Harry G West
Biographic Data
| ID | 468846 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Harry G West |
| GIVEN NAMES | Harry G |
| FAMILY NAME | West |
| SIGNATURE | WEST H G |
| AFFILIATIONS | SOAS University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4473-9053 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 845 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Transforming public food procurement: Stakeholder understandings of barriers and opportunities for more localised procurement
Green and sustainable food procurement has benefits for human health, the environment and economies. Public sector actors have purchasing power behind procurement decisions, and there is significant support for sustainably sourced food from consumers and the third sector. A sustainability transition in the public procurement of food would appear to be achievable, yet change remains incremental. This paper analyses supply chain stakeholder narrati…
Understanding Cultural Transmission in Anthropology: A Critical Synthesis
The concept of "cultural transmission" is central to much contemporary anthropological theory, since successful human reproduction through social systems is essential for effective survival and for enhancing the adaptiveness of individual humans and local populations. Yet, what is understood by the phrase and how it might best be studied is highly contested. This book brings together contributions that reflect the current diversity of approaches …
‘‘Who Rules Us Now?’’ Identity Tokens, Sorcery, and Other Metaphors in the 1994 Mozambican Elections
Power Revealed and Concealed in the NewWorld Order
Crafting innovation: Continuity and change in the "living traditions" of contemporary artisan cheesemakers
This is the final version. Available on open access from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record
Football and Colonialism: Body and Popular Culture in Urban Mozambique
An Interview with James C. Scott
Research Article| August 01 2015 An Interview with James C. Scott Harry G. West, Harry G. West SOAS, University of London Harry G. West is Professor of Anthropology, and Chair of the Food Studies Centre, at SOAS, University of London. His published works include Kupilikula: Governance and the Invisible Realm in Mozambique (University of Chicago Press, 2005), Ethnographic Sorcery (University of Chicago Press, 2007), and Food between the Country an…
New Directions in the Anthropology of Food
Naming Cheese
The following essays were written by members of the Cheese Scholars Collective. Formed during a workshop held 24–26 June 2009 in Totnes, Devon, England, the Collective is dedicated to faci1itating the constructive exchange of scholarly perspectives on cheese and its makers. The short essay form of these papers is intended to allow for a more productive juxtaposition of the authors' ideas, and to better convey the array of forms their shared objec…
Gourmandizing Poverty Food: The Serpa Cheese Slow Food Presidium
This paper examines a Slow Food-sponsored project to recreate and promote Serpa Velho, a hard aged cheese historically produced in the Alentejo region of Portugal. The authors examine the historical forces behind three changes that the project sought to reverse, namely the abandonment by cheese makers of the Merino breed, the move away from aging the cheese on straw mats in the cheese room rafters to aging in refrigerated stores, and the sale of …
Enduring Socialism: Explorations of Revolution and Transformation, Restoration and Continuation
Against the historical backdrop of successive socialist and post-socialist claims to have completely remade society, the contributors to this volume explore the complex and often paradoxical continuities between diverse post-socialist presents and their corresponding socialist and pre-socialist pasts. The chapters focus on ways in which: pre-socialist economic, political, and cultural forms in fact endured an era of socialism and have found new l…
Food fears and raw-milk cheese
Ethnographic Sorcery
According to the people of the Mueda plateau in northern Mozambique, sorcerers remake the world by asserting the authority of their own imaginative visions of it. While conducting research among these Muedans, anthropologist Harry G. West made a revealing discovery—for many of them, West’s efforts to elaborate an ethnographic vision of their world was itself a form of sorcery. In Ethnographic Sorcery, West explores the fascinating issues provoked…
Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (review)
James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa Neoliberal World Order. Durham: Duke University Press, April 2006. In fifth essay James Ferguson's forthcoming collection entitled Global Shadows: Africa Neoliberal World Order, author gives account of a short-lived Zambian Internet Magazine called Chrysalis. Produced by a cohort of young, foreign-educated Zambians, Chrysalis first appeared September 1998. Echoing then South deputy president Thabo Mbeki's ca…
Children and Youth on the Front Line: Ethnography, Armed Conflict and Displacement
