Early life and education

Kalb grew up in the municipality of Eindhoven. Born into a family of cigar and textile producers, the significant development Eindhoven experienced in the 1960s, catalyzed by the growth of the Phillips Corporation headquartered in the city, influenced Kalb to take up anthropology as a method of investigating what he describes as "the complexity, unevenness, and inequality" latent in the city's expansion.^[2]

Kalb completed his MA in cultural anthropology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen in 1988 before finishing his PhD in social sciences at the Universiteit Utrecht in 1995.^[4]

Expanding Class: Power and Everyday Politics in Industrial Communities, The Netherlands, 1850–1950

In Expanding Class: Power and Everyday Politics in Industrial Communities, The Netherlands, 1850–1950, Kalb examines 20th century social and economic developments in the Brabant region of the Netherlands through a case study of the region's predominately Catholic working-class families. Following E.P. Thompson, Kalb develops what he describes as a relational approach to class that attempts to explain worker quiescence through an analysis of the Brabant region's cultural and social circumstances as well as productive relations.^[9] Charles Tilly argues that the brand of relational analysis proposed in Expanding Class "incorporates some coercion and pays considerable attention to culture, but resolutely rejects both functional and competitive accounts of inequality. Kalb centers his explanation on continuously negotiated social relations. His investigation thereby provides a promising model for further anthropological work".^[10]

Focaal

Kalb is the founding editor of anthropology journal Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology,^[8] as well as the current FocaalBlog editor.^[11] Focaal focuses primarily on intersecting anthropological and historical debates examining local case studies within a global context. According to the journal's website, Focaal advocates for "an approach that rests in the simultaneity of ethnography, processual analysis, local insights, and global vision".^[12]

Books

• Kalb, Don (1998). Expanding Class: Power and Everyday Politics in Industrial Communities; The Netherlands 1850-1950. Comparative and International Working-Class History. Durham: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-2022-7.

Edited Volumes

• Carrier, James G.; Kalb, Don, eds. (2015). Anthropologies of Class: Power, Practice, and Inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107087415.
• Kalb, Don; Halmai, Gábor, eds. (2011). Headlines of Nation, Subtexts of Class: Working-class Populism and the Return of the Repressed in Neoliberal Europe. EASA Series. Vol. 15. Oxford: Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-0857452030.
• Kalb, Don; Tak, Herman, eds. (2006). Critical Junctions: Anthropology and History beyond the Cultural Turn. Oxford: Berghan Books. ISBN 978-1845450298.
• Kalb, Don; Pansters, Wil; Siebers, Hans, eds. (2004). Globalization and Development: Themes and Concepts in Current Research. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-1402024740.
• Kalb, Don; van der Land, Marco; Staring, Richard; Van Steenbergen, Bart; Wilterdink, Nico, eds. (2000). The Ends of Globalization: Bringing Society Back In. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0847698851.

Selected articles

• Kalb, Don (2013). "Financialization and the capitalist moment: Marx versus Weber in the anthropology of global systems". American Ethnologist. 40 (2): 258–266. doi:10.1111/amet.12018.
• Kalb, Don (2012). "Thinking about neoliberalism as if the crisis was actually happening". Social Anthropology. 20 (3): 318–330. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8676.2012.00215.x.
• Visser, Oane; Kalb, Don (2010). "Financialised Capitalism Soviet Style? Varieties of State Capture and Crisis". European Journal of Sociology. 51 (2): 171–194. doi:10.1017/S000397561000010X. hdl:2066/90377. S2CID 145206501.
• Kalb, Don (2009). "Conversations with a Polish populist : Tracing hidden histories of globalization, class, and dispossession in postsocialism (and beyond)". American Ethnologist. 36 (2): 207–223. doi:10.1111/j.1548-1425.2009.01131.x.
• Kalb, Don (2005). "From flows to violence". Anthropological Theory. 5 (2): 176–204. doi:10.1177/1463499605053994. S2CID 145535313.

Selected Book Chapters

• Kalb, Don (2017). "Regimes of Value and Worthlessness: How Two Subaltern Stories Speak". In Narotzky, Susana; Goddard, Victoria (eds.). Work and Livelihoods: History, Ethnography and Models in Times of Crisis. New York: Routledge. pp. 123–136. ISBN 978-1138813984.
• Kalb, Don (2015). "Introduction: class and the new anthropological holism". In Carrier, James G.; Kalb, Don (eds.). Anthropologies of Class: Power, Practice, and Inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–27. ISBN 978-1107087415.
• Kalb, Don (2014). "Class". In Nonini, Donald M. (ed.). A Companion to Urban Anthropology. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. pp. 157–176. doi:10.1002/9781118378625.ch9. ISBN 978-1444330106.
• Kalb, Don (2001). "Globalism and postsocialist prospects". In Hann, C.M. (ed.). Postsocialism: ideals, ideologies, and practices in Eurasia. London: Routledge. pp. 317–334. ISBN 978-0415262583.