David Scott

David Scott (born 1958) is a Jamaican academic and curator. He is the Ruth and William Lubic Professor of Anthropology and chair of the anthropology department at Columbia University. He is a recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Scott was born in Jamaica in 1958. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of the West Indies at Mona in 1980 and PhD from the New School for Social Research in 1989. His research has focused on postcolonial politics, diaspora, and cultural history in the Caribbean and Sri Lanka.

Scott is the curatorial director of the 2022 Kingston Biennial. He is also the director of the Small Axe Project, which is devoted to Caribbean intellectual and artistic work.

He is the author of books that include Formations of Ritual: Colonial and Anthropological Discourses on the Sinhala Yaktovil (1994), Refashioning Futures: Criticism After Postcoloniality (1999), Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment (2004), and Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice (2014). He co-edited, with Charles Hirschkind, Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors (2006).

• Formations of Ritual: Colonial and Anthropological Discourses on the Sinhala Yaktovil (1994)
• Refashioning Futures: Criticism After Postcoloniality (1999)
• Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment (2004)
• Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice (2014)

As editor

• With Charles Hirschkind, Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors (Stanford University Press, 2006, ISBN 9780804752657)