Global micro in the making marketization of weather

This research project problematizes economic orders by studying the emergence of weather-related microinsurance markets. It does so by analyzing the global production of market models for microinsurance products and their subsequent translation into specific settings in Ghana. Originally, we were interested in two main research questions:

• 
  How are global economic orders produced and translated into local settings?
  
• 
  How does the performativity and materiality of economic models and calculative practices intervene in the production of microinsurance markets?
  

Translation as an analytical concept, that derives from Science and Technology Studies and Actor-Network Theory, lies at the core of the project. It offers the possibility to analyze how things are drawn together and is a useful tool to show how the global is constructed via micro-translations. Indeed, as a modality of economization, marketization can be read as a radical translation process, one which ensures that economic and social realities are brought into line with the laboratory conditions of economic modelling, allowing the radical project of neoclassical economics to realize itself. Following recent theoretical developments in the social studies of marketization we conceive of markets as socio-technical agencements. A crucial role in the design of markets and the translational reconfiguration of the social play various modalities of experimentation.

We set apart our topic into three different empirical threads: (1) “Producing global knowledge” which focuses on the international microinsurance scene; (2) “Localizing” which takes into account the implementation of an index-based insurance market in Ghana; and (3) “Translating” which encompasses the analysis of economic experiments with regard to index-based insurance. Empirical work in the project (so far mostly prior to the current funding period) has been carried out along these three categories:

We argue that the empirical research on the making of weather related insurance products might shed light on basic features of at least three different developments of African dis/orders: the economization of nature, the making of markets and experimentality as a general condition of scientific governance of the Global South..

The economization of nature plays an important role when it comes to weather-related index insurance not only on a local basis but also on a global level. First, there are technologies that consist of calculative devices, which enable the visualization, and hence problematization of certain topics that in turn are requiring technological solutions and fixes. Second, there are crisis-related narratives with respect to climate change that are involved in processes of signification and legitimization. Here, the concept of crisification seems to be an appropriate starting point for an in-depth analysis of the narratives that sustain index-based weather insurance. In the following year, we seek to elaborate on these intersectional threads, which are linked to neoliberalizing/economizing nature in Africa in general.

Markets are often defined as the equilibrium of demand and supply, as natural and self-organized entities. The concept of marketization, in contrast, conceives of markets as socio-technical agencements, as hybrid collectifs, arrangements of heterogeneous elements that have to be constantly made and sustained and that bring about agency. Microinsurance provides an interesting insight into the making of new markets. So far, most of the index-based microinsurance pilots are characterized through a constant trial-and-error process.

On international conferences, development economists repeat frequently that according to economic theory, it is assumed that poor people display a relatively high-risk aversion; consequently, demand for insurance among this population group would be high. On the supply side, the value of a potential micro insurance market in general (including life, health and agriculture) is estimated between 30 and 50 billion $ annually (Accenture 2012), hence insurance companies should be eager to offer such products. However, there does not exist a market for microinsurance yet. Going into the field and considering reality, the vision becomes a conundrum as a facilitator says right at the beginning of a microinsurance workshop entitled “Putting Theory into Practice”. Some 16 practitioners, from various NGOs and insurance companies are gathered. Most of them do confirm the conundrum that is defined as puzzling state of confusion and difficulty – by sharing anecdotes and experiences from their own work in the field. Even in subsidized schemes, uptake is low and the initial optimism has waned, companies are not interested in microinsurance unless they are obliged to offer such products due to governmental regulations. What to do when there is neither demand nor supply?

We seek to describe the negotiation and creation of both demand and supply and hence the making of new markets at various sites and localities (international conferences, national law, development agencies, banks, insurance companies, weather stations, satellite imagery, mobile phones, farms etc.).

The making of Microinsurance markets is done through multi-layered experiments. They vary in scope, design and type: In the Northern Regions IPA runs randomized controlled trials with 3000 farmers, PhD students of economic development organize rather small framed field experiments in several villages of the Ashanti Region. Educational games and computer simulation programs are developed and promoted at international workshops. Even though these examples are quite different with respect to their potential target group, the required technical devices and their underlying theoretical assumptions they share several commonalities. First, they are used both as a method for data production and as a learning tool for scientists, practitioners and potential clients. Second, all of them take place in a controlled environment or laboratory – the paradigmatic site for the “production of certainty” (Latour 2002). We are interested in the seam zone of these laboratories and their slippery boundaries. What does it mean if the field is treated as a lab? Which consequences do these interventions have with respect to dis/ordering practices? We argue that the mode of experimentation can be conceived as a methodological tool that furthers the translation of financial inclusion and of market-making; as such experiments are elements of translational processes, of the overall “laboratorization” as Callon had put it: “For the world to behave as in the research laboratory, (…) we simply have to transform the world so that at every strategic point a ‘replica’ of the laboratory, the site where we can control the phenomena studied, is placed“ (Callon et al. 2009).

To sum up, current ordering processes such as the economization of nature, market-making and experimentation are mirrored in the establishment of index-based weather insurance in Ghana.

