Author: Maia

Payments to the Poor as Development Instrument: Review of Olivier de Sardan & Piccoli’s Cash Transfers in Context, Berghahn Books (2018).

Payments to the Poor as Development Instrument: Review of Olivier de Sardan & Piccoli’s Cash Transfers in Context, Berghahn Books (2018).

Programs that give money to poor households are implemented across the global South as part of donor financed development assistance. Originally designed as a  short term ameliorative for the social impacts of structural adjustment in Latin America, they are now components of development oriented social policy in countries as diverse as Kenya, the Philippines, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania. The details of these schemes vary, as do the amounts of money which beneficiaries receive. While Latin American schemes are relatively {+}

How Health Systems Hurt Women. Review of Fistula Politics by Alison Heller, Rutgers University Press (2018).

How Health Systems Hurt Women. Review of Fistula Politics by Alison Heller, Rutgers University Press (2018).

Medical anthropology has come a long way from its initial focus on the interpretive dimensions of health  and sickness. The Medical Anthropology series from Rutgers University Press provides a showcase for contemporary explorations of lives lived through the intersection of everyday practices, transnational health systems and global inequalities. Fistula Politics. Birthing Injuries and the Quest for Continence in Niger  by Alison Heller  is an ethnographic account of the experiences of women left incontinent by injuries they sustained through giving birth {+}

Anthropology as Strategy: A Review of Jay Hasbrouck’s “Ethnographic Thinking”

Anthropology as Strategy: A Review of Jay Hasbrouck’s “Ethnographic Thinking”

Anthropology is flourishing outside universities. More anthropologists than ever before work in the commercial sector- as researchers, consultants, user experience and design specialists.  Techniques informed by anthropological practice  comprise an expanding  portfolio of  approaches widely used in commercial qualitative research.  The practice of anthropology within commercial contexts has implications for the ways that research is conducted and fosters new professional identities. Many anthropologists at home in the commercial world are actively engaged in EPIC whose successful annual conferences  attract  a {+}

Learning From Design Researchers: Jan Chipchase’s Field Study Handbook

Learning From Design Researchers: Jan Chipchase’s Field Study Handbook

Jan Chipchase is a leading design researcher. Some of you may have come across his work on the anthropology of mobile phones. I discovered it by chance while flicking through a copy of Wired magazine some years back. That Wired piece became a core reading for students when I taught a Business Anthropology module at Manchester. It opened my eyes to a wider world of anthropology. Jan has extensive experience of working with interdisciplinary teams to carry out field based {+}

Being a Chair: Some Tips for Protecting Time

Being a Chair: Some Tips for Protecting Time

I’m about to hand over after being chair of a department for over four years. Being a chair is a bit like death and taxes.  If you are lucky enough  to  be  employed on a long term contract in an academic institution you will probably end up formally managing your department. More realistically, given the ways that we as academics seek to  manage ourselves and strive to defy what universities define as  `leadership’, you will end up trying to manage {+}