William F. Stafford, Jr.

William F. Stafford, Jr. is an anthropologist whose research focuses on the ethnography of transactional formats, technologies of infrastructuralisation, the conceptualization of force, and experiments with ‘equality’ as a methodological orientation and principle of social individuation. His book project The Autorickshaw Inside the City Inside the Auto explores how autorickshaws in Delhi mediate a varied materiality of urban relations through the technologies of encounter to which they connect, including meters, apps, panic buttons, fare schedules, strike logistics, interior designs, licensing regimes, and city architecture. Current work takes up error as an emergent instrument of technopolitical power, autonomous technology and discourses of cultural self-determination and postcolonial freedom, and figurations of the body in sculptural interpretations of mythic, epic, and religious artefacts of capture and containment in India. William completed his PhD in anthropology from the University of California Berkeley and studied for the MA and MPhil in sociology and anthropology at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the Delhi School of Economics respectively. He has taught anthropology, visual studies, and science and technology studies at the University of California Berkeley and the University of Virginia, was a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance at JNU, and held a postdoctoral fellowship in visual studies at the University of Toronto. Prior to his postgraduate training, William worked professionally as a researcher on bonded labour, forced labour, and minimum wage law and policy in South and Southeast Asia with UN agencies; international, regional, and national NGOs; and labour unions and associations.