Simon Larsson

Social Anthropology
PhD Student

About

• Bachelor degree in social anthropology, School of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg
• Bachelor degree in sociology from University West

Areas of interest

In my anthropological research I take an interest in European contacts with Africa South of the Sahara through mission, trade and colonialism during the 1900th and 2000th century. I am interested in the image of Africa and how Africa is represented in relation to the European society and how the African is represented in relation to a European understanding of the subject.

Current research

I am writing my doctoral thesis about Swedish protestant mission in the lower Congo (today the Democratic Republic of Congo) between 1881 and 1914.

In a tradition of symbolic anthropology I will discuss the cosmology of the missionaries in relation to the Swedish revivalist movement as well as in relation to a changing Swedish society. I will research how the missionaries’ work is related to utopian ideas and temporal fantasies about origin and future and how these ideas affect the establishment of spatial categories. Spatial categories that frames the work of establishing practices relating to exchange, family structures, cognition of time etc.

In my thesis I will also discuss identity and construction of subjects (both the positioning of the self as well as the positioning of the other) in relation to spatial and temporal categories in the missionaries narratives.

Teaching and tutoring

For the moment I do not teach.