Olly Owen
Biographic Data
| ID | 5679385 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Olly Owen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Olly |
| FAMILY NAME | Owen |
| SIGNATURE | OWEN O |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 70 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Anthropology and Tax: Ethnographies of Fiscal Relations
From the perspective of individual taxpayers to international tax norm negotiators, the anthropologists in this collection explore how taxes shape our world: our social relationships and value regimes, how we exclude and include, the categories we think with, and the way we share with each other. A first of its kind, it presents an anthropological discussion about tax rooted in ethnographic work. It asks fundamental questions such as: what is tax…
Thick claims and thin rights: Taxation and the construction of analogue property rights in Lagos
The importance of tenure security for development and wellbeing is often reduced to questions about how titles can guarantee rights, overlooking the contested and layered nature of property rights themselves. We use the case of Lagos to analyse property rights as 'analogue' rather than 'digital' in nature – things that only exist by degree, where a dynamic urban situation renders the distinction between a right and a claim much less clear than co…
Government paper: The negotiated production and life of state documents
This introduction provides the rationale for a fresh look at an apparently obvious phenomenon – the production and life of state documents. Whilst ethnographies of statehood have multiplied in recent years, we focus on an underexplored avenue of inquiry: the role played by pieces of paper in constituting modern bureaucratic states. To date, attempts to map out this area of study have focused predominantly on the discourse and semiotics of state d…
Police in Africa
State police forces in Africa are a curiously neglected subject of study, even within the framework of security issues and African states. This book brings together criminologists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists and others who have engaged with police forces across the continent and the publics with whom they interact to provide street-level perspectives from below and inside Africa’s police forces. The contributo…
Inside the Police Stations in Maputo City: The Street Level View
This chapter explores how police officers in Maputo, Mozambique, deal with everyday criminal cases. It discusses how police officers draw on a large and flexible repertoire of measures when handling cases, some of them formal, others informal. Their choice is often shaped by the competition for legitimacy they find themselves in with communities and private actors
Government Properties: The Nigeria Police Force as Total Institution
This article looks at the relationships between Nigerian police officers and the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) in which they serve. Against simplistic portraits of police institutions as mechanistic agents of governmental power, the article looks inside one such institution to examine how it exercises power over its own personnel, in a totalizing institutional project which combines duty and identity within a hierarchical and paramilitarized structu…
Lagos: A cultural and historical companion
As the saying goes, ‘You don't go to Lagos to look at the bridges.’ West Africa's commercial hub is more often seen as a functional place to pursue fame and fortune than an object of consideration in its own right. Those who have looked at Lagos as an object of study (most famously the architect Rem Koolhaas) take it as an exemplar of self-ordering chaos, a lesson in anti-structure. Kaye Whiteman's book, built on a long lifetime's intimate acquai…
Briefing: Why Goodluck Jonathan lost the Nigerian presidential election of 2015
“A do or die affair” is a common description of Nigerian elections, which underlines the competitiveness and acrimony that characterize the quadrennial political ritual. The recently concluded 2015 general elections were fiercer than most, with expectations that they would end in a contentious stalemate at best, and engulf the country in violent political crisis at worst. Many people stockpiled food, the affluent and many expatriate workers took …
Between vigilantism and bureaucracy: Improving our understanding of police work in Nigeria and South Africa
To date, much of the analytical scholarship on policing in Africa has centred on non-state actors. In doing so, it risks neglecting state actors and statehood, which must be understood on their own terms as well as through the eyes of the people they supposedly serve. This article seeks to develop our theoretical and empirical understanding in this respect by exploring the contexts in which citizens seek to engage state police in Nigeria and Sout…
Maintenir l'ordre au Nigeria: Vers une histoire de la souveraineté de l'État
Cet article retrace l'évolution de la Nigerian Police Force afin d'expliquer la nature de l'institution policière contemporaine au Nigeria. Il tente d'établir les origines et les trajectoires de la distribution du pouvoir et des modalités d'exercice de celui-ci. L'histoire du contrôle policier formel au Nigeria est comprise ici comme celle de la souveraineté et du domaine de l'État. La souveraineté par le maintien de l'ordre renvoie ici au déploi…
Biafran Pound Notes
