______________________
University
of Kentucky
Department of Anthropology
211 Lafferty Hall
Lexington, KY 40506
Phone: 859-257-2710
Fax: 859-323-1959
Access
webpage
change request form.
Contact
webmaster.
Last update: 8/2004
 |
Peter
D. Little, Ph.D. Professor and Chair |
Research Statement:
During the past 23
years my research trajectory has followed a dual course of intense field
research and writing on East Africa and a concern with comparative research
on social change, development, and globalization. Field research (i.e.,
more than 4.5 years during 1980 to 2003) falls into three general thematic
areas. These themes are: (1) agrarian (pastoral) production systems, marketing,
and social organization in East Africa; (2) the social dimensions of environmental
degradation and political ecology; and (3) the social effects on rural
communities of economic restructuring, globalization, and development.
Within these research areas I have always had a significant interest in
household and community organizations; social and class differentiation;
and land and resource tenure systems.
I currently participate in three interdisciplinary research programs with other social and natural scientists and with several graduate students in Africa and the US. The first addresses pastoral risk management in rangelands of East Africa, where economic, political, and environmental risks are especially high. This research grant, in collaboration with colleagues at Utah State University, Cornell University, Syracuse University, and Egerton University (Kenya), allows me to continue my long-term research on social change in Baringo, Kenya, a site where I have intermittently worked since 1980. A second project, in collaboration with colleagues at Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia), Washington University, Syracuse University, Institute for Development Anthropology, and the University of Wisconsin, looks at “Assets, Livelihoods, and Poverty in the Horn of Africa and Central America.” This work is taking place at sites in Kenya and Ethiopia, and in Honduras where colleagues from the University of Wisconsin have been studying poverty and local asset recovery strategies following the devastation of Hurricane Mitch. The final project, which has culminated in a recent book on stateless economies in Somalia (see citation below), has been funded by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation and addresses the interrelationships between cross-border trade, collapsed states, and local communities and traders in the Horn of Africa. My goal eventually is to look comparatively at other parts of post-colonial Africa and, perhaps, post-socialist central Asia, where widespread political transformation and collapse has occurred.
Research Interests:
Economic and Ecological Anthropology; Development and Change; Political Economy; Pastoralism; Social Theory and Organization; East Africa and Horn of Africa.
Courses taught:
ANT 370: Development
and Change in the Third World
ANT 433: Social Organization
ANT 637: Sociocultural Dimensions of Economic Development
ANT 731: Seminar in Social and Political Dynamics
ANT 734: Seminar in Economic Anthropology
ANT 736: Culture, Environment, and Development
Selected Publications:
Little, Peter D. (2003) Somalia: Economy Without State. Oxford, UK: James Currey Publishers; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 206 pp. (See link for information)
Little, Peter D. (2003) Rethinking Interdisciplinary Paradigms and the Political Ecology of Pastoralism in East Africa. In African Savannas: New Perspectives on Environmental and Social Change. T. Bassett and D. Crummey, eds. Pp. 161-177. Oxford, UK: James Currey Publishers; Portsmith, NH: Heineman Books.
Little, Peter D., K. Smith, B. A. Cellarius, D. L. Coppock, and C.B. Barrett (2001) Avoiding Disaster: Diversification and Risk Management among East African herders. Development and Change 32 (3): 401-433.
Haugerud, Angelique, Priscilla Stone, and Peter D. Little, eds. (2000) Commodities and Globalization: Anthropological Perspectives. Monographs in Economic Anthropology Series. Boulder, CO and London, UK: Rowman and Littlefield, 249 pp. (See link for information )
Little, Peter D. (2000) Recasting the Debate: Development Theory and Anthropological Practice. In The Unity of Theory and Practice in Anthropology: Rebuilding a Fractured Synthesis. Carole E. Hill and Marietta L. Baba, eds. Pp. 119-131. NAPA Bulletin 18. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association.
Little, Peter D. (1998) Maasai Identity on the Periphery. American Anthropologist 100 (2): 444-468.
Little, Peter D.
and Michael J. Watts, eds. (1994). Living Under Contract: Contract Farming
and Agrarian Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Madison, WI: University
of Wisconsin Press, 298 pp.
(See
link for information)
Little, Peter D. (1992). The Elusive Granary: Herder, Farmer, and State in Northern Kenya. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 212 pp. (See link for information)