Global Politics
The Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University has several researchers focussing on the anthropology and sociology of global politics.
Dr. Rivke Jaffe
Dr. Rivke Jaffe’s research interests are primarily in urban anthropology and sociology. Within cities, she is specifically interested in the interconnections between the social, natural and built environment. Socio-spatial fragmentation of cities and its relation to poverty, environmental problems and crime is an example of such interconnections. More recently, Rivke Jaffe has focused on the role of criminal organizations in creating ‘non-state spaces’ in urban areas in postcolonial contexts. She is exploring how criminal organizations and the state share control over urban spaces and populations, what kind of governance arrangements emerge, and which actors and mechanisms link ‘the street’ and the ‘state’. Rivke Jaffe’s research focuses on the spatialization of power, difference and inequality within cities. In connection to these themes, she is interested in the role of popular culture (in particular reggae, dancehall and hiphop) in establishing and transmitting urban meanings. Geographically, my area of interest is the Caribbean and its diaspora.
Keywords: Urban Studies, Environment, Crime, State, Popular Culture, Caribbean.
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 J. Pels
Prof. Dr. 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.
Dr. Ratna Saptari
Dr. 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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