, pp. 1740-1743.

17. "Polytheism", Mary Kline Horowitz, ed., New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 2005, pp. 1844-1846.

18. "An Invisible Religion? Anthropology’s Avoidance of Islam in Africa," Mwenda Ntarangwi, ed., African Anthropologies: History, Critique, and Practice, Dakar: CODESRIA in association with London and New York: Zed Books, Ltd., 2006, pp. 188-203.

19. "Practical Joking." Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, XLVI (4), 2006, pp. 795-808.

20. "Polytheism", International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Ed. William A. Darity, Jr..Vol. 6. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA 2008. p367-368.

21. "The Roots of Islamophobia in Côte d’Ivoire," Cultural Anthropology, virtual issue: "Hot Spots: Côte d’Ivoire is Cooling Down? Reflections a year after the Battle for Abidjan", Joseph Hellweg, ed., July 5, 2012.

22. With Rudolph Ware III, "Comment (ne pas) lire le Coran? Logiques de l’enseignement religieux au Sénégal et en Côte d’Ivoire.» In Gilles Holder, ed., .L'islam, nouvel espace public en Afrique, Paris: Karthala 2009, pp. 127-145.

23. "Lafitau revisited: American "savages" and universal history", Anthropologica 52 (2010) 337-343.

24. "Myth and Music: the musical epigraphs to The Raw and the Cooked", Histories of Anthropology Annual, 7, 83-90. 2011.

25. "Lewis Henry Morgan," Oxford Bibliographies Online in "Anthropology". Ed. John L. Jackson, Jr.  New York: Oxford University Press, January 2012. http://www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com/view/document/obo-9780199766567/obo-9780199766567-0050.xml.

26. "The Roots of Islamophobia in Côte d’Ivoire," Cultural Anthropology, virtual issue: "Hot Spots: Côte d’Ivoire is Cooling Down? Reflections a year after the Battle for Abidjan", Joseph Hellweg, ed., July 5, 2012.

27. "Is Lévi-Strauss Still Good to Think?" Reviews in Anthropology 42:1, 2013, pp. 38.

28. "Dyula." In Oxford Bibliographies in African Studies. Ed. Thomas Spear. New York: Oxford University Press, http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199846733/obo-9780199846733-0111.xml.

29. "West Africa," Street Food around the World: An Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, Bruce Kraig and Colleen Sen, eds., ABC-Clio, 2013, pp. 395-400. Reprinted in Bruce Kraig and Colleen Taylor Sen, eds., Street Food: Everything You Need to Know About Open-Air Stands, Carts & Food Truck Across the Globe. Chicago: Sunset Books, 2017, pp. 58-65.

30. "Malthus, Thomas," R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, eds., Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopedia. Los Angeles: Sage Reference. 2 vols. 2013. pp. 511-512.

31. "Echoes of the class struggle: Exoticism, religion and politics in Fustel de Coulanges’ The Ancient City", Regna Darnell and Frederic W. Gleach, eds., Corridor Talk to Culture History: Public Anthropology and Its Consequences, History of Anthropology Annual, vol. 9, University of Nebraska Press, 2015, pp.81-94.

32. "Islam in Black and White", Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 35, 3, 2015, pp. 641-647.

33. "Introduction",In Robert Launay, ed.,  Islamic Education in Africa: Writing Boards and Blackboards., Indiana University Press. 2016.

34. "French" in Carol Mighton Haddix, Bruce Kraig and Colleen Taylor Sen, eds. The Chicago Food Encyclopedia, Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2017, pp120-121.

35. "Maize avoidance? Colonial French attitudes towards Native American foods in the Pays des Illinois (17th-18th century)." Food and Foodways , 26, 2, 2018.

36. "Views from Afar: Understanding Medieval Trans-Saharan Trade through Accounts of Arab Geographers", Kathleen Bedford Berzock, ed., Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa, Block Museum of Art and Princeton University Press, 2019.

37. "Mande (Mandingo)." The Encyclopedia of Islam Three. Brill, 2020, pp.138-139.

38. "Defining Religion: Durkheim and Weber Compared." Religions,  13: 89, 2022.https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13020089.

39. "Genealogies of Islam Noir: Racializing Islam", In Frank Peter, Paula Schrode and Ricarda Stegman., eds.  Conceptualizing Islam, Routledge 2025, pp. 202-214.

40. "Le Shaykh et le Prophtète" Fabienne Samson, ed. Repenser les Modernités Africaines: Témoignages sur l’anthropologie critiquede Jean-Pierre DozonI, Editions Karthala, 2026, pp. 207-212.