Jeffrey W Mantz

Affiliate Faculty

Anthropology: Political economy; inequality; religion, ritual and spirituality; science and technology; Caribbean; West and Central Africa

Jeff Mantz taught at George Mason University from 2008-2012; he remains an affiliate of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Cultural Studies program. He previously taught at the California State University, Stanislaus from 2003-07, and Vassar College from 2001-03. He conducts research in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Caribbean on the political, economic, and cultural changes underlying the digital age.

Jeff Mantz now serves as Cultural Anthropology Program Director and Human Subjects Research Officer at the National Science Foundation. He can be reached at jmantz@nsf.gov; 703-292-7783.

Selected Publications

Improvisational Economies: Coltan Production in the Eastern Congo." Social Anthropology 16 (2): 34-50.

“Enchanting Panics and Obeah Anxieties: Concealing and Disclosing Eastern Caribbean Witchcraft” Anthropology and Humanism 32 (1): 18-29.

“How a Huckster Becomes a Custodian of Moral Markets: Traditions of Flexibility in Exchange in Dominica .” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 14 (1-2): 19-38

(With James H. Smith) “Do Cellular Phones Dream of Civil War?: The Mystification of Production and the Consequences of Technology Fetishism in the Eastern Congo ” (In Inclusion and Exclusion in the Global Arena . (Ed.) Max Kirsch. New York : Routledge).

Courses Taught

ANTH 114: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
ANTH 313: Myth, Magic and Mind
ANTH 390: Theories, Methods and Issues I
ANTH 617: Political Economy
ANTH 650: Ethnographic Methods and Research Design

Education

PhD, University of Chicago, Anthropology (2003)

MA, Binghamton University, Anthropology (1996)

BA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Anthropology / Social Thought & Political Economy (1993)