Anthropology
Formations of the Secular
Talal Asad has produced some interesting books, his 2003 book “Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity” is somewhat less powerful as a collective narrative since it draws on previously published materials (as opposed to a narrative that is linked throughout), nonetheless some interesting ideas from two decades past: “What is the connection between “the […]
Tags: #Anthropology #Formations of the Secular #Secular myths #Secularism #Talal Asad
The Act of Living
NOTE: This was a book review that was published in 2020. As a country with sustained levels of high macro-economic growth, Ethiopia has been suggested as amongst Africa’s Lions (Bhorat and Tarp, 2016), an economic grouping envisioned as potentially following the Asian Tigers of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. Macro-economic growth does […]
Tags: #Addis Ababa #Anthropology #Di Nunzio #Ethiopia #The Act of Living
Islam, Ethnicity, and Conflict in Ethiopia
With Islam, Ethnicity, and Conflict in Ethiopia, Terje Østebø contributes a historical ethnography to two under researched domains. First, to African and Ethiopian studies and secondly to Islamic studies. As a field of study, African studies, and Ethiopian studies in particular, have tended to focus on dominant themes, such as the largest populations, key livelihoods, […]
Tags: #Anthropology #Bale Insurgency #Conflict #Ethiopia #Ethnicity
Humanitarian Work in Ethiopia’s Somali Region
Lauren Carruth provides a useful introduction to Ethiopia’s Somali region, to the practices of global health, to ‘humanitarianism’, and to anthropology / ethnography with her 2021 publication: Love and Liberation: Humanitarian Work in Ethiopia’s Somali Region (Cornell University Press). The book helpfully deconstructs international / Euro-Western conceptualizations of humanitarianism and re-orients that within the Somali context (linguistic, socio-cultural, […]
Tags: #Anthropology #Ethiopia #Humanitarian #Humanitarianism #Somali
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 […]
Tags: #Anthropology #Culture #Data #Development Studies #Politics
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 […]
Tags: #Anthropology #Ethnography #Mexico #Migration #United States
Growing Up in New Guinea – Margaret Mead
Margaret Mean is one of Anthropology’s focal early theorists. She has penned a number of books covering issues of childhood, gender, age and aging and sexuality. Amongst her fieldwork, she worked in New Guinea, during the period between WWI and WWII. The resulting book, “Growing Up in New Guinea” (1930) explores the educational process of […]
Tags: #Anthropology #Ethnographic #Ethnography #Growing Up in New Guinea #Margaret Mead
Two Arabs, A Berber and a Jew
Writing anthropological and ethnographic research can be quite challenging. The experiences are so rich that one may not know where to begin and where to end. In “Two Arabs, A Berber and a Jew: Entangled Lives in Morocco” (2016), Lawrence Rosen provides an exemplary model for anyone grappling with these questions. To do so, he […]
Tags: #Anthropology #Islam #Lawrence Rosen #Morocco #Muslims
Fictions of Feminist Ethnography
Some of the strengths of feminist scholarship and feminist critique have become more widely utilized and adopted, often without recognition of their origins. Intersectionality and positionality are two examples of approaches of this sort. In many ways, Kamala Visweswaran’s book “Fictions of Feminist Ethnography” (1994) is a reflection of the time period of its authoring […]
Tags: #Anthropology #Ethnography #Feminist #Intersectionality #Positionality
Social Hierarchy of Dawuro, Southern Ethiopia
A search on Amazon for books about the southern peoples of Ethiopia suggests a dearth of ethnographic publications. However, one key source of well-informed research that is rarely available to scholars outside of Ethiopia are publications produced by Ethiopian scholars and printed by national publishers. The Forum for Social Studies is one key place to […]
Tags: #Anthropology #Dawuro #Ethiopia #Ethnography #Social Hierarchy
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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