Matthew Gutmann
Professor of Anthropology
Director, Brown International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI)
Matthew Gutmann is Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes, and Faculty Fellow at the Watson Institute. Most of his ethnographic research has been conducted in Mexico, where he is a visiting professor at Colegio de México, and China, where he is a visiting professor at Nanjing University. He has also conducted collaborative research on United Nations Peacekeepers in Haiti and Lebanon. From 2009 to 2013, he was Vice President for International Affairs at Brown, leading the University’s efforts to build collaborations and exchanges with leading institutions around the world and major programs relevant to internationalization. Gutmann has a Master’s in Public Health, and in 2008 he won the Eileen Basker Memorial Award for the best scholarly study on gender and health. He has also been a visiting professor in China, France, Mexico, and Spain. Gutmann’s undergraduate major was modern and classical Chinese.
MEN ARE ANIMALS: This anthropological study draws on fieldwork in Mexico City and Shanghai to explore popular enthusiasm for putative scientific beliefs that men have minimal control over their sexual and violent “natures” and they must be managed and restrained, usually by societal restrictions, and by the women in their lives. Why analytic frames referencing heredity, genes, and hormones hold sway in the popular imaginary at this particular historical moment rests on more than simply the credibility of scientific discovery.
GLOBAL AFFINITIES: CITIZENS OF THE WORLD: This project looks at what people think and do to demonstrate their commitment to global affinities, identities, and associations. How people disengage from local (including national) allegiances and replace (or supplement) these with global communities is obviously easier said than done. Why might the Catholic Church, to take an unlikely example, be considered the most global institution on earth?
GLOBAL SQUARE BOOK SERIES (co-editor with Jeffrey Lesser), California, nine volumes to be published 2016-2012.
GLOBAL LATIN AMERICA: INTO THE 21st CENTURY (ed. with Jeffrey Lesser), California, 2016.
POR MIS PISTOLAS: SEXO, ANTICONCEPCION Y SIDA EN MEXICO, Siglo Veintiuno, 2016.
BREAKING RANKS: IRAQ VETERANS SPEAK OUT AGAINST THE WAR (with Catherine Lutz), California, 2010.
EL ROMANCE DE LA DEMOCRACIA: REBELDIA SUMISA EN EL MEXICO CONTEMPORANEO, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2009.
FIXING MEN: SEX, BIRTH CONTROL, AND AIDS IN MEXICO, California, 2007.
THE ROMANCE OF DEMOCRACY: COMPLIANT DEFIANCE IN MEXICO CITY, California, 2002.
THE MEANINGS OF MACHO: BEING A MAN IN MEXICO CITY, California, 1996 (2006).
Anthropology of Masculinity (ANTH1221)
Ethnography (ANTH2050)
Ethnography + Social Critique (ANTH1848)
Peoples and Cultures of Greater Mexico (ANTH66N)
January 15, 2020 Fatherly
This interview with Professor of Anthropology Matthew Gutmann focuses on the research in his book, "Are Men Animals?", in which he debunks the myth that biological determinism drives or explains male violence.
November 12, 2019 News from Brown
In his new book, Are Men Animals? Mathew Gutmann refutes the decades-old claim that "boys will be boys" and emphasizes that men are more than testosterone and Y chromosomes — a common idea proliferated by society.
December 5, 2017 University of California Press Blog
Anthropology professor Matthew Gutmann in the University of California Press Blog, "The history of Latin America is more than the Triple C’s of Conquest, Colonialism, and Christianity, the genocide, slavery, and immigration brought to the continent by rulers from Europe and the United States."
November 7, 2017 Al Jazeera
Faculty Fellow Matthew Gutmann participated in a panel on what can be done to stop sexual harassment, in light of the scandals in Hollywood.
June 12, 2017
Anthropology Professor and BIARI Director Matthew Gutmann recently received a two-year grant from The Virgina B. Toulmin Foundation.
May 18, 2015 Folha de São Paulo
Folha de São Paulo interviews Faculty Fellow Matthew Gutmann.
November 4, 2010
In a new video, Brown Vice President for International Affairs Matthew Gutmann and Institute Professor Catherine Lutz describe their experience interviewing dozens of anti-war veterans and compiling the results into their book, Breaking Ranks: Iraq Veterans Speak Out against the War (University of California Press, 2010). “As anthropologists, we approached these veterans as people who were American, who grew up in the late 20th and early 21st century, and are really products of that society and its values about masculinity, nation, and the individual — and we focused on how they think about their experience from that perspective,” said Lutz. “These are not universal, natural, inevitable kinds of soldiers. They are very much American soldiers.”