Gabriella Elgenius remembers the remarkable Thomas Hylland Eriksen, professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, who passed away on November 27, 2024, at the age of 62.

Thomas Hylland Eriksen, taken by Gabriella Elgenius in 2012 at Point Sud Research Centre in Bamako, Mali, at an event on Independence Jubilees in Africa

I first met Thomas at the London School of Economics when he was giving a lecture for the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN). As members of ASEN we had got to know Thomas through his scholarly work on ethnicity and nationalism and his support for our student-run organization. Thomas’ contributions included numerous talks at conferences, seminars, and workshops, as well as service on the International Advisory Board of Nations and Nationalism.

As students of nationalism, we engaged with his work on the complexities of cultural identity in a globalized world and the ways in which local communities navigate the pressures of modernization and change. At our weekly PhD seminars, I remember discussing excerpts from his influential books such as Ethnicity and Nationalism (1993) and Us and Them in Modern Societies (1993), which explore the construction and maintenance of ethnic identities. His “inverted refrigerator” metaphor comes to mind, referring to groups’ tendencies to overcommunicate differences, radiating coldness to defined “outsiders” while generating warmth for “insiders.” In Small Places, Large Issues (1995), a classic introduction for anthropology students, Thomas returned to the interconnectedness of local practices and global phenomena, exploring the local dynamics of small communities in the context of larger societal issues.

Thomas demonstrated the importance of taking ethnography seriously in research on globalization as he introduced the “overheating” approach to globalization (Overheating: An Anthropology of Accelerated Change, 2016), indicating ways in which new forms of connectedness and acceleration shed light on phenomena such as neoliberalism, identity politics, and climate change. Overheating was his last major European Research Council project within which he addressed the social implications of ecological sustainability, growth, and migration in times of rapid climate change. In subsequent publications, he aptly highlighted the temporal, multiscale, heterogeneous, and positional nature of the so-called “local view,” emphasizing the need for ethnographic research situated in context, and that we may understand as a call for mixing methods:

A proper grasp of the global condition requires both a proper command of an ethnographic field and sufficient contextual knowledge – statistical, historical, macro-sociological – to allow the ethnographer to enter the broad conversation about humanity at the outset of the twenty-first century. Since human lives are lived in the concrete here and now, not as abstract generalizations, no account of globalization is complete unless it is anchored in a local life world – but understanding local life is also in itself inadequate, since the local reality says little about the system of which it is a part. The tension between the anthropological focus on the non-scalable, local and unique, and a historical and macro-sociological perspective on large-scale systems connecting and sometimes clashing with these worlds, should not be seen as an obstacle, but as a resource.

 

– Eriksen, Thomas. (2016). Overheating: the world since 1991. History and Anthropology. 27. 1-19. 10.1080/02757206.2016.1218865

Thomas was well known for his commitment to making research accessible to a larger audience, for which he received many honours and awards. His final book, Seven Meanings of Life: The Threads That Connect (2022), explored the meaning of life through the “threads that connect” us and the relationships we form as we commit ourselves to others. Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s extraordinary legacy endures through his extensive body of work, which continues to inspire, but also through the web of such connecting threads. In this context, I remember colleagues in Norway speaking about Thomas’ commitment to his family, and we send our warmest condolences to Thomas’ family, his wife, and children.

I remember his generosity and kindness and am grateful for having had the opportunity to collaborate with him on texts and talks in different places. The many tributes to Thomas’ life acknowledge his scholarly contributions as well as his generosity and mentorship across disciplinary boundaries.

Thank you, Thomas.