China-Africa / Asia-Africa Engagements
I began my academic career at the National University of Singapore (2000-2006). Because of the absence of African studies on campus, I launched new classes that brought African ethnography to Singaporean students. Beginning in 2000 and anticipating the surge of Asian economic and political interests throughout the African continent in the first decade of the twenty-first century, I explored and began teaching about the many historic and contemporary connections between Asian and African nations. By the mid-1990s it was already clear that connections between African and Asian people, markets, and nations were significant and increasing. Even in the remote forests where I work, before the turn of the twenty-first century Asian timber companies had moved into the Congo River basin, Asian products (batteries, buckets, shoes, clothing) proliferated in markets throughout equatorial Africa, and Asian cultural forms were gaining popularity (martial arts clubs were springing up in forest villages and Bruce Lee films were screened in timber camps). Through my teaching in Singapore, I began to formalize my analysis of such historically deep, politically expedient, and culturally significant connections between Africa and Asia. This exploration opened up a new area of sustained research, which I pursued actively as a faculty associate and research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School (2006-08).
I was an early contributor to the field of “China-Africa” studies, offering ethnographic analyses of boundaries of belonging and cultural perceptions between participants in the processes of engagement between “China” and “Africa.” In presentations and publications I have argued that relations between African and Chinese actors at individual, communal, market, corporate, and state levels can best be characterized as postcolonial interdependencies—relationships that are mutually beneficial to the engaged parties within the context of contemporary relationships of power, which themselves are often characterized by systematic inequalities.
As an example of such interdependencies, I examine the politics of energy. On one hand, numerous African nations hold tremendous energy wealth in raw resources, even as their citizens experience energy poverty in their daily lives. On the other hand, China has outstripped its own national resources of oil and is approaching its peak production of coal, yet is able to provide its citizens with access to energy infrastructure. The energy sector demonstrates the mutually beneficial, interdependent nature of energy inequalities between China and African nations: China seeks Africa’s energy resources; African nations seek China’s expertise in establishing national energy infrastructures.
My current research of international flows of ivory and divergent cultural values of elephants and ivory in African and Asian contexts also addresses cultural, economic, and political engagements between African and Asian nations.
As an example of such interdependencies, I examine the politics of energy. On one hand, numerous African nations hold tremendous energy wealth in raw resources, even as their citizens experience energy poverty in their daily lives. On the other hand, China has outstripped its own national resources of oil and is approaching its peak production of coal, yet is able to provide its citizens with access to energy infrastructure. The energy sector demonstrates the mutually beneficial, interdependent nature of energy inequalities between China and African nations: China seeks Africa’s energy resources; African nations seek China’s expertise in establishing national energy infrastructures.
My current research of international flows of ivory and divergent cultural values of elephants and ivory in African and Asian contexts also addresses cultural, economic, and political engagements between African and Asian nations.