Research at the Margaret Anstee Centre

Archives of the Disappeared is an interdisciplinary initiative that addresses the challenges of researching communities, social movements, spaces, literatures and lifeworlds that have been suppressed or annihilated through acts of colonial, economic, and state violence. Working within disciplinary practices (history, social anthropology, literature, and sociology) that rely on material and empirical research, where finding ‘evidence’ forms a core methodological objective, this initiative addresses the absence of evidence as a result of colonial, national, elite, and state denial and suppression and responses to such structures by those targeted for erasure. This initiative will launch with an initial focus on the Middle East and South Asia. It studies innovative forms of documentation by survivors and descendants of disappeared communities and cultures, develop new theoretical frameworks and methodologies for archival and field work in the absence of archives, and build a network of historians, archivists, organisers, and artists across the region whose work offers a challenge to disciplinary practices.

Past events can be found here.

For more details, and to be added to the mailing list, please contact Dr Mezna Qato, Newnham College and Faculty of History, University of Cambridge

This project is using a historical perspective to understand the Zambian government’s strategies for strengthening its trusteeship over the economy, shaping the public’s minds for economic development, and building a national identity. It also examines the source of theories that suggest foreign actors are engaging in economic sabotage and Zambia’s evolving approach to non-alignment in international relations. The project casts light on how these themes are affected by social media influence operations as well as public memory of the Cold War and the political decolonization of southern Africa.

Recent publications include the policy brief Social Media Debates in Zambia’s Evolving Foreign Relations with the East and West: Trends and Implications and No Sea Change: African Foreign Policies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which is part of a longer working paper. The project will also produce a documentary and a book that will make conceptual contributions to research on African agency, nation-building, and multilateralism.

For more information about this research please contact Dr Cynthia Kamwengo.

Dr Diala Lteif focuses on the role of migration and class struggle in the production of space and aims to centre marginalized communities, such as refugees, migrants, and laborers, within urban narratives. Dr Lteif’s research contributes to emerging debates in theories of urbanism from the Global South by examining bottom-up approaches to city-making. Dr Lteif is currently developing her first book project which considers these questions, over a century (1918-2018), through an urban historical study of a marginalized working-class neighbourhood in Beirut, Lebanon, known as Karantina. Dr Lteif is simultaneously pursuing a second research project where she examines the intersection of labor mobilizations and urban politics. More specifically, she investigates a forgotten mobilization led by the Butchers Union & Livestock Traders Syndicate (BULTS) in the 1960s in Beirut, Lebanon. This specific labor struggle yielded historic victories for BULTS and set an important precedent for similar union-led activity in Lebanon.

For more information about this research please contact Dr Diala Lteif.

Journal publications

• Lteif, Diala. “IDPs of East Beirut versus the Lebanese State.” Forced Migration Review, Issue 62, (October 2019): 53–54.
• Lteif, Diala. “L’intégration d’une approche innovante: Le Design Global au Liban cas d’étude de la section design de l’École des Arts Décoratifs à l’ALBA.” [Integrating an innovative approach: Global Design in Lebanon, case study: Design Department at ALBA]. In Actes des 10e Ateliers de la recherche en design, Montréal, Québec, 21-24 (Octobre 2015): 65–70. Université de Montréal: Groupe Design et société, 2018.

Selected media articles and other publications

• Lteif, Diala. “Change for Beirut must start in the oppressed neighborhood of Karantina.” Toronto Star. August 17, 2020. Opinion. 
• Lteif, Diala. “كي لا ننسى الكرنتينا. [Lest we forget Karantina]”. Al-Jumhuriyah, August 25, 2020. Opinion. 
• Lteif, Diala. “The Lebanon Revolution takes on the media: A resource on alternative news outlets”,  Jadaliyya, December 23, 2019.

Dr Fadia Panosetti is a Wiener-Anspach Postdoctoral Fellow based here at the Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies.

She focuses her research on the histories and theories of agricultural development and economic, social, political change among rural communities in the Middle East.

