Jeffrey W Mantz

Assistant Professor

Political economy, religion and the supernatural, science and technology, Caribbean, West and Central Africa

Jeff Mantz holds a BA in Anthropology and Social Thought and Political Economy from the University of Massachusetts, an MA in Anthropology from Binghamton University, and a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. Prior to coming to George Mason University, Mantz was a professor at the California State University, Stanislaus from 2003-07, and Vassar College from 2001-03. He conducts research in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Caribbean on the political, economic, and cultural changes underlying the digital age.

Selected Publications

Improvisational Economies: Coltan Production in the Eastern Congo." Social Anthropology 16 (2): 34-50.

“Enchanting Panics and Obeah Anxieties: Concealing and Disclosing Eastern Caribbean Witchcraft” Anthropology and Humanism 32 (1): 18-29.

“How a Huckster Becomes a Custodian of Moral Markets: Traditions of Flexibility in Exchange in Dominica .” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 14 (1-2): 19-38

(With James H. Smith) “Do Cellular Phones Dream of Civil War?: The Mystification of Production and the Consequences of Technology Fetishism in the Eastern Congo ” (In Inclusion and Exclusion in the Global Arena . (Ed.) Max Kirsch. New York : Routledge).

Courses Taught

ANTH 114: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
ANTH 313: Myth, Magic and Mind
ANTH 390: Theories, Methods and Issues I
ANTH 617: Political Economy
ANTH 650: Ethnographic Methods and Research Design