Jason Pine
Lecturer - Anthropology
School of Natural and Social Sciences
Office: 1013 SS Building
Phone: (914) 251-6627
Fax: (914) 251-6603
e-mail: jason.pine@purchase.edu
Jason has conducted research in Naples for the past five years, where he studies the zone of contact where the camorra, the region's powerful and volatile organized crime networks, and more ordinary, underemployed families meet in day-to-day life. He studies how the moral economy of the camorra is inflected in various aesthetic forms ranging from music and musical theater, to pirated television, film and everyday linguistic performances. Additionally, Jason has been pursuing a research project on methamphetamine production and addiction in North America, and its relationship to the broader, more general everyday demands of optimal performance and productivity encouraged by Big Pharma. Finally, he has been studying the aesthetics and political economy of virtual world-building in Second Life. Jason uses photography, video and machinima in all of his research projects.
Education:
Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin
M.A., New School University
B.A., University of Chicago
Awards:
Research has been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the U.S. Department of Justice - Bureau of Justice Assistance
Areas of expertise:
political economy, organized crime, aesthetics, music, film, virtual world-building, language & culture
Research interests:
organized crime and underground economies in Naples, street drugs and pharmaceuticals in North America, pirated TV, music, musical theater and melodrama, film, virtual world-building
Courses taught:
Film & Anthropology, Urban Anthropology, Ethnography & New Media, Social Marketing with Social Media, Ethnographic Methods, Linguistic Anthropology, Language & Culture, Intro to Cultural Anthropology, Intro to Media, Society & the Arts
Media
An Emergent Second Life
A television show produced in collaboration with Paper Tiger TV that focuses on identity in the virtual world Second Life and what it can tell us about identity in everyday experience. It suggests that self-designed experiences may enable us to articulate emergent identities for ourselves and for others. The program combines a live studio audience, videotaped testimonials of Second Life users who express profound personal investments while creating their avatars and environments, and experimental machinima (machine cinema) to evoke the experience of virtual self-design and world-building: www.papertiger.org/Current#2ndlife. The show airs on December 3rd at 8pm on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN) www.mnn.org and at 3pm and 11pm on Brooklyn Community BCAT www.briconline.org/bcat/default.asp. Producer and Director, Bianca Ahmadi; Associate Producer, Juan Rubio; Editor, Juan David Gonalez; Content Director, Jason Pine.
Melomercato
video clips and collages from field footage: http://revver.com/u/anthrofilms/
Publications:
(2009) "Embodied Capitalism and the Meth Economy" in
(2008) “Icons and Iconoclasm: Roberto Saviano’s Gommorah,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 11.3
(2008) “Contact, Community, Complicity: Affective Communities and Economies of Affect in Naples,” Law, Culture and the Humanities, 4.3.
(2008) “Ethnography, Video and the Aesthetics of Engagement” in Martin Downing, ed., Video Visions: The Use of Video in Social Research. Cambridge Scholars Publishing (forthcoming).
(2007) “Economy of Speed: The New Narco-Capitalism,” Public Culture, 19.2.
(2007) “Se la scrittura incontra l’arte” Alias (weekly supplement to Il Manifesto), December 15.
(2007) “Italian Cinema by Mary P. Wood” (invited book review). CONGRIPS (Conference Group on Italian Politics and Society) Newsletter 64.
(2007) The Passeggiata and Popular Culture in an Italian Town by Giovanna P. Del Negro” (invited book review). International Labor and Working-Class History 70:1.
(2002) “Il sogno infranto del ventriloquo.” Alias (weekly supplement to Il Manifesto), March 2.