Fadia’s current research project is a study of the the political and economic drivers underpinning the emergence of export-oriented agricultural clusters in the West Bank, and the context-specific consequences of small holders’ inclusion in global value chains for dynamics of land access and control, and livelihood configurations in the region of Qalqilya.

Through this project, she sheds light on a region that has often been neglected in main agrarian and critical development studies and brings the field of Middle Eastern studies into dialogue with agrarian political economy.

She will start working on her first book, Agrarian Palestine, in the summer. Follow the link to read her recent paper which is open access on the Journal of Peasant Studies, Land struggle and Palestinian farmers’ livelihoods in the West Bank: between de-agrarianization and anti-colonial resistance.

For more information about this research please contact Dr Fadia Panosetti.

In the dusk of the fossil fuel age and given the challenges of climate change, important geopolitical transformations are happening in the global energy system. Renewable energies are now firmly at the centre of global debate, requiring novel strategic resources such as lithium for new technologies leading to the low-carbon energy transition. Lithium-ion batteries play an essential role in two aspects: by expanding and massifying the use of electric vehicles reducing the CO2 emissions from the transport sector; and by increasing the efficiency and capacity of renewable energies through large energy storage systems to be connected to the grid. Both of these will  dramatically change the residential and commercial energy markets.

The extraction and evaporation of lithium entails a complex process. The brines are mostly located in the so-called ‘Lithium Triangle’ in the South American salt flats of northern Chile, southern Bolivia and north-western Argentina. This region accounts for 85% of the lithium sourced from brines worldwide. Chile and Argentina have been extracting and exporting lithium for more than 20 years by private companies. Although Bolivia is not a producer yet, it concentrates more than a third of the global lithium resources.

Considering lithium is a strategic resource found in three dissimilar countries (in terms of political economy, levels of poverty and industrial development) my research focused on the geopolitical dynamics emerging in the South American salt flats.

Renewable energy geopolitics emerges as a field in which different stakeholders seeking to control resources valuable for turbines, solar panels or batteries, enter into a new era of competition and geographical domination. Elements my work looked at included: i) the different elements shaping the governance of lithium and how alliances with transnational companies are developing in Andean countries; ii) the emergence of new ‘renewable superpowers’ such as China in the lithium supply chain and its degree of influence it the Lithium triangle; and iii) how lithium mining will perpetuate (or not) uneven development and forms of neo-dependency in the producing countries, in the face of a world in a climate change crisis and an aggressive energy transition already taking place.

The research was based on primary and secondary data. It had a qualitative approach grounded in interpretative and exploratory practices. It sought to understand frameworks and political struggles around the mining of lithium and at the same time, looked for new angles and insights in relation to the different roles of the state in each country, the diverse range of actors interacting in defining governance, and the different challenges emerging from lithium mining in South America. 

May 2019: From a White Desert to the Largest World Deposit of Lithium: Symbolic Meanings and Materialities of the Uyuni Salt Flat in Bolivia

REN21: Renewables 2019, Global Status Report

October 2018: Sustainable Governance of Strategic Minerals: Post-Neoliberalism and Lithium in Bolivia

June 2018 Lithium and cobalt – a tale of two commodities

When we consider forcibly displaced populations, several images often spring to mind: of sprawling refugee camps in arid environments or people boarding rickety boats in search of a more humane future. What we rarely consider are all those individuals who have valid claims for asylum but instead choose to seek refuge through employment in spaces where refugee status is not an option. These are the individuals who choose not to enter formal systems of protection, find ways to establish ‘security’ for themselves, and who are almost always overlooked in scholarly and policy analyses.

This research project sought to shed more light on one particular manifestation of this phenomenon: the situation of forced migrants in the Gulf States. More specifically, it focused on populations leaving Eritrea who move to Riyadh and Dubai, exploring questions including: What role do these cities play in responding to displaced individuals? How have these populations shaped the urban fabrics, labour markets and political economies with which they interact? How does living in these cities affect the trajectories, identities and transnational networks of forced migrants residing there? What are the impacts of these migratory dynamics for regional politics and dynamics in the country of origin? Finally, how do these trends bear on changing humanitarian orthodoxies, in a context in which Gulf and ‘Southern’ actors are becoming more powerful voices globally. 