Villains, Victims, or Makonde in the Making? Reading the Explorer Henry O'Neill and Listening to the Headman Lishehe
Henry O'Neill's narrative of first encounter in 1882 with residents of the plateau south of the Rovuma (in Mozambique) constitutes the earliest contribution to the written record on the area. By his presence among and accounts of these people, O'Neill transformed regional villains into victims awaiting British stewardship. This article portrays those O'Neill met on the plateau as more complex historical subjects who brought to the encounter their…
Transparency and conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order
Power Revealed and Concealed in the New World Order
“Who Rules Us Now?” Identity Tokens, Sorcery, and Other Metaphors in the 1994 Mozambican Elections
Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order
Transparency has, in recent years, become a watchword for good governance. Policymakers and analysts alike evaluate political and economic institutions—courts, corporations, nation-states—according to the transparency of their operating procedures. With the dawn of the New World Order and the “mutual veil dropping” of the post–Cold War era, many have asserted that power in our contemporary world is more transparent than ever. Yet from the perspec…
Association for Political and Legal Anthropology: Karam Wins Paper Prize
Sorcery and Mozambican Democracy
Voices Twice Silenced: Betrayal and Mourning at Colonialism's End in Mozambique
In the course of gathering life histories in northern Mozambique, the author encountered men who had been the victims of torture at the hands of the Portuguese during the Mozambican war for independence. The author gives an account of his conversations with these men, reflecting upon the urgency with which they told him their stories decades after their experience of violence. Where Portuguese attempts to `rehabilitate' political prisoners and to…
Makonde
December 01 2002 Makonde by JesperKirknaes and JørnKorn; A Host of Devils: The History and Context of the Making of Makonde Spirit Sculpture by ZacharyKingdon Harry G. West Harry G. West Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Harry G. West Online Issn: 1937-2108 Print Issn: 0001-9933 Copyright 2003 Regents of the University of California2003 African Arts (2002) 35 (4): 84–86. https://doi.…
Dealing with the Devil: Meaning and the Marketplace in Makonde Sculpture
Les AA. contestent la persistance des descripteurs polarises - notamment entre authentique et commercial - dans l'evaluation de la production contemporaine des artistes makonde d'Afrique Orientale. Ils critiquent egalement la dichotomie plus fondamentale entre tradition et modernite, appreciations superficielles du travail des sculpteurs makonde. Selon les AA., ces oppositions obscurcissent la dynamique essentielle de la reproduction et de l'evol…
Seeing Like a StateHow Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
Seeing Like. State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, by James C. Scott, Yale University Press, 1998
Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order
Transparency has, in recent years, become a watchword for good governance. Policymakers and analysts alike evaluate political and economic institutions—courts, corporations, nation-states—according to the transparency of their operating procedures. With the dawn of the New World Order and the “mutual veil dropping” of the post–Cold War era, many have asserted that power in our contemporary world is more transparent than ever. Yet from the perspec…
Betwixt and Between: Traditional Authority' and Democratic Decentralization in Post-War Mozambique
The end of civil war in Mozambique has been accompanied by democratization of political processes, as exemplified by the 1994 multi-party presidential and parliamentary elections. Under the rubric of democratization, the issue of state decentralization has also been raised. Current political debates focus on what role ‘traditional authority’ might play in local governance. Advocates argue that ‘traditional authority’ constitutes a genuinely Afric…
Sorcery of Construction and Socialist Modernization: Ways of Understanding Power in Postcolonial Mozambique
In this article I examine how rural Mozambicans in the Mueda plateau region experienced the socialist modernization policies of FRELIMO, the anti-colonial guerrilla movement that eventually took power over the postindependence Mozambican state. In interpreting and engaging with the dramatic transformations brought on by FRELIMO socialism, Muedans often drew on the familiar language of sorcery, notwithstanding FRELIMO attempts to banish sorcery-re…
This neighbor is not my uncle: Changing relations of power and authority on the Mueda Plateau
At independence in 1975, the FRELIMO government abolished chieftaincy in Mozambique. Two decades later, Mozambicans are discussing the role to be played by ‘traditional authority’ in the post‐civil war era. Current debates focus on whether or not kin‐based political institutions can be considered ‘legitimate’ expressions of political community in the context of democratic decentralization. This article seeks to contribute to ongoing discussions b…