5. Specification of research question

Out of our empirical research, two specifications arose: One is rather thematically and empirically, the other concerns theoretical considerations. First, we have been able to trace the travelling of global concepts and their translations into a specific local setting in Ghana. What might be interesting is to see which consequences theses translational processes have with respect to local ordering processes. To address this question, it would be necessary to get an insight into agricultural microinsurance schemes that have been implemented for a longer period than the Ghana Agricultural Insurance Program. Here, a comparative study with projects in Ethiopia or Kenia might reveal interesting aspects especially with respect to the construction of calculative subjects and the responsabilization of clients.

Second, initially we aimed at putting more emphasis on technologies and calculative practices. This is still important; however, our focus has been shifted more towards the notion of experimentation. During the second phase of the project, we seek to work on the theorization of experimentation/experimentality. We are especially interested in the question of how a mode of experimentation is linked to processes of translation.

COLLABORATION

During discussions of the SPP Summer School “On Crisis” 2013, it became clear that there is a thematic proximity to the project “Translations of the ‚Adaptation to Climate Change‘ Paradigm in Eastern Africa”. Narratives of climate change have several general narrative threads and serve several purposes such as the legitimization of “Adaptation Programs”. It might be worthwhile to pursue a common analysis of climate change related narratives under the analytical concept of crisfication. Further, close theoretical links exists between our project and “Translating Global Health Technologies”. This has been discussed extensively on the Junior Researcher Workshop “Conceptualizing Technology and Translations” 2014.

West African traders as translators between Chinese and African urban modernities

Formal information:

1. Project title: “West African traders as translators between Chinese and African urban modernities”

2. Project location: Hamburg, German Institute of Global and Area Studies

3. Countries of study: China, Ghana, Senegal

4. Project start: January 2013 (L. Marfaing) / June 2013 (K. Giese, A. Thiel, K. Liang)

5. Academic staff: 4

Dr. Karsten Giese,

- Principal investigator, since January 2011 (institutional funding)

Dubai (10-15 January, 30 January - 8 February 2013); Senegal (15-30 January 2013); China (28 June – 2 August 2013)

ESF Exploratory Workshop: Immigrant China, Angers, 3-5 October 2012: Invited speaker (De facto immigrants in China – the African case: State of affairs and future research agenda)

AAA Annual Meeting, San Francisco 14-18 November 2012: Panel organizer (China in Africa and Africa in China: Employment relations as border crossing) and presenter (When week bosses meet vulnerable employees – Chinese trade in West Africa)

Point Sud Conference “South-South-relations and Globalization: Chinese migrants in Africa, African migrants in China, Dakar, 20-25 January 2013: Conference organizer

8^th International Convention of Asia Scholars, Macao, 24-27 June 2013: Panel organizer and presenter (Social management abroad – how to integrate new Chinese transnational migrants?)

6^th Chinese in Prato & 4^th Wenzhounese Diaspora Symposium, Monash University Prato, 29-30 October 2013: Presenter (Pioneers, Greater Fools, and Bag Holders – disentangling Chinese business networks in Africa)

SPP Gender Workshop Leipzig January 2014: Participant

International Conference on the New Horizons of Diasporic Chinese Studies, National Technological University of Singapore, 21-22 March 2014: Invited speaker (It’s the family, stupid! Challenging paradigms of social organization among new Chinese overseas)

Workshop on African entrepreneurship, migration and law in China, Global South Studies Center Cologne, 9 April 2014: Invited speaker (African entrepreneurs in China as translators of urban modernities)

Grassi-Gespräche: China in Afrika – Chancen, Herausforderungen, Perspektiven, Grassi Museum für Völkerkunde Leipzig, 22 May 2014: Invited speaker

Institut für Ostasienwissenschaften-Sinologie, Universität Wien, 28 May 2014: Invited speaker (Role and impact of Chinese entrepreneurs in Africa)

3rd Conference on Chinese in Africa/Africans in China, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 12-14 December 2014: Panel organizer (Place, Space and Translocality in the Context of CA/AC)

- Principal investigator, since January 2011

China (10 June - 18 July 2013); Senegal (25 January - 16 February 2013, 25 January - 7 March 2014)

Point Sud Conference “South-South-relations and Globalization: Chinese migrants in Africa, African migrants in China, Dakar, 20-25 January 2013: Conference organizer

VAD Conference, Bayreuth, June 2014: Panel organizer (Asian traders in Africa: impacts and future perspectives) and presenter (Présence Chinoise et mobilité sous régionale – le cas de l’hinterland sénégalais)

AEGIS Thematic Conference, Frankfurt am Main, Mai 2014: Presenter (Vertical and horizontal expansion of trade strategies of African businessmen)

3e Rencontres des Études africaines en France, Bordeaux, July 2014: Panel organizer (Réseaux, adaptation des normes et des manières de faire) and presenter (création d’entreprises internationales en réseaux des hommes et femmes d’affaires africains)

Kelly Si Miao Liang (Double MSc in International Affairs, London School of Economics and Peking University)

- Junior Researcher, (33 % DFG funded + 32% institutional funding), since 15 June 2014

China (28 June to 2 August 2013)

SPP Gender Workshop Leipzig January 2014: Presenter (Gender Dimensions in Translating Urban Modernities)

SPP Workshop on Modernisation, Bayreuth, March 2014: Presenter (Perceiving through technologies of moderinities: Chinese-African everyday encounters in urban China)

SPP Workshop on Narratives, Cologne, April 2014: Participant.