This research project sought to build an evidence base to firmly reposition the experiences of forced migrants in the Gulf within global discourses on displacement. Quite rightly the human rights narrative has dominated work on migration in the Gulf, highlighting abuses suffered within the kafala system and through international recruitment bodies. The result, however, has been that nuanced accounts of why individuals choose to enter these systems and then their experiences within them have rarely been recorded. Given the severe strain on the current asylum system, whereby numbers of refugees are increasing while durable solutions appear ever more elusive, it seems particularly expedient to explore the alternative journeys that individuals undertake to avoid this system altogether. Following from this, and from the migrants’ perspectives, are important questions concerning what opportunities and constraints these spaces and Gulf development actors present.

Doing so is important not only for policy-makers and humanitarian organisations, who cannot accurately forecast and plan for population movements while overlooking such a significant region and form of migration. It is also valuable for these populations themselves, whose relative invisibility within these spaces may, despite certain possible advantages, have contributed to their specific needs being overlooked and their resilience, contributions and services being undervalued. 

The findings from this study also impact certain key paradigmatic debates within geography and refugee studies. Accounts of ‘protection’ within the Gulf will challenge current conceptions of what ‘humanitarianism’ and ‘humanitarian systems’ should consist of. Narratives of those forced migrants inhabiting these spaces will deepen our understanding of migrant-decision making, aspirations and trajectories. And better knowledge of this will serve to reconfigure global geographies of displacement, focusing policy and humanitarian attention on zones such as the Gulf States as well as more familiar sites such as the shores of the Aegean and Mediterranean.

October 2019: Working with ‘stayee’ communities: learning from Eritrea

The IUKDPF resources can be found here. 

The India-UK Development Partnership Forum (IUKDPF) was an initiative to support research, knowledge exchange and development partnership between India and the UK. The project was funded by the Department for International Development, under the India-UK Global Partnership Programme on Development (GPPD). The GPPD supports India’s contribution towards delivering on the Global Goals and in advancing global public goods, in doing so it will contribute towards more positive outcomes in other developing countries and on global issues.

The GPPD programme has several partners. These include the World Bank, Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), EXIM Bank of India, and the Centre for Policy Research (CPR).

The IUKDPF was hosted by the Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies, at Newnham College, University of Cambridge.

The IUKDPF had three components:

a) Research on bilateral, trilateral and multilateral Indian development cooperation

b) To enhance knowledge exchange through a platform and through forums

c) To provide senior private and public sector executive fellowships in development partnership

Jessica Sklair is an anthropologist working on philanthropy and the changing role of the private sector in international development in Brazil and the UK. Her research here spanned three main areas: (i) elite philanthropy, philanthrocapitalism and ‘impact investing’ in Brazil; (ii) financialisation and the role of the private sector in international development, and (iii) wealth elites, inheritance and business succession processes in Brazil.

Dr Sklair’s work involved two research projects. The first (led by PI Professor Emma Mawdsley, in collaboration with colleagues at the Universities of Cambridge, Sussex, Nottingham and East Anglia) was an ESRC-funded project exploring the UK government’s procurement of services from for-profit consultants and contractors in the spending of the ODA (Official Development Assistance) budget. The second (in partnership with Dr Farwa Sial at the European Network on Debt and Development and funded by the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy at the Cambridge University Judge Business School) explored the adoption of innovative financing mechanisms by philanthropic foundations in the Middle East. In parallel, Dr Sklair worked on the design of a further project (in partnership with colleagues at the Universidade Federal de São Carlos in Brazil) looking at processes of financialisation within Brazil’s development sector. Her book Brazilian Elites and their Philanthropy: Wealth at the Service of Development is published by Routledge in their Studies in Latin American Development Series.

Publications

Edited Special Issues

Hart, J., Russon, J. and Sklair, J. (eds.) (2021) ‘The Private Sector in the Development Landscape: Partnerships, Power, Possibility’, Development in Practice,31(7).

Gilbert, P. and Sklair, J. (eds.) (2018) ‘Mutuality, Complicity & Critique in the Ethnography of Global Elites’, Focaal – Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 81.

