Sub-Saharan Africa
The Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University has researchers with expertise in various countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Africa
Prof. Peter Pels (1958) graduated in 1993 on a study of the colonial contacts between Dutch Catholic missionaries and a mountain people in Tanzania, and has since studied the introduction of modern political institutions in African countries, the history and anthropology of colonialism, the representation of Africa in modern European history, the history of anthropology and African studies, social science ethics and methodology, and the globalization of religious repertoires (especially in terms of Christianity, “animism” and New Age discourse). His most recent interests focus on the religious and secular aspects of conceptions of nature and technology, of the modern culture of materiality and object categories, and of science fiction.
Peter Pels currently supervises research in African politics and conflict-management, the landscapes of African water development, the heritage of African slavery, US American cyberculture, consumerism in Greece, the representation of East African refugees, and nomadism and conservation policies in Mongolia.
Keywords: Globalization, Ethics, Religion, Politics, Materiality.
South Africa
Dr. Erik Bähre is an economic anthropologist specialised in South Africa. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork, as well as conducted surveys, in the townships and squatter settlements of Cape Town. His Ph.D. at the ASSR, University of Amsterdam (2002), was an ethnography on how Xhosa migrants in Cape Town, establish burial societies and credit groups. It examined the urban poor’s day-to-day conflicts over money in post-apartheid South Africa. His current research is on South African insurance companies that develop policies for ‘the bottom end of the market’.
Erik Bähre is the author of Money and Violence: Financial Self-Help Groups in a South African Township (Brill, 2007) and has published in, among others, African Studies, Current Anthropology, Ethnography, and Journal of Religion in Africa. Erik Bähre has worked at the University of Natal (now University of KwaZulu Natal) (1999-2000), University College Utrecht (2002-2005), and at the University of Amsterdam (2002 and 2004-2007).
Keywords: microfinance, insurance, rapid economic change, violence, urban studies, development, corruption, witchcraft, South Africa.
Mali
Dr. Jan Jansen (1962, PhD Leiden 1995) has a special interest in oral tradition in Sub-Sahara Africa. He conducted extensive fieldwork in the region southwest of Mali's capital Bamako. Jan Jansen’s anthropological studies focus on the relationship between historical discourses and local politics. He has published extensively on local systems of education by apprenticeship and has produced - often in collaboration with Malian scholars and local male elites - numerous text editions of oral history accounts.
Jan Jansen’s current research project focuses on the epistemological and methodological consequences of applying new recording and documentation technology, with a special attention for the academic traditions by which the encounter between researcher and informant is constructed. Jan Jansen is co-editor of African Sources for African History (published by Brill, Leiden) and Mande Worlds (published by LIT Verlag, Munster/Hamburg).
West Africa / Burkino Faso
Dr. Sabine Luning's PhD research dealt with the social dynamics of ritual practices in Burkina Faso, a topic at the crossroads of religious ideas, politics and social identities. She continued studying the contemporary situation of chiefs as well as local perceptions of the natural environment, in particular how these are shaped in wider social arenas such as national elections and development projects. Ever since her first professional experience as anthropologist in a large DGIS project, she has retained an interest in the social relations, power dynamics and organizational culture of development initiatives.
Now her research focuses on economic anthropology, in particular the booming business goldmining in West Africa. Sabine Luning investigates interactions between (representatives of) multilateral organizations, the state, international companies, national entrepreneurs, artisanal miners and local communities as well as the moral discourses that accompany and shape these interactions. Her research is part of the VIDI project I.C.E. in Africa: the relationship between people and the Internal Combustion Engine in Africa, headed by Jan-Bart Gewald.
Keywords: value of gold, resource politics, relations between autochthones and (international) migrants, religious ideas, economics, landtitles, miners and mining companies, corporate social responsibility.
West Africa / Cameroon
Dr. José van Santen did her Ph.D. research (1986-1988) on processes of Islamisation in West Africa in general and Cameroon in particular. She has followed the ongoing processes of fundamentalism and its implications for the construction of masculinities and femininities (gender). Her research in the NWO project ‘Islam in Africa, moving frontiers’, examines on the way Muslims, both leaders and followers, are engaged in the re-construction of their identities in the context of dissimilar forms of globalization and modernization. José van Santen pays special attention to the process of re-construction among youth. Due to the link between Islam and the ethnic identity of the cattle-keeping Fulangi in Cameroon, she has been intrigued by the relationships and/or clashes (often related to access to resources) between agriculturalists and cattle-keepers/nomads in relation to religion and political processes.
José van Santen was previously scientific Director at the Centre of Environment and Development of the University of Dschang in Cameroon and remains involved in issues concerning ‘developmentalism’ and the Environment.
Keywords: Islam/Islamization, Globalization, Gender, Ethnic and Religious Identity, Processes of migration and access to land, Relation between sedentary and nomadic groups in West Africa.