- Junior Researcher, since 1 January 2011, (one child, parental leave from 31 October 2012 to 31 May 2013)

China (10 June - 18 July 2013); Ghana (15 January - 7 May 2014)

IUAES World Congress, Manchester, August 2013: Panel organizer (How international organisations associate communities with the liberal concept of right; with Marek Szilvasi) and presenter (The re-gendering of public space in Accra, Ghana; with Michael Stasik)

SPP Summer School, Halle, September 2013: Participant

VAD Conference, Bayreuth, June 2014: Panel organizer (Asian traders in Africa: impacts and future perspectives) and presenter (From street vendor to transnational entrepreneur: urban Ghanaian youth’s new “Chinese dream”)

AEGIS Thematic Conference, Frankfurt am Main, Mai 2014: Presenter (Coming full circle: Ghanaian trade agents in China preparing for a future back home)

3e Rencontres des Études africaines en France, Bordeaux, July 2014: Presenter (Ghanaian trade agents in China)

ASA Conference, Edinburgh, June 2014: Presenter (Transnational Ghanaian entrepreneurs as vectors of “world time”)
5.1 Student assistants

Elena Litzmann (1 January 2013-ongoing), Stefanie Schaller (1 October 2013, ongoing)

- delayed start of the second project phase (except Laurence Marfaing) due to parental leave (Alena Thiel) and late recruitment of second junior researcher (Kelly Liang)

• 
  In which ways (mediated or not) do African traders experience the urban Chinese version of multiple modernities through their economic sojourns to the Chinese supply centers of global capitalism?
  
• 
  Which are the “things Chinese” (i.e. material objects and immaterial concepts) African traders select, interpret, translate and re-define within the context of their home societies?
  
• 
  In which way does the discursive process of translation and creative appropriation impact negotiating social change and re-ordering (institutions, practices, social formations, policies) in urban West Africa in an era of accelerated and increasingly accessible economic globalization?
  

- Concepts:

Multiple modernities, actor centered translation regime, social and spatial mobility, interregional/international mobilities, transnationalism, sojourning, and discourses/narratives
- Methods:

Ethnographic fieldwork including qualitative (open and semi-structured) interviewing and participant observation, archival research, spatial analysis

• 
  Senegal (Marfaing, January/February 2013): establishment of contacts with traders travelling to China and their partners in Yiwu, Guangzhou and Hong Kong, organization of meetings in China (preparation of fieldwork in China)
  
• 
  Dubai (Giese, January/February 2013): structural analysis of the Chinese trading clusters associated with African business for the purpose of comparison
  
• 
  China (June-July 2013, Giese, Marfaing, Liang, Thiel): African traders‘ perceptions of China; Chinese perceptions of Africans; the impact of the traders’ contact persons (Chinese and African) on their perceptions of China; identification of potential translation objects
  

Our research in China and Africa suggests that for African traders urban China and their personal experiences thereof are important sources of inspiration. Not unexpectedly immaterial concepts (such as work ethics, rationalization and organization of social and spatial relations etc.) rather than material objects are selected for translation and adaptation into the African home societies.

Although quite a few of our Chinese informants (depending on education and social status) regard themselves as cultural ambassadors vis-à-vis Africans in China, they are rarely knowledgeable about which particular material objects and/or immaterial concepts representing Chinese urban modernities their African contact persons select to be translated into the social contexts of African home countries. Chinese informants have also proven to be unaware of their particular roles within the translation process.

The great majority of Chinese informants interacting with African business people in the realm of trade rarely distinguishes between different African nationalities and usually does not engage in more intimate personal relationships with Africans beyond functional encounters. Chinese informants’ narratives of their daily encounters with Africans (touching mainly on Africans’ “Sinification” during their stay in China, business ethics, imaginative geographies, China-Africa relations, sexuality and intimacy) were found heavily influenced by the products and technologies the Chinese government deployed to stimulate modernization, including demographic control and neoliberal marketization.

Exposure to and experiences of China among the large number of African traders who either visit China for the first time or only occasionally heavily depend on the filtered discourses and narratives presented to them by African middlemen in their urban Chinese destinations. Hence the role of these middlemen within the translation process (initially hypothesized to form one of several intervening variables) has to be reconsidered, given that it is in their business interest to limit their clients’ and fellow countrymen’s and -women’s spatial maneuverings in China as much as possible. With regard to translation between China and Africa travelling traders are therefore not the only and perhaps even not the most relevant sub-group among our research subjects, since their Chinese experiences not necessarily enhances their social capital and status at home. At the same time, a number of more experienced Africans claim that they have established direct access to Chinese factory representatives who not only share detailed data about products sold to their respective national markets but also engage in regular private exchanges.