Articles

Sklair, J. and Gilbert, P. (2022) ‘Giving as “De-Risking”: Philanthropy, Impact Investment and the Pandemic Response‘, Public Anthropologist, 4(1), 51-77.

Hart, J., Russon, J. and Sklair, J. (2021) ‘Introduction: The Private Sector in the Development Landscape: Partnerships, Power, and Questionable Possibilities’, Development in Practice,31(7), 857-871. https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2021.1966172

Sklair, J. and Glucksberg, L. (2020) ‘Philanthrocapitalism as wealth management strategy: Philanthropy, inheritance and succession planning among the global elite.’ The Sociological Review. October 2020. doi: 10.1177/0038026120963479

Sklair, J. (2020) ‘Investimento de impacto e grantmaking: Visões conceituais distintas para o investimento social privado brasileiro.’ Artigos GIFE, v. 2, n. 1, artigo 2. doi: 10.33816/gife.20200201a2

Gilbert, P. R. and Sklair, J. (2018) ‘Introduction: Ethnographic Engagements with Global Elites: Mutuality, Complicity & Critique.’ Focaal – Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 81, 1-15.

Sklair, J. (2018) ‘Closeness and critique among Brazilian philanthropists: Challenges for a critical ethnography of wealth elites.’ Focaal – Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 81, 29-42. 

Sklair, J. (2016) ‘Philanthropy as Salvation: Can the rich save the world and should we let them try?’ Voices from Around the World (Online Journal, Global South Studies Center Cologne), Jan. Issue.

Frúgoli Jr., H. and Sklair, J. (2009) ‘O Bairro da Luz em São Paulo: Questões antropológicas sobre o fenômeno da gentrification.’ [The Luz District in São Paulo: Anthropological questions on the phenomenon of gentrification] Cuadernos de Antropología Social (Argentina), 30, 119-136.

Books

Sklair, J. (2021) Brazilian Elites and their Philanthropy: Wealth at the service of development. London and New York: Routledge.

Sklair, J. (2010) A Filantropia Paulistana: Açoes sociais em uma cidade segregada. [Philanthropy in São Paulo: Social projects in a segregated city.] São Paulo: Editora Humanitas.

Book Chapters

Sklair, J. (2021) ‘Development opportunity or national crisis? The implications of Brazil’s political shift for elite philanthropy and civil society organizing.’ In: Hatzikidi, K. and Dullo, E. (eds.) A Horizon of (Im)Possibilities: A Chronicle of Brazil’s Conservative Turn. London: University of London Press.

Sklair, J. (2019) Direitos e responsabilidades: Filantropia e a provisão de serviços de saúde em uma favela paulistana. [Rights and Responsibilities: Philanthropy and the provision of healthcare in a São Paulo shanty town]. In: Frúgoli Jr., H., Spaggiari, E. and Aderaldo, G. (eds.) Práticas, Conflitos, Espaços: Pesquisas em Antropologia da Cidade. Rio de Janeiro: Gramma. 

Frúgoli Jr., H. and Sklair, J. (2013) ‘O bairro da Luz (São Paulo) e o Bairro Alto (Lisboa) nos entremeios de mudanças e permanências.’ [The Luz district and the Bairro Alto district: Caught between change and permanency]. In: Fortuna, C. and Leite, R., (eds.) Diálogos Urbanos: Territórios, culturas, patrimónios. Coimbra: Almedina.

Blog Posts

Sklair, J. (2022) ‘COVID-19 and the Financialisation of Social Care’, SOAS Economics Blog. https://study.soas.ac.uk/covid-19-financialisation-social-care/

Sklair, J. (2018) ‘Will Brazilian philanthropy leapfrog the ‘grantmaking phase’ and move directly to an impact investing model?’, Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace Blog.
http://www.psjp.org/leapfrog-the-grantmaking-phase/

Sklair, J. (2018) ‘Fostering Social Business in Brazil: Interview with Maure Pessanha at Artemisia’, The Latin American Diaries. https://latinamericandiaries.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2018/05/11/fostering-social-business-in-brazil-interview-with-maure-pessanha-at-artemisia/