A Piece of Land in a Land of Peace? State Farm Divestiture in Mozambique
Inthe first two years following the peace accord in Rome on 4 Ocotber 1992 between Mozambique's governing party, theFrente de Libertação de Moçambique(Frelimo), and theResistência National Moçambicana(Renamo) guerrilla leadership, over one million refugees returned to the country while as many as three million moved back to the areas they were forced to flee during the war. With the post-accord commitment of the United Nations to monitor the 'pea…
Girls with Guns: "Narrating the Experience of War of Frelimo's "Female Detachment
This article examines the way in which female guerrillas both appropriated and contributed to the FRELIMO narrative of women's participation in the struggle for Mozambican liberation. The author argues that ideological commitment to the cause was essential to defining the experience of violence for these girls and young women and that, concurrent with their convictions, they felt empowered rather than victimized by the war. The article contribute…
Voices Twice Silenced: Betrayal and Mourning at Colonialism's End in Mozambique
In the course of gathering life histories in northern Mozambique, the author encountered men who had been the victims of torture at the hands of the Portuguese during the Mozambican war for independence. The author gives an account of his conversations with these men, reflecting upon the urgency with which they told him their stories decades after their experience of violence. Where Portuguese attempts to `rehabilitate' political prisoners and to…
Gourmandizing Poverty Food: The Serpa Cheese Slow Food Presidium
This paper examines a Slow Food-sponsored project to recreate and promote Serpa Velho, a hard aged cheese historically produced in the Alentejo region of Portugal. The authors examine the historical forces behind three changes that the project sought to reverse, namely the abandonment by cheese makers of the Merino breed, the move away from aging the cheese on straw mats in the cheese room rafters to aging in refrigerated stores, and the sale of …
Creative Destruction and Sorcery of Construction. Power, Hope and Suspicion in Post-War Mozambique
This article addresses the historic transformations occurring in Mozambique over the past decade, including political and economic liberalization, the cessation of armed conflict, and the staging of national elections. Drawing on fieldwork conducted among the predominantly Makonde-speaking communities of the Mueda plateau in the country's northern province of Cabo Delgado, the author argues that recent historical events have been met with ambival…
Creative Destruction and Sorcery of Construction: Power, Hope and Suspicion in Post-War Mozambique
Development Communication and Popular Resistance in Africa: An Examination of the Struggle over Tradition and Modernity through Media
From the onset of the post-World War II international campaign for the development of the Third World, much attention has been paid to the role of various media forms in the process of making Africa modern. In the discourses of many state officials, development agencies, Western economists, sociologists, and political scientists, development was defined in terms of a country's ability to urbanize, industrialize, and democratize. What was needed f…
Villains, Victims, or Makonde in the Making? Reading the Explorer Henry O'Neill and Listening to the Headman Lishehe
Henry O'Neill's narrative of first encounter in 1882 with residents of the plateau south of the Rovuma (in Mozambique) constitutes the earliest contribution to the written record on the area. By his presence among and accounts of these people, O'Neill transformed regional villains into victims awaiting British stewardship. This article portrays those O'Neill met on the plateau as more complex historical subjects who brought to the encounter their…
Naming Cheese
The following essays were written by members of the Cheese Scholars Collective. Formed during a workshop held 24–26 June 2009 in Totnes, Devon, England, the Collective is dedicated to faci1itating the constructive exchange of scholarly perspectives on cheese and its makers. The short essay form of these papers is intended to allow for a more productive juxtaposition of the authors' ideas, and to better convey the array of forms their shared objec…
Crafting innovation: Continuity and change in the "living traditions" of contemporary artisan cheesemakers
This is the final version. Available on open access from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record
Food fears and raw-milk cheese
Transforming public food procurement: Stakeholder understandings of barriers and opportunities for more localised procurement
Green and sustainable food procurement has benefits for human health, the environment and economies. Public sector actors have purchasing power behind procurement decisions, and there is significant support for sustainably sourced food from consumers and the third sector. A sustainability transition in the public procurement of food would appear to be achievable, yet change remains incremental. This paper analyses supply chain stakeholder narrati…