Although these findings confirm the general validity of our analytical model of the translation process, they also reveal a higher degree of complexity than the results of our previous research in Senegal and Ghana had suggested: a wider variety of African actors engaging in procurement activities in China (including occasional traders, employees of bigger corporations, tender based buying agents etc.) will have to be included into the sample because they engage with different audiences; and beyond the more structural factors that we regarded as relevant for framing the individual experience of urban China more weight has to be given to additional and mostly personal endowments and attributes such as financial capacities, type of business, international travel experiences, level of professionalism and – last but not least – gender. Moreover, in addition to factoring in the limiting influences of African middlemen in China other international experiences of our respondents beyond China have to be controlled for with regard to separating the translation of “things Chinese” from various other international translation products.

Beyond translating Chinese urban modernities into African contexts Africans and various Chinese groups were also found to have been engaging in the joint but mutually unaware production of place in urban areas with high concentrations of African populations in China. Through pursuing their own economic interests, both Africans and Chinese are forming and reforming the social fabric and translocal links which give space specific meanings, functions and positionality – thus potentially making the translation between Chinese and African urban modernities a localized multidirectional process.

Moreover, the latest wave of fieldwork in Dakar and Accra suggests that since the end of the first project phase in 2012, the modes of interaction between Chinese traders and their local counterparts have advanced into new directions – and in the course of these developments potentially also the mutual significations of the Other. While we initially could not establish empirical evidence for any interaction between Chinese traders and Africans beyond simple functional relationships in the two West African capitals in our sample, we have since been able to identify indicators of new forms of interaction/cooperation between members of the two groups, particularly involving our current main research subjects, African entrepreneurs travelling to China.

Karsten Giese, 2013, Same-Same But Different: Chinese Traders' Perspectives on African Labor, The China Journal, 69, 134-153

Laurence Marfaing/Alena Thiel, 2014, “Agents of Translation”: West African Entrepreneurs in China as Vectors of Social Change, Working Paper of the SPP 1448

Laurence Marfaing/Alena Thiel, 2014, Demystifying Chinese Business Strength in Urban Senegal and Ghana: Structural Change and the Performativity of Rumors, Canadian Journal of Africa Studies, Volume 47, 3

Laurence Marfaing/Alena Thiel, 2013, « Petits commerçants chinois en Afrique et saturation des marchés ouest-africains : déconstruction d’une rumeur (Dakar-Accra) », Sociétés Migration, 149: 137-158.

Laurence Marfaing/Alena Thiel, 2013, New Actors, New Orders: The Changing Norms of Market Entry In Senegal’s And Ghana’s Urban Chinese Markets, AFRICA 83(4): 646-669

Laurence Marfaing, 2014, « Importations de marchandises chinoises et mobilité sous régionale en Afrique de l’ouest », Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines

Karsten Giese/Laurence Marfaing (eds.), 2014 (forthcoming), Encounters between African and Chinese Entrepreneurs – New Sources of Social Transformations? La rencontre des petits entrepreneurs africains et chinois transnationaux est-elle porteuse de changements sociaux ? (working title), Karthala (including contributions by all project team members)

Albeit being the only project under the SPP1448 framework using modernity as one of the underlying theoretical frameworks, other projects mobilize this concept for their analytical purposes. Project “Translating Adaptation” touches upon phenomena which are explicitly self-expressed as modern, such as the discourse of being a ‘modern farmer’ in Rwanda. “Translating urban infrastructures” in turn analyses the travelling idea of idealized “modern” infrastructure models. Associated projects “Refugee Repatriation” and “Political Cultures in KwaZulu Natal” approach political institutions through the lens of modernity. In contrast to these latter two, we deliberately chose an approach different from common binary notions of tradition versus modernity.

Regionally, ours is the only project studying Senegal. On the other hand, we share the field site of Ghana with a number of SPP projects: “Changing stateness in Africa” looked at Ghana in project phase 1, “Marketization of weather in Africa”, “Translating urban infrastructures” and “Roadside and Travel Communities” have ongoing projects in Ghana. Their targeted groups of informants do in many ways intersect with our multi-angled approach, combining the perspectives of traders, market participants, and state officials.

Our project has many things in common with others in the program in terms of gender relations, including the gender-specific practices, gendering of space and interplay of gender and other markers of identity. For instance, both project “Translating Adaptation” and ours explore how gender and modernity are intertwined. Also, empirical evidences from both project “African State Boundaries” and our project indicate that gender-specific norms and practices are not necessarily socially unprogressive and could be utilized creatively to achieve specific ends.

