Joost Beuving
Biographic Data
| ID | 636880 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joost Beuving |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joost |
| FAMILY NAME | Beuving |
| SIGNATURE | BEUVING J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Radboud University Nijmegen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0879-7400 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 64 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
From Catastrophe to Escape: A Bourdieusian Analysis of Personal Debt in The Netherlands
This paper examines how individuals experience and respond to personal debt, arguing that debt is not merely a financial problem but a systemic issue that affects social relationships, moral worth, and health. Drawing on online forum posts, and grounded in Bourdieu's theory of capital, the paper introduces an expanded framework of ‘assets’ and ‘liabilities’—including economic, social, cultural, moral, and health aspects—to better understand debt …
Class and kinship in problem debt: Navigating the “debt maelstrom” in the Netherlands
This article discusses problem debt in the Netherlands by considering debtors' social connectedness, focusing especially on the role of kinship. The socioeconomic stratification approach entails problematic assumptions about class in private debt, but we contend that stratification offers only a partial explanation of why some groups acquire problem debt, and others do not. By instead drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's processual class interpretation, …
Theorizing Entrepreneurship for the Future: Stories from Global Frontiers
Prologue
This is an anthropological study that tells stories about entrepreneurship, so let me open this book with one.It is a Tuesday morning, halfway through January 2001, still very early with sunrise a few hours away.I get off the city bus that has taken me from the central station to a residential area in the northeast of the city of Utrecht, The Netherlands.Given the early hour, it is surprising that the bus is filled to capacity: it will be another…
Ethnography’s future in the big data era
This essay explores knowledge claims about Big Data/BD from an ethnographic viewpoint. This epistemological exploration was triggered by social scientist/BD analyst Seth Stephens-Davidowitz’ best-selling book Everybody Lies (2017). In my reading, it portrays BD in a way that evokes affinity with ethnography: as a naturalistic research practice that makes visible small subpopulations and discloses people’s hidden motives. This threefold assertion …
Teaching qualitative research in adverse times
This article discusses how the teaching of qualitative research in higher education is threatened by the effects of new public management, by academic culture wars and by a growing belief in big data. The controversy over Alice Goffman’s book On the Run presents one recent example of this. In an effort to counterbalance these developments, this article stresses the importance in social science curricula of ‘naturalistic inquiry’ – the artisanal c…
Contacts in a box: Cell phones, social relations, and field research in Africa
This article discusses the impact of cell-phone use on social life in Africa, and explores its implications for field research. It focuses on new frontiers of economic activity associated with newly emerging product markets, showing how the popularity of cell phones coincides with a shift in the meaning of social ties. Young Africans in particular see in emerging markets an opportunity for personal advancement, and the cell phone is key in their …
Disentangling Poor Smallholder Farmers’ Risk Preferences and Time Horizons: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Ethiopia
The anthropologist as jester, anthropology as jest
This article argues that anthropologists in the field are often attributed the role of jester. Anthropologists are transient figures in the societies they study, and they stand out in behaviour or in physical appearance. Society symbolically resolves their strange presence with humour: anthropologists involuntarily elicit joking remarks and laughter. Over time, the role of jester may shade into one of accepted outsider, and that promotes direct o…
How African Households Shop: Evidence from Dairy Chains in Ethiopia
Ethnographies of Marginality
Africanist discourse today displays a strong, widespread and growing sense of optimism about Africa's economic future. After decades of decline and stagnation in which Africa found itself reduced to the margins of the global economic stage, upbeat Afro-optimism seems fully justified. One only needs to consider African economies' solid growth rates, the emergence of new export markets earning unprecedented quantities of foreign exchange, and the r…
Doing Qualitative Research: The Craft of Naturalistic Inquiry
Spatial diversity in small‐scale fishing: A socio‐cultural interpretation of the Nile perch sector on L ake V ictoria, U ganda
