Education
Ph.D., University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 2001
M.A., SE Asian Studies, University of California Berkeley, 1993
B.A., Anthropology, University of California Berkeley, 1991
CAS Speaker Bureau Topic(s)
Indonesia; Islam; gender; middle-class consumption
Regional and Thematic Interests
Southeast Asia
Religion
Profile
Carla Jones received her Ph.D. in Anthropology in 2001 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She joined CU in 2004, after a post-doctoral fellowship at Emory University. Her current research focuses on Islamic fashion. She is also interested in gender and consumption in the context of middle-class families in urban Indonesia. She has published on domesticity, gendered forms of expertise, the transformation of manners, and fashion. One strain of her scholarship asks how theories of materiality explain or fail to explain the embodied pleasures and burdens middle-class women carry in contemporary Indonesia. She is particularly interested in debates within Indonesia about the linked rise of consumer capitalism and Islamic piety. She grew up in Southeast Asia and loves to share her enthusiasm about the region in her teaching. She teaches courses on globalization, modernity, Islam and social theory.
Selected Publications:
- 2023 “Making an Appearance: Images, Frailty, and the Potency of Beauty in the Indonesian Modest Fashion Scene.” In Provocative Images in Contemporary Islam. Bart Barendregt, David Kloos, Leonie Schmidt, and Mark Westmoreland, eds., pp. 165-193. Leiden: Leiden University Press
- 2021 “Mualaf Chic: Conversion and Mediation in Indonesian Pious Sociality.” CyberOrient 15(1): 172-205
- 2021 Freeman, Carla and Carla Jones. “Catherine Lutz: Feminist Scholar, Feminist Mentor.” In “Genealogies of the Feminist Present: Lineages and Connections in Feminist Anthropology,” edited by Lynn Bolles and Mary H. Moran, American Ethnologist, May 24, 2021
- 2020 “Pandemic Diaries: Affect and Crisis,” American Ethnologist, May 20, 2020
- 2020 "Gender." “Mary Steedly’s Anthropology of Modern Indonesia: A Collection of Keywords,” Indonesia 109 (April): 45-59, Cornell Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University Press
- 2020 "A Case for Agitation: On Affect and Writing." In Writing Anthropology: Essays on Craft and Commitment. Carole McGranahan, ed. Durham: Duke University Press
- 2019 Jones, Carla and Jennifer Wies. 2019. “Feminist Anthropology for Our Times." Anthropology News, August 26, 2019. DOI: 10.1111/AN.1243
- 2019 “The Globalization of Asian Dress: Re-Orienting Fashion or Re-Orientalizing Asia?" Ann Marie Leshkowich and Carla Jones. In The Anthropology of Fashion and Dress: A Reader. Pp. 295-310. Joanne Eicher and Brent Luvaas, eds. London: Bloomsbury Publishing
- 2019 “Dress for Sukses: Fashioning Femininity and Nationality in Urban Indonesia.” In The Anthropology of Fashion and Dress: A Reader. Pp. 209-218. Joanne Eicher and Brent Luvaas, eds. London: Bloomsbury Publishing
- 2018 "Piety." In The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Pp. 4631-33. Hilary Callan, ed. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons
- 2018 "Stylish Ethics: Indonesian Modest Fashion and National Image." In Contemporary Muslim Fashions. Pp. 70-79, catalogue for Contemporary Muslim Fashions exhibit, de Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA
- 2012 Jones, Carla “Women in the Middle: Femininity, Virtue, and Excess in Indonesian Discourses of Middle-Classness.” The Middle Classes: Theorizing Through Ethnography. Pp. 145-167. Rachel Heiman, Carla Freeman, and Mark Liechty, eds. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.