Dealing with the Devil: Meaning and the Marketplace in Makonde Sculpture
Les AA. contestent la persistance des descripteurs polarises - notamment entre authentique et commercial - dans l'evaluation de la production contemporaine des artistes makonde d'Afrique Orientale. Ils critiquent egalement la dichotomie plus fondamentale entre tradition et modernite, appreciations superficielles du travail des sculpteurs makonde. Selon les AA., ces oppositions obscurcissent la dynamique essentielle de la reproduction et de l'evol…
Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (review)
James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa Neoliberal World Order. Durham: Duke University Press, April 2006. In fifth essay James Ferguson's forthcoming collection entitled Global Shadows: Africa Neoliberal World Order, author gives account of a short-lived Zambian Internet Magazine called Chrysalis. Produced by a cohort of young, foreign-educated Zambians, Chrysalis first appeared September 1998. Echoing then South deputy president Thabo Mbeki's ca…
Sorcery and Mozambican Democracy
Development Communication and Popular Resistance in Africa: An Examination of the Struggle over Tradition and Modernity through Media
From the onset of the post-World War II international campaign for the development of the Third World, much attention has been paid to the role of various media forms in the process of making Africa modern. In the discourses of many state officials, development agencies, Western economists, sociologists, and political scientists, development was defined in terms of a country's ability to urbanize, industrialize, and democratize. What was needed f…
A Piece of Land in a Land of Peace? State Farm Divestiture in Mozambique
Inthe first two years following the peace accord in Rome on 4 Ocotber 1992 between Mozambique's governing party, theFrente de Libertação de Moçambique(Frelimo), and theResistência National Moçambicana(Renamo) guerrilla leadership, over one million refugees returned to the country while as many as three million moved back to the areas they were forced to flee during the war. With the post-accord commitment of the United Nations to monitor the 'pea…
Creative Destruction and Sorcery of Construction. Power, Hope and Suspicion in Post-War Mozambique
This article addresses the historic transformations occurring in Mozambique over the past decade, including political and economic liberalization, the cessation of armed conflict, and the staging of national elections. Drawing on fieldwork conducted among the predominantly Makonde-speaking communities of the Mueda plateau in the country's northern province of Cabo Delgado, the author argues that recent historical events have been met with ambival…
Creative Destruction and Sorcery of Construction: Power, Hope and Suspicion in Post-War Mozambique
This neighbor is not my uncle: Changing relations of power and authority on the Mueda Plateau
At independence in 1975, the FRELIMO government abolished chieftaincy in Mozambique. Two decades later, Mozambicans are discussing the role to be played by ‘traditional authority’ in the post‐civil war era. Current debates focus on whether or not kin‐based political institutions can be considered ‘legitimate’ expressions of political community in the context of democratic decentralization. This article seeks to contribute to ongoing discussions b…
Seeing Like a StateHow Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
Seeing Like. State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, by James C. Scott, Yale University Press, 1998
Betwixt and Between: Traditional Authority' and Democratic Decentralization in Post-War Mozambique
The end of civil war in Mozambique has been accompanied by democratization of political processes, as exemplified by the 1994 multi-party presidential and parliamentary elections. Under the rubric of democratization, the issue of state decentralization has also been raised. Current political debates focus on what role ‘traditional authority’ might play in local governance. Advocates argue that ‘traditional authority’ constitutes a genuinely Afric…
Girls with Guns: "Narrating the Experience of War of Frelimo's "Female Detachment
This article examines the way in which female guerrillas both appropriated and contributed to the FRELIMO narrative of women's participation in the struggle for Mozambican liberation. The author argues that ideological commitment to the cause was essential to defining the experience of violence for these girls and young women and that, concurrent with their convictions, they felt empowered rather than victimized by the war. The article contribute…
Sorcery of Construction and Socialist Modernization: Ways of Understanding Power in Postcolonial Mozambique