Cooperation:

- Alena Thiel und Michael Stasik (Roadside and Travel Communities) jointly authored a conference paper at the IUAES World Congress 2013 in Manchester (“The re-gendering of public space in Accra, Ghana”), which has been developed into the Working Paper “Market men and Station women: changing significations of gendered space in Accra”. The work touches upon aspects of gender, changing practices of entry into different public spaces and ultimately, their impact on changing spatial significations. This focus on the re-signification of space has received further attention in our analyses of the impact of Chinese commodity markets on mobility patterns of Ghanaian and Senegalese traders in Asia and West Africa.

- Karsten Giese has offered regional expertise to projects in which Chinese actors play a significant role. This has been mainly the case for the project “Oil and Social Change”

- We regularly engaged in discussions with the team of project “Translating Adaptation” during meetings of the SPP 1448 and other academic venues in Germany, not least in order to advance the two different conceptions of translation regimes that have been central elements of the two projects. Whereas our colleagues study the translation of the internationally acknowledged paradigm of climate change, our research does not focuses on institutionalized discourses but on travelling ideas of urban modernities and things Chinese various social actors have chosen to adopt, as well as effects on their destination. Despite these differences, in our joint goal to understand the impact of transnational flows of ideas on local social change we share an interest in understanding such processes of translation and the adaptation of narratives therein.

Proposal for phase 3:

The wealth of preliminary findings during the second project phase, relevant to the main research questions of both project phases, makes continuation of research extremely desirable. We’d like to widen and deepen the project’s findings on processual nature of the interactions between Chinese and African partners in the contexts of globalization from below.

1. 
   Preliminary empirical findings in China and subsequently in Ghana and Senegal suggest modifications of the translation model which has been central to the understanding of the translation process. These adaptations have to be evaluated through additional empirical research.
   
   
2. 
   The role of African middlemen in China has to be further observed and analyzed, especially in regards to their influence and control over traveling traders’ capacities of translation. How the local partners of these middlemen recruit customers in the home countries has to be studied. Investigating these aspects will further consolidate our knowledge and interpretations on the middlemen’s functions in the translation process.
   
   
3. 
   The empirical basis needs to be enlarged and deepened by incorporating various new actors and aspects of gendered experiences for more informed, integrated and situated analysis.
   
   
4. 
   New observations from fieldwork early 2014 in Ghana/Senegal also suggest further developments in the modes of interaction between different groups of African and Chinese actors in Africa that we had studied in phase 1. Hence, these initial observations deserve a close follow-up on-field examinationin order to add a temporal dimension to the results from in phase 1.
   

Project based at Freiburg University and working in Namibia/ Angola, South Africa/ Zimbabwe and Côte d’Ivoire/ Burkina Faso/ Mali

Project start: June 1, 2013

Researchers:

Prof. Dr. Gregor Dobler, Project Leader

Field stays: March-April 2013 (before project’s start, university funded)

Conferences and workshops:

• 
  SPP thematic workshop Berlin, April 26-28, 2013
  
• 
  Workshop “Gender dimensions in the SPP”, Leipzig, January 24-25, 2014
  
• 
  ECAS Lisbon, June 27-29, 2013
  
• 
  „Re-figuring the South African Empire“, Basel, September 9-11 2013
  
• 
  ABORNE Workshop „Bewildering Borders – Transnational Conservation and Resource Governance in Africa“, Vienna, September 27-29, 2013
  
• 
  Biannual Conference of the German Anthropological Association, Mayence, October 2-5 2013
  

Field stay: December 2013-April 2014

Conferences and workshops:

• 
  SPP thematic workshop Berlin, April 26-28, 2013
  
• 
  ECAS Lisbon, June 27-29, 2013
  
• 
  Summer School on Crisis, Halle, 26-28 September 2013
  

Olivia Klimm M.A., PhD Researcher (employed since June 15, 2013)

Field stay: November 2013-March 2014

Conferences and workshops:

• 
  „Re-figuring the South African Empire“, Basel, September 9-11 2013
  
• 
  ABORNE Workshop „Bewildering Borders – Transnational Conservation and Resource Governance in Africa“, Vienna, September 27-29 2013
  
• 
  Biannual Conference of the German Anthropological Association, Mayence, October 2-5 2013
  

The project compares three African border regions and asks how the state border, a powerful institution, affects social agency. Under what conditions and for which groups, does it create a resource of agency, and where does it curtail possibilities of action? By empirically addressing these questions, the project takes up the theoretical and conceptual issues of SPP 1448 and simultaneously contributes to better understanding the role of state borders in Africa today.

Methodologically, the project uses “thick participation” and everyday conversations as its main methods, relying on interviews as a supplementary source of information. This necessitates long field stays, but promises a better understanding of the social relevance of the border in everyday situations and the practical norms surrounding it.

The project has been running for ten months; the postdoc researcher has only worked in the project for four months. Results are by necessity preliminary. According to the project outline in the original funding application, work packages one to three should be completed before the second field phase starts in autumn 2014. In spite of a slightly later start, this still seems realistic.

