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18:56
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Dynamic Relations
I've recently come across David Harvey's span style="font-style: italic;"Spaces of Global Capitalism/span (2006). Harvey is known for his very sophisticated works on capitalism, globalization, and modernity. In this particular work, Harvey is attempting to unify diverse theories that have dealt ...
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17:41
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Dynamic Relations
The presentation of my preliminary research went swimmingly at the Memory and Truth Conference this past weekend. I was asked engaged questions from the audience, given fantastic feedback by many of the senior professors there, and was even told by ...
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16:45
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Dynamic Relations
I have to reiterate the caveat that the previous two posts are excerpts from a paper I'll be presenting at a conference (tomorrow morning). The conclusions drawn from my preliminary research are more like guiding lights. In that vein, there ...
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16:08
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Dynamic Relations
The Nigerien director of the regional office of the Ministry of the Environment and the Fight against Desertification in Maradi lamented that while people are becoming more cognizant of the long-term effects of intensive mono-cropping, deforestation, and over-grazing there is ...
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21:10
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Dynamic Relations
On the 25th of this month, I'll be presenting some findings--thoughts and next-step questions--from my recent research in Niger at a conference hosted here at CU. This is the graduate student-initiated a href="http://www.colorado.edu/anthropology/memorytruth/"Memory + Truth Conference/a that asksbr /blockquoteWhat is ...
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18:20
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Dynamic Relations
Gaya is situated in a fairly tight bend of the Niger River. At the southern tip of Niger, it is also one of the wettest places in the country. As such, it is very humid but the most fertile area ...
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15:47
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Dynamic Relations
a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4GHSoNpbA5U/SoqzBG7nyMI/AAAAAAAAAHM/8xZhlPHbeVw/s1600-h/Niger+137.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4GHSoNpbA5U/SoqzBG7nyMI/AAAAAAAAAHM/8xZhlPHbeVw/s320/Niger+137.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5371302337214662850" border="0" //ablockquoteThe ride north from Zinder to Agadez was certainly an adventure, and one of the most ...
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21:51
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Dynamic Relations
span style="font-weight: bold;"span style="font-size:100%;"Maradi/span/spanbr /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4GHSoNpbA5U/SoRwQ70FOYI/AAAAAAAAAFM/TgxjaoiAKpY/s1600-h/Niger+094.JPG"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4GHSoNpbA5U/SoRwQ70FOYI/AAAAAAAAAFM/TgxjaoiAKpY/s320/Niger+094.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369540091968829826" border="0" //aa href="http://dynamicrelations.blogspot.com/2009/07/hittin-road.html"/ablockquotea href="http://dynamicrelations.blogspot.com/2009/07/hittin-road.html"Hittin' the road/a and watchin' the sun rise./blockquotebr /br ...
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16:22
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Dynamic Relations
span style="font-style: italic;"Below are some snapshots during my time in Niger. I'll post them in the order in which I took them, in the order in which I traveled around Niger. The photos will be spread out over the next ...
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20:53
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Dynamic Relations
In order to continue procrastinating from putting up my own research--from actually producing something and putting it out into the great wide inter-web-nets; and because it's Sunday, the day of rest; because my meetings are finished; and because I've had ...
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13:07
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Dynamic Relations
I realize now that I haven't fully explained what I'm doing in Niger. This trip--funded by a private grant for budding PhD students in cultural anthropology at CU-Boudler--had three objectives: (1) to begin speaking with people on the ground and ...
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17:51
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Dynamic Relations
After having spent the past 4 weeks speaking with people about development, I feel less sure as to what exactly "development" is. Prior to arriving in Niger, I broadly lumped environmental and agricultural projects--such as for reforestation, halting soil erosion ...
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15:38
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Dynamic Relations
span style="font-style: italic;"From my fieldnotes; 27 July/spanbr /br /Gaya: the spirit of the Earth. After the desert dwelling I've been doing for the past 3 weeks, Gaya is a verdant Paradise. Green. Trees. span style="font-style: italic;"Rain!/span I write this from ...
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13:57
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Dynamic Relations
By all measures, development in Africa has far from succeeded despite half a century of effort by the West to aid the Rest. Lambeck (1992) noted that most scholars agree that this crisis of development in Africa is due to ...
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10:50
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Dynamic Relations
The UN uses the Human Development Index to rank countries' development beyond their gross domestic product. It includes such things as life expectency and quality, adult literacy, second and tertiary school enrollment, and standard of living or purchasing power. It's ...
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13:45
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Dynamic Relations
p class="MsoNormal"span style="" lang="EN-GB"I came to Agadez for adventure and for--truth be told--a respite from forcing myself to do research, for a little relaxation. Of course, I didn't want to admit this to myself and reasoned that the lack of ...
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14:47
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Dynamic Relations
Victor Turner, elaborating on Arnold Van Gennep, thought that any group passing though stages of life together, or sharing a significant event, would share a common bond. That transition--that time of being not in one place or stage and not ...
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18:08
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Dynamic Relations
"Le bureau d'Air France," she says in a flawless Parisian accent.br /br /The taxi driver nods his assent and she slides into the passenger's seat, filling the car with expensive perfume. I'm crammed in the back; three grown men in ...
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11:14
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Dynamic Relations
Zinder is a much needed change of pace from Maradi. It's larger, more spread out, not nearly as frenzied, and people are generally more amicable.br /br /Yesterday, while still in Maradi, I met with the director of the Agency for ...
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10:18
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Dynamic Relations
Maradi is the third largest city in Niger, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in economic activity. It is emthe/em economic and commercial center of Niger and the main border town with Nigeria. Everything is concentrated ...
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13:49
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Dynamic Relations
I'm finally getting myself out of Niamey. It's been difficult coming to terms (again) with the slow pace of work in Africa. Not much of a rush for anything. One of my contacts didn't come through but I bit the ...
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14:05
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Dynamic Relations
Mustapha is in his early 30s. He has a broad, toothy grin that puffs out his cheeks and covers his eyes.br /br /Born in a small village to the east of Niamey, Mustapha moved his wife and himself to the ...
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16:13
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Dynamic Relations
This is the rainy season. I've been here nearly two weeks and it had only rained one time. Last night it rained for the second time.br /br /Weather is not subtle in West Africa and thunderstorms are no exception. I'm ...
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16:07
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Dynamic Relations
10 days. A quarter of my trip has already passed. I'm not sure if it's been as productive as it should have been. I feel myself on the verge of another Malinowskian existential crisis. So this blog is to take ...
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17:51
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Dynamic Relations
The situation on the ground is far more volatile than the information I came across before I landed in Niger. The Tuareg faction in the north of the country has been staging an official/unofficial rebellion since the mid 1990s and ...
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12:54
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Dynamic Relations
I've been spending my afternoons at a particular cyber cafe. I stumbled across it during the heat of the day, not really knowing where I was going, after being turned away by the locked door of the internet place I ...