Gender
Gender is a central focus in the research of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University
Dr. Jan Jansen
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). Keywords: Oral history, Technology, Politics, Gender, 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.
Dr. Ratna Saptari
Ratna Saptari studied anthropology at the University of Indonesia (MA 1984) and at the University of Amsterdam (PhD 1995). Saptari is coordinator of the IIAS-funded Changing Labour Relations in Asia (CLARA) programme she organized several panels and conferences in collaboration with research/teaching institutions in Europe and Asia focusing on topics such as labour, migration, domestic service, social movements and histories of subaltern groups. In addition to several articles and book chapters on these themes, she has also co-edited a number of books: The Household and Beyond: Cultural Notions and Social Practices in the Study of Gender in Indonesia; Labour in Southeast Asia: Local Processes in a Globalized World; and on the politics of history-writing Pemikiran Kembali Penulisan Sejarah Indonesia (Rethinking Indonesian History-Writing). Ratna Saptari is currently writing on and researching ‘The Making and Remaking of the Cigarette Labour Communities in East Java: a comparative study of three cigarette towns, 1913-2003’; ‘Decolonisation and Urban Labour in Indonesia (1920s to 1965): Continuity and Change’and ‘The Cultures of Tobacco in Indonesia and India.’ Keywords: Migration, Social Movements, Labour, Gender, Oral History, South East Asia
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