Oshikango is still very much a trade town characterised by lucrative cross-border transactions. Due to new Angolan currency regulations, however (the US Dollar is no longer freely tradable, while the export of Kwanza is still restricted), trade volumes have declined. This tightening has affected different actors in very different ways and changed the power balance in the border region. It is an ideal case for studying the projects’ theme and will be deepened in a further field phase during sabbatical leave from September 2014 to January 2015.

Apart from presentations at international conferences, Dobler has worked on two publications of immediate relevance on the project: a book-length history of traders in the border region to be published in June 2014, and a theoretical paper on the concept of a borderland to be submitted to an international journal in May.

Katharina Heitz Tokpa has done fieldwork in Côte d’Ivoire, a country that is still in a fragile post-conflict phase, from December 2013 to March 2014; she also spent time in Burkina Faso and Mali. In the rapidly changing post-conflict environment, she mapped border actors and the technologies employed by the different state services. Of particular interest however was the local hunter association (dozoya). Heitz Tokpa lived in the household of the chef de terre of the main border town Ouangolodougou, who also is the chief of the local dozoya. Accompanying hunters on their daily missions to surrounding villages, she could observe their border control in practice. Off the main road controlled by state police, roadblocks and border patrol points have been set up by the dozow to control people, motorbikes and goods. The hunters collaborate closely with state representatives. By carving out a space in which they are allowed to operate ‘beside the state’, hunters have managed to give themselves a new role and signification in a changed social environment. They will form one of the groups Heitz Tokpa will analyse in detail.

A second group of great relevance for the study are smugglers. A host of transit enterprises are located around the customs areas, offering their services to clients who want to import cars and other goods. At night, motorbikes fully loaded with goods take dusty paths to enter the town. First good contacts with smugglers and state officials supposed to control them have been established and will be deepened in a next field phase.

Comparing these different experiences, the choice of field sites has stood the test of relevance for comparison. The three case studies promise to offer excellent material for a theoretical discussion of the themes of the Special Priority Programme.

From the first meetings in April 2013 onwards, a number of very promising possibilities of cooperation have emerged within SPP 1448. We found the joint workshops very fruitful for the overall framing of our own project and are in a mostly informal, but intensive exchange with other projects. ‘Roadsides and travel communities’ and our project take two different, but complementary perspectives on the transport of goods and people; we plan a comparative workshop to bring these perspective into a fruitful exchange. Anna Hüncke, employed by the project on ‘Transnational crime control’, works on Musina, as well, and is in close thematic exchange with Olivia Klimm. Due to the importance of Chinese traders in Oshikango, the links to ‘Translating Urban Modernities’ have been strong, too. In addition to these bilateral links, Katharina Heitz Tokpa is preparing a junior workshop on creativity together with Franziska Zanker and Lena Heinze.

In all these cooperations, the SPP’s overall theme has proven to be as fruitful as challenging, and grappling with it is an excellent way of conceptualising one’s own research questions and making them relevant for comparison.
We are going to submit a proposal for the third project phase. Since the PhD project cannot reasonably be expected to be concluded after two years, the necessity to search additional funding had been clear from the start (and expressed in the original proposal). In addition to this, the empirical richness and theoretical fruitfulness of the three case studies cannot be fully explored within two years, which makes an extension very desirable. By offering systematically contrasting situations going back to the same class of intervention, the studies still promise rich further results. As already planned, the next phase will extend the analysis to include its historical roots, identifying bifurcation points and path dependencies, and will include the other side of the respective boundary in a more systematic manner.

Significations of Oil and Social Change in Niger and Chad

An Anthropological Cooperative Research Project on Technologies, Signification and Processes of Creative Adaption in Relation to African Oil Production

University of Halle-Wittenberg; University of Göttingen; University of Mainz; LASDEL (Niger); CRASH (Chad)

1 March 2013 (Nikolaus Schareika); 1 April 2013 (Andrea Behrends, Thomas Bierschenk); 1 April - 31 October 2013 (Remadji Hoinathy); 15 February 2014 CRASH (Chama-James Tabi); 1 April 2014 LASDEL (Mahaman Tidjani Alou, Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, Mahamidou Aboubacar Attahirou)

Research: Chad, 21 March – 5 April 2013; Chad, 16-24 February 2014

Conferences:

• 
  4 March 2013, PP 1448 Workshop on “Comparison in Anthropology“, German Institute of International and Global Studies (GIGA), Hamburg; presentation of project results in relation to “comparison”
  
• 
  26-28 April 2013, PP Thematic Workshop in Berlin
  
• 
  23 June 2013, organization of Workshop with Prof. Dr. Andrew Barry on ‘Resources, Infrastructures, and Impacts: Notes on the Relation between Anthropology and STS’ at the University of Göttingen
  
• 
  26-30 June 2013, ECAS Meeting in Lisbon; organisation of panel on “Crude Moves: Social Fields of Global Oil”; presentation on “Technologies of Oil and Social Transformation in Chad” (together with N. Schareika)
  
