

Assistant Professor
Campion 213
Email: zuckermc@bc.edu
ORCID
Dr. Charles Zuckerman is a linguistic anthropologist who studies how cultural categories mediate ethical life in human interaction. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Formative Education at the Lynch School of Education & Human Development. Most of his long-term research has been in Laos, but over the past few years, he has become increasingly interested in how people across the world are using new communicative technologies to cultivate ethical dispositions.
His current book project explores the moral economy of gambling in Luang Prabang, Laos, and the social categories that make this moral economy legible and politically actionable.
The result is a rethinking of how scholars should understand the many roles that social categories play in our lives.
He is the founder and organizer of 91”ΔÎ's new Forum on Semiosis, a space for collaboratively studying the details of communicative interactions. He thinks best and has the most fun when thinking aloud with others.
2023, Charles H. P. Zuckerman and N. J. Enfield, âThe Limits of Thematization,â Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.
2023, âVideo Footage and The Grain of Practice,â Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 13 (1): 128-145.
2022, âWhen Ethics Canât be Found: Evaluative Gaps in Ordinary Life,â Cultural Anthropology, 37 (3): 450-485.
2022, Charles H. P. Zuckerman and John Mathias, âThe Limits of Bodies: Gatherings and the Problem of Collective Presence,â American Anthropologist 124 (2): 345-357.
2021, âFigure Composition.â Signs and Society 9 (3): 263-299.
2021, âOn the Unity of Types: Lao Gambling, Ethno-Metapragmatics, and Generic and Specific Modes of Typification.ââ Language in Society 50 (4): 557-582.
2020, ââDonât gamble for money with friendsâ: Moral Economic Types and their Uses.â American Ethnologist 47 (4): 432-446.
2016, âPhatic Violence? Gambling and the Arts of Distraction in Laos.â Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 26 (3): 294-314.