This article examines the recent re-release of the Biafran pound currency, previously used by the breakaway Republic of Biafra between 1968 and 1970, by the separatist-revival group the Movement for the Actualization of a Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) in south-eastern Nigeria. It briefly traces the circumstances of its re-release, contextualizes it in the light of MASSOB's aims and activities and in reference to the original Biafran currency…
The Phoenix State: Civil Society and the Future of Sudan
A. H. Abdel Salam and Alex de Waal (eds), The Phoenix State: Civil Society and the Future of Sudan. Asmara: Justice Africa and the Committee of the Civil Project; Lawrenceville NJ: Red Sea Press, 2001, 302 pp., US$24.95, ISBN 1 56902 143 0. - Volume 73 Issue 2
White Nile, Black Blood: War, Ethnicity and Leadership from Khartoum to Kampala
Jay Spaulding and Stephanie Beswick (eds), White Nile, Black Blood: war, ethnicity and leadership from Khartoum to Kampala. Lawrenceville NJ: Red Sea Press, 2000, 290 pp., US$21.95, ISBN: 1 56902 099 X paperback. - Volume 72 Issue 3
Between vigilantism and bureaucracy: Improving our understanding of police work in Nigeria and South Africa
To date, much of the analytical scholarship on policing in Africa has centred on non-state actors. In doing so, it risks neglecting state actors and statehood, which must be understood on their own terms as well as through the eyes of the people they supposedly serve. This article seeks to develop our theoretical and empirical understanding in this respect by exploring the contexts in which citizens seek to engage state police in Nigeria and Sout…
Thick claims and thin rights: Taxation and the construction of analogue property rights in Lagos
The importance of tenure security for development and wellbeing is often reduced to questions about how titles can guarantee rights, overlooking the contested and layered nature of property rights themselves. We use the case of Lagos to analyse property rights as 'analogue' rather than 'digital' in nature – things that only exist by degree, where a dynamic urban situation renders the distinction between a right and a claim much less clear than co…
Briefing: Why Goodluck Jonathan lost the Nigerian presidential election of 2015
“A do or die affair” is a common description of Nigerian elections, which underlines the competitiveness and acrimony that characterize the quadrennial political ritual. The recently concluded 2015 general elections were fiercer than most, with expectations that they would end in a contentious stalemate at best, and engulf the country in violent political crisis at worst. Many people stockpiled food, the affluent and many expatriate workers took …
Government Properties: The Nigeria Police Force as Total Institution
This article looks at the relationships between Nigerian police officers and the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) in which they serve. Against simplistic portraits of police institutions as mechanistic agents of governmental power, the article looks inside one such institution to examine how it exercises power over its own personnel, in a totalizing institutional project which combines duty and identity within a hierarchical and paramilitarized structu…
Biafran Pound Notes
This article examines the recent re-release of the Biafran pound currency, previously used by the breakaway Republic of Biafra between 1968 and 1970, by the separatist-revival group the Movement for the Actualization of a Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) in south-eastern Nigeria. It briefly traces the circumstances of its re-release, contextualizes it in the light of MASSOB's aims and activities and in reference to the original Biafran currency…
Maintenir l'ordre au Nigeria: Vers une histoire de la souveraineté de l'État
Cet article retrace l'évolution de la Nigerian Police Force afin d'expliquer la nature de l'institution policière contemporaine au Nigeria. Il tente d'établir les origines et les trajectoires de la distribution du pouvoir et des modalités d'exercice de celui-ci. L'histoire du contrôle policier formel au Nigeria est comprise ici comme celle de la souveraineté et du domaine de l'État. La souveraineté par le maintien de l'ordre renvoie ici au déploi…
The Phoenix State: Civil Society and the Future of Sudan
A. H. Abdel Salam and Alex de Waal (eds), The Phoenix State: Civil Society and the Future of Sudan. Asmara: Justice Africa and the Committee of the Civil Project; Lawrenceville NJ: Red Sea Press, 2001, 302 pp., US$24.95, ISBN 1 56902 143 0. - Volume 73 Issue 2
White Nile, Black Blood: War, Ethnicity and Leadership from Khartoum to Kampala
Jay Spaulding and Stephanie Beswick (eds), White Nile, Black Blood: war, ethnicity and leadership from Khartoum to Kampala. Lawrenceville NJ: Red Sea Press, 2000, 290 pp., US$21.95, ISBN: 1 56902 099 X paperback. - Volume 72 Issue 3
The Phoenix State: Civil Society and the Future of Sudan
A. H. Abdel Salam and Alex de Waal (eds), The Phoenix State: Civil Society and the Future of Sudan. Asmara: Justice Africa and the Committee of the Civil Project; Lawrenceville NJ: Red Sea Press, 2001, 302 pp., US$24.95, ISBN 1 56902 143 0. - Volume 73 Issue 2
Biafran Pound Notes
This article examines the recent re-release of the Biafran pound currency, previously used by the breakaway Republic of Biafra between 1968 and 1970, by the separatist-revival group the Movement for the Actualization of a Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) in south-eastern Nigeria. It briefly traces the circumstances of its re-release, contextualizes it in the light of MASSOB's aims and activities and in reference to the original Biafran currency…
