Research Interests

Feminist theory, gender, civil society,globalization,cyberspace, transnationalism,the Islamic revival, peasants, labor migration, Africa, Muslim societies

Academic Distinctions

Fulbright Research Fellowship, Wenner-Gren Grant, Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, Social Science Research Council Dissertation Grant, National Science Foundation Disseration Grant, Phi Beta Kappa

Research Abstract

I have recently returned from a year of fieldwork in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania where I examined issues of gender activism, political innovation, and global civil society. In this project I am particularly interested in how globalization and new communications technology are changing the ways women articulate gender issues and the strategies open to them for asserting feminist demands in their local contexts. I also have an interest in Eritrea where I have been working on two projects: one deals with isissues of gender and nationalism, focusing on the experiences of women guerilla fighters; the other looks at transnationalism, diaspora, and Eritrean nationalism. My earlier fieldwork took me to the Sudan where I worked on capitalism, peasants, and labor migration, and on the Islamic revivial.

BOOK
Cultivating Workers: Peasants and Capitalism in a Sudanese Village. New York: Columbia University Press. 1991.

2000
"Equality to Die For?: Women Guerilla Fighetrs and Eritrea's Cultural Revolution"
POLAR

1999
"Migration, Modernity, and Islam in Rural Sudan" MIDDLE EAST REPORT

1997
"Colonial Moral Economy and the Discipline of Development: the Gezira Scheme and 'Modern Sudan" CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

1997
"islam, Transnational Culture, and Modernity in Rural Sudan" in GENDERED ENCOUNTERS: CHALLENGING CULTURAL BOUNDARIES AND ETHNIC HIERARCHIES IN AFRICA, edited by M. Grosz-Ngate and Omar Kokole

1995
"Cotton and Colonial Order in Sudan: A Social History with Emphasis on the Gezira Scheme" in COTTON, COLONIALISM AND SOCIAL HISTORY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, edited by Allen Isaacman and Richard Roberts

1994
"Peasants, Capitalism and (Ir)Rationality" AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST

1994
"Gender, Culture, and Capitalism: Women and the Remaking of Islamic 'Tradition' in a Sudanese Village" COMPARATIVE STUDIES IN SOCIETY AND HISTORY

1990
"The Politics of Research on Agricultural Development: An Instructive Example from the Sudan." AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 92(3):732-739.

1988
"Coercion and Incentives in African Agricultural Development: Insights from the Sudanese Experience" AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW

Professional Societies

American Anthropological Association
African Studies Association

Link to this profile

http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=2582

Last updated

03/15/2002