• Political anthropology
• Historical anthropology
• Ethno-politics, ethnic relations, ethnic minorities and majorities
• Civilizations and barbarians
• Sovereignty, citizenship, state formation
• Archaeology (esp. East and Southeast Asia)
• Museum studies
• Asian studies (esp. China, Burma)

Books:

• 2004: China Before China: Johan Gunnar Andersson, Ding Wenjiang, and the Discovery of China's Prehistory. Bilingual in English and Chinese; with Dr. Chen Xingcan. Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities monographs no. 15, 2004.
• 2003: The Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon, The Death of Teddy's Bear, and the Sovereign Exception of Guantanamo. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003. (A Turkish-language short version was published by the Istanbul-based BIANet, as "Bag'is,lama ve Mutlak I'ktidarin Gizi" [The President's Pardon and the Hidden Rituals of Sovereign Power], http://www.bianet.org/2003/04/18/18308.htm).

Articles:

• Forthcoming: "The animal other: Re-naming the barbarians in 20th-century China." Social Text 109 (Special issue, "China and the Human," projected for Winter 2011).
• 2011: "Slavery as the commodification of people: Wa 'slaves' and their Chinese 'sisters.'" In Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 59 (Spring 2011), 3-18.
• 2011: "Science across borders: Johan Gunnar Andersson and Ding Wenjiang." In Denise M. Glover, Stevan Harrell, C. McKhann, and M. Swain, eds., Explorers and Scientists in China's Borderlands, 1880-1950. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011, 240-66.
• 2011: "Giorgio Agamben och den kommande gemenskapen" [Giorgio Agamben and the coming community]. In Sociologik: Tio essäer om socialitet och tänkande [Sociologics. Ten essays on sociality and thought], edited by Christian Abrahamsson, Fredrik Palm & Sverre Wide. Stockholm: Santérus, 2011, 53-87. (In Swedish)
• 2010: "Mining, history, and the anti-state Wa: The politics of autonomy between Burma and China." Journal of Global History 5.2 (2010), 241-64.
• 2010: "The reluctant sovereign: New adventures of the US presidential Thanksgiving turkey." Anthropology Today 26.5 (Oct. 2010), 13-18.
• 2010: "Participant intoxication and self-other dynamics in the Wa context." The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 11.2 (2010), 111-27.
• 2010: "The global repatriation debate and the new 'universal museums.'" In Jane Lydon et al, eds. The Handbook of Postcolonialism and Archaeology. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2010, 303-310.
• 2010: "The politics of cultural heritage." In Lee, Ching Kwan and Hsing, You-tien, eds. Reclaiming Chinese Society: The New Social Activism. London: Routledge, 2010, 225-45.
• 2009: "The autonomy of naming: Kinship, power and ethnonymy in the Wa lands of the Southeast Asia-China frontiers." In Charles Macdonald & Yangwen Zheng, eds. Personal Names in Asia: History, Culture and Identity. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2009, 150-74.
• 2007: "The trouble with world culture: Recent museum developments in Sweden." Anthropology Today 23.5 (October 2007), 6-11.
• 2006: "Rescuing the Empire: Chinese Nation-Building in the Twentieth Century." European Journal of East Asian Studies 5.2 (2006), 15-44 (Special issue on "Nation-building and ethnic minorities in East and Southeast Asia"
• 2006: "Chinese Collections Outside China: Problems and Hopes." (Inaugural lecture for the International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology, ICCHA, University College London, March 2005). Public Archaeology [London] 5.2 (2006), 111-26.
• 2005: "A Foreign Bird in a Golden Cage: Sweden's Asia Collections." Res Publica 65 (2005), 68-80. (In Swedish).
• 2004: "Giorgio Agamben: Philosophy now," and "The Barbarians and the Outlaws: A Critique of Homo sacer," in Res Publica (Stockholm), special Agamben issue guest edited by M. Fiskesjö, vol. 62/63 (2004), 4-12, 107-25. (In Swedish).
• 2003: "Who Will Take Responsibility For World Cultural Heritage? The Views of a Western Museum Director," Zhongguo wenwu bao (Beijing), February 14, 2003, front page. (In Chinese)
• 2003: "Lost Civilizations, Lost Choices." Dushu (Beijing) 4 (2003), 72-75. (In Chinese).
• 2002: "The Barbarian Borderland and the Chinese Imagination -- Travellers in Wa Country," Inner Asia 4.1 (2002), 81-99.
• 2001: "Rising From Blood-Stained Fields: Royal Hunting and State Formation in Shang China," Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 73 (2001), 48-192.
• 1999: "On the 'Raw' and the 'Cooked' Barbarians of Imperial China," Inner Asia 1.2 (1999), 139-68.

Edited volume:

• "New Perspectives on Eurasian Archaeology," special issue of the Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (BMFEA, Stockholm), vol. 75, 2003