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Medical Apartheid
Winner of several awards, Harriet A. Washington’s “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present” (2006) documents a history we tend only to know bits and pieces of. Those familiar with ethics will be aware of the Tuskegee Study, but likely not the bigger story. This is […]
Getting to Zero: On the Ebola Frontline
“It seems very hard to stop this now, but I think we all just have to believe that it is possible.” (Norwegian epidemiologist, p. xvii) Within development studies literature there is a sub-genre of memoires, biographies and dairies. Some are troubling to read. Not all are well written. Some are extremely informative. Most present […]
How Democracies Die
We tend to assume that democratic processes, norms and structures are ‘sticky’ and rarely ‘die’. The cases we might think about are those that ended due to war and conflict, with the emergence of dictatorship in the form of fascism or military rule. In “How Democracies Die” (2018) Levitsky and Ziblatt provide a clear counter-narrative, […]
Sustainable Livelihoods and Rural Development
If you are looking for an accessible introduction to research within thew broad umbrella of livelihoods that is well researched and provides a clear outline of what we have learned and what we need to know more about, this is it. Ian Scoones book “Sustainable Livelihoods and Rural Development” (2015) would do well for undergraduates […]
Measuring What Counts
In “Measuring What Counts: The Global Movement for Well-Being” (2019), Stiglitz, Fitoussi and Durand build upon the work that was conducted following a 2009 commission to re-think what measures are used to assess the health of the economy (particularly GDP). The financial crises forced reflections on how the vulnerabilities were not understood; to which these […]
Becoming Legal
Ruth Gomberg-Munoz first book, Labor and Legality (2011), explores the lives of undocumented Mexicans living in Chicago. This book, Becoming Legal: Immigration Law and Mixed-Status Families (2017), explores the experiences of seeking legal status. The chapters follow the process, rooted in ethnographic research. The book is accessible. I used this book in a first-year undergraduate course […]
Cooking Data
More attention is being paid to data. In the context of the SDGs, it is the lack of data. In the broader conversation, it is about the quality of data. From these conversations, there is an emerging literature that might might classify as an ethnography of data. A recent addition to this set of literature […]
The Historical Ecology of Malaria in Ethiopia
James C. McCann has produced some excellent works of history, and specifically on Ethiopia. This includes From Poverty to Famine (1987) and People of the Plow (1990), as well as The Historical Ecology of Malaria in Ethiopia (2014). The most recent of these books brings readers into a complex story of malaria over the centuries […]
People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent
In 2019, Joseph Stiglitz published “People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent.” The book covers a wide range of topics, largely on contemporary American policy while also highlighting their histories – and is overtly political (Trump comes up frequently, throughout). The author provides an analysis of the challenges as well as potential […]
Labor and Legality
I spent much of the summer looking for good ethnographies that would be suitable for first year undergraduate students – essentially a book that is not written for anthropologists, not heavy with theory, while still presenting the value that ethnography can offer. Gomberg-Munoz’s Labor and Legality (2011) fit that well. The book also provides insight […]
About me
Logan Cochrane
Associate Professor at HBKU in the College of Public Policy. He is an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and an Adjunct Professor at Hawassa University (Institute for Policy and Development Research). Over the last fifteen years, he has worked in Afghanistan, Benin, Burundi, Canada, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Logan acts as a consultant for governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations, seeking to create bridges between research and practice.
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