In this article I examine how rural Mozambicans in the Mueda plateau region experienced the socialist modernization policies of FRELIMO, the anti-colonial guerrilla movement that eventually took power over the postindependence Mozambican state. In interpreting and engaging with the dramatic transformations brought on by FRELIMO socialism, Muedans often drew on the familiar language of sorcery, notwithstanding FRELIMO attempts to banish sorcery-re…
Makonde
December 01 2002 Makonde by JesperKirknaes and JørnKorn; A Host of Devils: The History and Context of the Making of Makonde Spirit Sculpture by ZacharyKingdon Harry G. West Harry G. West Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Harry G. West Online Issn: 1937-2108 Print Issn: 0001-9933 Copyright 2003 Regents of the University of California2003 African Arts (2002) 35 (4): 84–86. https://doi.…
Dealing with the Devil: Meaning and the Marketplace in Makonde Sculpture
Les AA. contestent la persistance des descripteurs polarises - notamment entre authentique et commercial - dans l'evaluation de la production contemporaine des artistes makonde d'Afrique Orientale. Ils critiquent egalement la dichotomie plus fondamentale entre tradition et modernite, appreciations superficielles du travail des sculpteurs makonde. Selon les AA., ces oppositions obscurcissent la dynamique essentielle de la reproduction et de l'evol…
Transparency and conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order
Power Revealed and Concealed in the New World Order
“Who Rules Us Now?” Identity Tokens, Sorcery, and Other Metaphors in the 1994 Mozambican Elections
Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order
Transparency has, in recent years, become a watchword for good governance. Policymakers and analysts alike evaluate political and economic institutions—courts, corporations, nation-states—according to the transparency of their operating procedures. With the dawn of the New World Order and the “mutual veil dropping” of the post–Cold War era, many have asserted that power in our contemporary world is more transparent than ever. Yet from the perspec…
Association for Political and Legal Anthropology: Karam Wins Paper Prize
Sorcery and Mozambican Democracy
Voices Twice Silenced: Betrayal and Mourning at Colonialism's End in Mozambique
In the course of gathering life histories in northern Mozambique, the author encountered men who had been the victims of torture at the hands of the Portuguese during the Mozambican war for independence. The author gives an account of his conversations with these men, reflecting upon the urgency with which they told him their stories decades after their experience of violence. Where Portuguese attempts to `rehabilitate' political prisoners and to…
Children and Youth on the Front Line: Ethnography, Armed Conflict and Displacement
Villains, Victims, or Makonde in the Making? Reading the Explorer Henry O'Neill and Listening to the Headman Lishehe
Henry O'Neill's narrative of first encounter in 1882 with residents of the plateau south of the Rovuma (in Mozambique) constitutes the earliest contribution to the written record on the area. By his presence among and accounts of these people, O'Neill transformed regional villains into victims awaiting British stewardship. This article portrays those O'Neill met on the plateau as more complex historical subjects who brought to the encounter their…
Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (review)
James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa Neoliberal World Order. Durham: Duke University Press, April 2006. In fifth essay James Ferguson's forthcoming collection entitled Global Shadows: Africa Neoliberal World Order, author gives account of a short-lived Zambian Internet Magazine called Chrysalis. Produced by a cohort of young, foreign-educated Zambians, Chrysalis first appeared September 1998. Echoing then South deputy president Thabo Mbeki's ca…
Ethnographic Sorcery
According to the people of the Mueda plateau in northern Mozambique, sorcerers remake the world by asserting the authority of their own imaginative visions of it. While conducting research among these Muedans, anthropologist Harry G. West made a revealing discovery—for many of them, West’s efforts to elaborate an ethnographic vision of their world was itself a form of sorcery. In Ethnographic Sorcery, West explores the fascinating issues provoked…
Enduring Socialism: Explorations of Revolution and Transformation, Restoration and Continuation
Against the historical backdrop of successive socialist and post-socialist claims to have completely remade society, the contributors to this volume explore the complex and often paradoxical continuities between diverse post-socialist presents and their corresponding socialist and pre-socialist pasts. The chapters focus on ways in which: pre-socialist economic, political, and cultural forms in fact endured an era of socialism and have found new l…
Food fears and raw-milk cheese
New Directions in the Anthropology of Food
Sociology (19 works) · Political science (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Politics (12 works) · History (11 works) · African history and culture studies (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Art (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (6 works)