Global Economy
The Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University has several researchers focussing on the anthropology and sociology of global economy.
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. 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. 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.
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