• 
  26 June 2013, Project Meeting with all members in Lisbon
  
• 
  3-8 September 2013, CRESC Conference in London on “In/vulnerabilites and Social Change: Precarious Lives and Experimental Knowledge”; presentation on “In/vulnerability in crisis – translating development and humanitarian aid in the Darfur-Chad border zone”
  
• 
  14-15 October 2013; Grantees Meeting of the Volkswagen Foundation Program “Knowledge for Tomorrow” (as German Partner to Remadji Hoinathy’s post-doc project)
  
• 
  10-15 February 2014, Conference on “Mapping Science and Technology in Africa: Traveling technologies and global dis\orders” in Johannesburg, South Africa; presentation on “Does rationality travel? Translating a World Bank model for fair oil revenue distribution in Chad”
  

• 
  26-28 September 2013, PP 1448 Summer School on “Crisis” in Halle/Saale; one day teaching (together with Prof. Mirjam de Bruijn, ASC Leiden)
  

• 
  Wintersemester 2013, Seminar „Oil in Africa“ (at the Institut für Ethnologie, Hamburg University)
  

Conferences:

• 
  26-28 April 2013, PP Thematic Workshop in Berlin
  
• 
  23 June 2013, organization of Workshop with Prof. Dr. Andrew Barry on ‘Resources, Infrastructures, and Impacts: Notes on the Relation between Anthropology and STS’ at the University of Göttingen
  
• 
  26-30 June 2013, ECAS Meeting in Lisbon; organisation of panel on “Crude Moves: Social Fields of Global Oil”; presentation on “Technologies of Oil and Social Transformation in Chad” (together with A. Behrends)
  
• 
  26 June 2013, Project Meeting with all members in Lisbon
  
• 
  October 2013, Workshop: “Spaces of Violence in Democracies”, ZiF Bielefeld, Presentation: ‘Oil, Violence and Democracy in Niger’ (with J. Schritt)
  

Conferences:

• 
  4 March 2013, Kick-off lecture on “Comparison in Anthropology“, PP 1448 workshop at the German Institute of International and Global Studies (GIGA), Hamburg
  
• 
  26-28 April 2013, PP Thematic Workshop in Berlin
  
• 
  26-30 June 2013, ECAS Meeting in Lisbon; organisation of panel on “Crude Moves: Social Fields of Global Oil”; discussant
  
• 
  26 June 2013, Project Meeting with all members in Lisbon
  

Research: Niger, on-going

Conferences:

• 
  15 May 2012, LASDEL Niamey, presentation on ‘La gouvernance du pétrole’
  
• 
  26-30 June 2013, ECAS Meeting in Lisbon; Panel on “Crude Moves: Social Fields of Global Oil”; presentation on “Transformation de la gouvernance minière au Niger : l'exemple du pétrole »
  
• 
  26 June 2013, Project Meeting with all members in Lisbon
  

Research: Niger, on-going

Conferences:

• 
  26-30 June 2013, ECAS Meeting in Lisbon; organisation of panel on “Crude Moves: Social Fields of Global Oil”; discussant
  
• 
  26 June 2013, Project Meeting with all members in Lisbon
  

Research: Niger, 28 February – 26 March 2014 (Niamey, Zinder and Bakin Birgi)

Conferences and Workshops:

• 
  April 2013: Institutskolloquium, Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. Presentation: ‘Öl, Macht und Politik im Niger’
  
• 
  April 2013: NigerDay, GIGA Institute Hamburg. Presentation: ‘The history of oil in Niger and its narratives in political processes of realizing rights, aims and claims’.
  
• 
  26-28 April 2013, PP Thematic Workshop in Berlin
  
• 
  23 June 2013, Workshop with Prof. Dr. Andrew Barry on “Resources, Infrastructures, and Impacts: Notes on the Relation between Anthropology and STS” at the University of Göttingen. Presentation and discussion of his research project.
  
• 
  26-30 June 2013; ECAS Meeting in Lisbon, participation in panel on “Crudes Moves: Social fields of global oil”. Presentation: ‘Oil exploitation in Niger: From nuclear to petro democracy?’
  
• 
  26 June 2013, Project Meeting with all members in Lisbon
  
• 
  October 2013, Workshop: “Spaces of Violence in Democracies”, ZiF Bielefeld, Presentation: ‘Oil, Violence and Democracy in Niger’ (with N. Schareika)
  
• 
  December 2013, Workshop: “Oil, Rents and Politics”, University of Kassel, Presentation: ‘Resource Curse and Rentier State in Niger?’
  
