Development

Development is one of the main thematic specializations of of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University.

Dr. Erik Bähre

Erik Bähre is an economic anthropologist specialized 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, South Africa.

Dr. Bart Barendregt

Bart Barendregt is currently researching the process of appropriation of mobile phone technology by marginalized groups as part of a larger book project on the “Underbelly of Indonesian IT society”. He is linking this research to the dynamic and growing field of research on ICT4D (Information and Communication Technologies for Development) based movements, which plays an essential role in determining the relevance of future anthropological research. Bart Barendregt is also interested in Islamic pop culture, new media and images/imaginations of the future. He is currently working on a book about Nasyid: Islamitic boyband music and the mixing of religion, youth culture and politics that has become so popular among Malaysian and Indonesian students and activists. Bart Barendregt is also involved in a long-term research project on eco-chic and slow living Asian style: a mix of lifestyle politics, wellness and the desire to return to an aristocratic version of ‘traditional culture’, in which newly rich Asians are adopting a cultural version of the politically loaded “Asian Values” debate. Keywoords: South- East Asia, Mobile Technology, ICT 4 Development, Religion (Pop Islam), Asian Eco-chic.

Dr. Sabine Luning

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 of 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: Economy, Religion and Religious Ideas, Corporate Social Responsibility, Resource Politics, Migration, Africa.

Dr. Marianne Maeckelbergh

Marianne Maeckelbergh’s research focuses on the anthropology of globalization, democracy and social movements. Specifically on the decision-making practices within the alterglobalization movement and the implications these practices have for contemporary assumptions about democracy and democratic values. Her research examines prefiguration as a strategic movement practice and raises questions about what happens to democratic values when they are practiced on a global scale through network structures instead of the nation-state. Marianne Maeckelbergh’s other research interests include anthropological approaches to ‘identity’, ‘personhood’ and ‘agency’ in a context of global flows; urban social movements in India, specifically how caste, class, language and especially transnational exchanges affect the way politics is practiced. Marianne’s approach is a political one based on an engaged anthropology that explores the methodological challenges posed by the need for a more ‘global’ ethnography in both the anthropology of social movements and the anthropology of development. Keywords: Global Politics, Democracy, Social Movements, Development, Technology, South Asia.

Prof. Dr. Peter Pels

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: Global Politics, Ethics, Religion, Material Culture, Technology and Science Fiction, Development, Africa.

Drs. Metje Postma

Metje Postma’s current research examines how a group of refugees from the Arab Rashaayda Bedouin community of Sudan, staying in Eritrea, is represented to and by aid organizations and how it presents itself in different ways, arenas and for different audiences. Her theoretical interest is in how forms and modes of communication engage an audience differently. For their Arab brothers the Rashaayda emphasize their courage and their high descent through lengthy poems and songs and rhetorical speech, mobilizing their cultural heritage and history; to Western aid organizations they stress their neediness and their victimization by the Sudanese government and how they suffered from human rights abuses. Metje Postma explores how the discourse on representational processes in ethnography can be applied in the field of development. In past and future research she has also been interested in how people embody knowledge and skills, and how body-techniques are traditionally used to reach certain states of consciousness. Key words: Visual Ethnography, Development, Ethnic Identity and Representation, Media and Communication, Embodied Knowledge, Africa.

Dr. José van Santen

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. Key words: Islam/Islamization, Globalization, Gender, Ethnic and Religious Identity, Processes of migration and access to land, Relation between sedentary and nomadic groups in West Africa.

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Last Modified: 15-11-2010