Maintenir l'ordre au Nigeria: Vers une histoire de la souveraineté de l'État
Cet article retrace l'évolution de la Nigerian Police Force afin d'expliquer la nature de l'institution policière contemporaine au Nigeria. Il tente d'établir les origines et les trajectoires de la distribution du pouvoir et des modalités d'exercice de celui-ci. L'histoire du contrôle policier formel au Nigeria est comprise ici comme celle de la souveraineté et du domaine de l'État. La souveraineté par le maintien de l'ordre renvoie ici au déploi…
Between vigilantism and bureaucracy: Improving our understanding of police work in Nigeria and South Africa
To date, much of the analytical scholarship on policing in Africa has centred on non-state actors. In doing so, it risks neglecting state actors and statehood, which must be understood on their own terms as well as through the eyes of the people they supposedly serve. This article seeks to develop our theoretical and empirical understanding in this respect by exploring the contexts in which citizens seek to engage state police in Nigeria and Sout…
Lagos: A cultural and historical companion
As the saying goes, ‘You don't go to Lagos to look at the bridges.’ West Africa's commercial hub is more often seen as a functional place to pursue fame and fortune than an object of consideration in its own right. Those who have looked at Lagos as an object of study (most famously the architect Rem Koolhaas) take it as an exemplar of self-ordering chaos, a lesson in anti-structure. Kaye Whiteman's book, built on a long lifetime's intimate acquai…
Briefing: Why Goodluck Jonathan lost the Nigerian presidential election of 2015
“A do or die affair” is a common description of Nigerian elections, which underlines the competitiveness and acrimony that characterize the quadrennial political ritual. The recently concluded 2015 general elections were fiercer than most, with expectations that they would end in a contentious stalemate at best, and engulf the country in violent political crisis at worst. Many people stockpiled food, the affluent and many expatriate workers took …
Government Properties: The Nigeria Police Force as Total Institution
This article looks at the relationships between Nigerian police officers and the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) in which they serve. Against simplistic portraits of police institutions as mechanistic agents of governmental power, the article looks inside one such institution to examine how it exercises power over its own personnel, in a totalizing institutional project which combines duty and identity within a hierarchical and paramilitarized structu…
Police in Africa
State police forces in Africa are a curiously neglected subject of study, even within the framework of security issues and African states. This book brings together criminologists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists and others who have engaged with police forces across the continent and the publics with whom they interact to provide street-level perspectives from below and inside Africa’s police forces. The contributo…
Inside the Police Stations in Maputo City: The Street Level View
This chapter explores how police officers in Maputo, Mozambique, deal with everyday criminal cases. It discusses how police officers draw on a large and flexible repertoire of measures when handling cases, some of them formal, others informal. Their choice is often shaped by the competition for legitimacy they find themselves in with communities and private actors
Government paper: The negotiated production and life of state documents
This introduction provides the rationale for a fresh look at an apparently obvious phenomenon – the production and life of state documents. Whilst ethnographies of statehood have multiplied in recent years, we focus on an underexplored avenue of inquiry: the role played by pieces of paper in constituting modern bureaucratic states. To date, attempts to map out this area of study have focused predominantly on the discourse and semiotics of state d…
Thick claims and thin rights: Taxation and the construction of analogue property rights in Lagos
The importance of tenure security for development and wellbeing is often reduced to questions about how titles can guarantee rights, overlooking the contested and layered nature of property rights themselves. We use the case of Lagos to analyse property rights as 'analogue' rather than 'digital' in nature – things that only exist by degree, where a dynamic urban situation renders the distinction between a right and a claim much less clear than co…
Anthropology and Tax: Ethnographies of Fiscal Relations
From the perspective of individual taxpayers to international tax norm negotiators, the anthropologists in this collection explore how taxes shape our world: our social relationships and value regimes, how we exclude and include, the categories we think with, and the way we share with each other. A first of its kind, it presents an anthropological discussion about tax rooted in ethnographic work. It asks fundamental questions such as: what is tax…
Political science (12 works) · Law (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Politics (7 works) · Law (5 works) · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance (4 works) · Criminology (4 works) · History (4 works) · Policing Practices and Perceptions (4 works) · State (computer science (4 works)