Peter Hervik

Udupa, S., & Hervik, P. (Eds.). (2026). Handbook on anthropology and artificial intelligence. Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing. 

Publishers page: https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/handbook-on-anthropology-and-artificial-intelligence-9781035342198.html
(Open access link: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035342204 )

The Handbook of Anthropology and Artificial Intelligence offers a groundbreaking ethnographic framework for understanding AI as a sociocultural phenomenon. In 33 chapters, the volume examines human–machine entanglements across global contexts—from healthcare and policing to warfare and climate politics—critiquing AI’s limits, promises, and power through anthropological theory and field-based research. 

My chapter: 
Does AI contribute to ignorance and foster indifference, nihilism, and violent identity politics?

https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035342204.00046

On November 10, 2021, I held a guest lecture that was video-recorded. “The Study of Strategic Ignorance: Anthropological Perspectives on Racialization in Denmark.”

In this talk, I show how strategic ignorance works, particularly through the eyes of those who look, talk, write and contest the presence and identity of what broadly is being referred to as migrants. The content draws primarily from the Danish language book “Sådan er det bare.”

Here are the slides from the keynote speech November 4, 2015 held in Jyväskyä, Finland as part of an international seminar “Racialization in the Nordic Countries”. My talk was called: “On the challenge of making sense of Nordic exclusionary reasoning”. It included talk about the Abu-Ghraib photographs and a Danish cartoon by the Morgenthaler company. This topic is further more dealt with in a forthcoming chapter in a companion volume on Media Anthropology on Routledge (Fall 2022). 

Hvem er vi? Vi ved ikke, før vi ved!
SÅDAN ER DET BARE

– antropologiske perspektiver på oplevelser og reaktioner på racialisering i Danmark

“Sådan er det bare” er et nærmere kig på, hvordan det kan være, at et stort flertal af danskere slår hørelsen fra, når minoriteter i landet fortæller om deres oplevelse af at blive behandlet anderledes.

Posted on May 29, 2019October 28, 2021

Workshop: Critical understanding of racialization in the era of global populism, June 3-4, 2019