About

Erica Lagalisse is an anthropologist and writer, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE) and editor at The Sociological Review. 

Lagalisse currently holds a grant from the British Academy to develop a compilation on “Solidarity and Care during the Covid-19 Pandemic”, the special section of The Sociological Review that she managed during 2020-21.

She is also the author of Occult Features of Anarchism – With Attention to the Conspiracy of Kings and the Conspiracy of the Peoples (2019) and guest researcher at the Anarchism Research Group at Loughborough University. Occult Features of Anarchism is a historical study that explores the gendered cosmology of the modern Left to build an anti-colonial critique of anarchism, commenting on the cultural production of “conspiracy theory” in the process. 

Lagalisse’s PhD dissertation, “Good Politics”: Property, Intersectionality, and the Making of the Anarchist Self (2016), explores anarchist networks that cross Québec, the United States and Mexico to examine contradictions within indigenous solidarity activism and settler “anarchoindigenism”. The ethnography throws into relief the idiosyncracies of university-educated Anglo-American leftists, and draws on anthropological, feminist and critical race theory to show how they have preempted the black feminist challenge of “intersectionality” by recuperating its praxis within the logic of neoliberal self-making projects and property relations. This work is currently undergoing revisions for a university press. Previous feminist ethnographic work also includes “Gossip as Direct Action” (2013), and “Marginalizing Magdalena:  Intersections of Gender and the Secular in Anarchoindigenist Solidarity Activism” (2011).

Her most recent publication is her Chapter “Anthropology” in the The Handbook of Marxism (Vol I-III), Eds. Sara Farris, Alberto Toscano, Beverley Skeggs, and Svenja Bromberg. London: SAGE, forthcoming in 2022.

While completing her PhD in Social Anthropology (2016) at McGill University in Montreal, Canada (supervisor: Kristin Norget), Lagalisse also held a visiting researcher appointment at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia Social (CIESAS) in Oaxaca, Mexico (supervisor: Margarita Dalton), and a U.S.-Canada Fulbright Fellowship at the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) at the University of Texas at Austin (supervisor: Charles Hale). Lagalisse also held doctoral scholarships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Société et Culture (FRQSC), as well as a postdoctoral research grant from the FQRSC while she developed Occult Features of Anarchism (2019) at the International Inequalities Institute of the London School of Economics, under the supervision of Professor Beverley Skeggs.

Lagalisse is involved in two ongoing ethnographic research projects. One adapts her long-time research focus on autonomist social movements to inform an anti-capitalist analysis of marijuana legalization, with a multisited ethnographic focus on black market growers, crafters and dealers affected by the medicalization and legalization of cannabis in Quebec, Canada, and California, U.S.A.

Lagalisse is also engaged in a longitudinal, multisited study of son jarocho, a politicized folk musical practice in Mexico and diaspora. Beyond themes of identity, migration and gendered labour, this study also expands upon her past work on political resistance movements to consider sensorial questions of affect, rhythm and repetition in relation to son jarocho as an imaginative practice and physiologically embodied art of memory. All correspondence regarding son jarocho is especially welcome.

See full bibliography complete with links to PDFs.

Listen to podcasts.

See information and writings in Spanish.

Lagalisse’s profile at the International Inequalities Institute of the London School of Economics.

Contact: e.lagalisse@lse.ac.uk

Twitter: @ELagalisse

Instagram: ericalagalisse

Facebook: Erica Lagalisse