• 
  January 2014, Workshop: “Gender Dimensions in SPP1448”, Leipzig, Presentation: ‘Gendered Assets in Oil Politics: Violent Masculinity, Patriarchy and Female Agency in Niger’
  
• 
  3. April – 5. April 2014, organization of SPP Junior Researcher Workshop “Narrating Narratives: Exploring Theories of Signification and Methodological Approaches”, Wermelskirchen (together with S. de Wit, E. Riedke, J. WIllers)
  

In June 2013 Remadji Hoinathy received the competitive Volkswagen Foundation three year scholarship for post-doctoral research and thus stopped working for the PP project end of October of that year. He remains, however, in close contact with the research group and supervises the newly employed Cameroonian PhD candidate, Chama-James Tabi. He taught a seminar on oil at the newly inaugurated Institute for Anthropology at N’Djamena University in 2013 and 2014. Thomas Bierschenk and Andrea Behrends attended his kick-off meeting in N’Djamena in February 2014. In October 2013 he published his monograph “Pétrole et changement social : Rente pétrolière, dé-agriculturation et monétisation des interactions sociales dans le canton Béro au sud du Tchad” with Karthala (Hoinathy 2013).

Chama-James Tabi was recruited as a new PhD candidate to continue research in Chad. He will focus his research on political dynamics of oil in Chad. This focus allows establishing rigorous comparison within the oil project between the research on political dynamics of oil in Niger that is done by Jannik Schritt and the new research by Tabi Chama James in Chad.

With deep regret we have to announce that Dr. Moussa died in a tragic traffic accident on 20 July 2013 in Niamey, Niger. Only a few weeks before we had been together at the ECAS Meeting in Lisbon where she presented on “Enjeux de l'exploitation pétrolière : étude de cas à N'gourti (Niger)” in the Panel on “Crude Moves: Social Fields of Global Oil”. Hadiza had been preparing the “Call for Applications” for African PhD candidates during the project’s second phase until the night before her death.

Research: 7 February - 8 March 2013 (N’gourti and Diffa)

Conferences:

• 
  26 June 2013, Project Meeting with all members in Lisbon
  

• 
  26-30 June 2013; ECAS Meeting in Lisbon, participation in panel on “Crudes Moves: Social fields of global oil”. Presentation: ‘Enjeux de l'exploitation pétrolière : étude de cas à N'gourti (Niger)”.
  

Mahamidou Aboubakar Attahirou finished his Master’s Thesis within our oil-project on « Dynamiques locales et stratégies des acteurs autour de la ’rente pétrolière’ à N’gourti » at the Abdou Moumouni University of Niamey. He was deeply affected by the death of his supervisor Dr. Hadiza Moussa that led to a delay in carrying out research in Niger by LASDEL. In April 2014 he received a PhD research position within the project for the second project phase. He focuses his new research on « Pétrole et changement social : Rente pétrolière et monétisation des interactions sociales dans N’gourti à l’est du Niger ». This focus allows establishing rigorous comparison with Remadji Hoinathy’s completed research on oil and social change in Chad.

Conferences:

• 
  26 June 2013, Project Meeting with all members in Lisbon
  

• 
  26-30 June 2013; ECAS Meeting in Lisbon, participation in panel on “Crudes Moves: Social fields of global oil”. Presentation: ‘Dynamiques locales et stratégies des acteurs autour de la rente pétrolière à N'Gourti (Nord-est du Niger)’
  

Oubandoma Salissou conducted several weeks fieldwork in Bakin Birgi - the site of the oil refinery - and recently finished his Master’s thesis within our oil-project on ‘Stratégies des acteurs autour de la raffinerie de Bakin Birji’ at the Abdou Moumouni University of Niamey. In the meantime he became vice-president of Niger’s anti-corruption authority HALCIA (la Haute Autorité de Lutte Contre la Corruption et les infractions assimilées).

Saadi Amar took up an employment in the oil industry as Head of Communications at SORAZ (Société de raffinage de Zinder) and stopped working for the project.

Abdoutan Harouna replaced Saadi Amar. He conducted several weeks of fieldwork in Zinder and recently finished his Master’s Thesis on “Régionalisation et exploitation pétrolière dans la ville de Zinder » at the Abdou Moumouni University of Niamey.

Due to significant changes in our research framework within the last year (2013), some of our planned activities have had to be postponed or fundamentally changed. These changes were:

1. In accordance with the DFG Andrea Behrends interrupted her research for a replacement professorship in Hamburg from 1 October 2013 to 31 March 2014. During this phase she could not access her funds attributed to the second project phase.

2. Niger has become a high risk country due to recent abductions and violence towards foreigners. With urgent travel warnings by the Federal Foreign Office including the capital Niamey, the research projects of Nikolaus Schareika and Jannik Schritt were severely hampered.

3. After the tragic death of our Nigerien research coordinator, Dr. Hadiza Moussa (as mentioned above), some of the planned research activities of our Nigerien master students could not take place as planned. The local team in Niger needed to be reassembled, a process that included a call for applications and selection of PhD candidates, which has only recently been finalised.

4. We advertised Dr. Remadji Hoinathy’s position in an Africa-wide Call for Applications (as we did for Niger) and only in February after a thorough selection process could we hire a well qualified PhD candidate from Cameroon, Chama-James Tabi. Chama-James Tabi has started his research, but only in mid February 2014.