This paper discusses spatial patterns in small‐scale fishing in A frica. It is located in L ake V ictoria where since the 1990s a vibrant N ile perch fishing for overseas export developed. Focusing on a very small area in the U gandan part of the lake, the paper uncovers a larger diversity in fishermen's responses to the dynamic environment of the N ile perch sector than a widely adopted generic model predicts. To understand this better, the pape…
American cars in Cotonou: Culture in African entrepreneurship and the making of a globalising trade
Traders in Cotonou (Bénin), a prominent hub in the Euro-West African second-hand car trade, traditionally sold cars imported from Europe. Since the 2000s however, more and more cars are being imported from the US. Anthropological study of one group of entrepreneurs active in this new business, traders from Niger, reveals an African entrepreneurship at work that follows a distinct social pattern: traders are groomed in close kinship ties in West A…
Coupled human and natural system dynamics as key to the sustainability of Lake Victoria's ecosystem services
Downing, A. S., E. Van Nes, J. Balirwa, J. Beuving, P. Bwathondi, L. J. Chapman, I. J. M. Cornelissen, I. G. Cowx, K. Goudswaard, R. E. Hecky, J. H. Janse, A. Janssen, L. Kaufman, M. A. Kishe-Machumu, J. Kolding, W. Ligtvoet, D. Mbabazi, M. Medard, O. C. Mkumbo, E. Mlaponi, A. T. Munyaho, L. A. J. Nagelkerke, R. Ogutu-Ohwayo, W. O. Ojwang, H. K. Peter, D. Schindler, O. Seehausen, D. Sharpe, G. M. Silsbe, L. Sitoki, R. Tumwebaze, D. Tweddle, K. E.…
Playing information games: Démarcheurs in the second-hand car markets of Cotonou, Bénin
This paper discusses , intermediaries in the second‐hand car markets in Cotonou, Bénin. An ethnographic case study shows how make a profit by creating barriers between car buyers and sellers. In this way the paper presents an alternative interpretation of intermediaries: not as brokers of market information in fragmented business networks but as skilful information manipulators who pretend to be important. By analysing how interpret the car busin…
Chequered Fortunes in Global Exports: The Sociogenesis of African Entrepreneurship in the Nile Perch Business at Lake Victoria, Uganda
Globalization and the Cultures of Business in Africa: From Patrimonialism to Profit
Migrants and Strangers in an African City: Exile, dignity, belonging by Bruce Whitehouse
n Contains fulltext :\n 122550.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)\n
Being Dutch, More or Less
Playing Pool Along the Shores of Lake Victoria: Fishermen, Careers and Capital Accumulation in the Ugandan Nile Perch Business
The 1990s saw the emergence of a thriving Nile perch export market from East Africa. This commercial table fish species is landed by migrant fishermen at villages that have sprung up along the shores of Lake Victoria, and then exported to overseas markets. By analysing the Ugandan perch fishery as a set of careers, the article shows that, although some fishermen have benefited from the perch boom, most face an uncertain and marginal existence. Fe…
Striking Gold In Cotonou? Three Cases Of Entrepreneurship In The Euro-West African Second-Hand Car Trade In Benin
This chapter shows how this Euro-West African second-hand car trade network has expanded rapidly over the past two decades. It discusses the significance of a new form of entrepreneurship connected to it. The chapter focuses on the entrepreneurial behaviour of individual car traders. It highlights the significance of non-economic factors in investment decisions that become logical when viewed from the car traders' perspective. It presents a brief…
Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda by Sverker Finnström Conflict, Transformation and Social Change in Uganda by Susanne Buckley-Zistel
Nigerien second-hand car traders in Cotonou: A sociocultural analysis of economic decision-making
This article discusses the economic decision-making of migrant traders from Niger who operate in large second-hand car markets found in Cotonou (Benin). Like the Cotonou car-trading community at large, these traders continued to import cars despite the fact that local demand dropped in 2002. Case analysis uncovers that Nigerien car traders show a propensity to live up to the expectations of people in authority. Business decisions in geographicall…
Lebanese Traders in Cotonou: A Socio-Cultural Analysis of Economic Mobility and Capital Accumulation
Passenger cars and other small vehicles have for a long time been the backbone of transport in west Africa. The cars are usually second-hand, and they are sourced on overseas car markets, mostly in western Europe. During the 1990s the port town of Cotonou, Bénin, became one of the most prominent hubs in this car trade: car markets mushroomed, attracting large numbers and a wide variety of traders - including a prominent contingent of Lebanese. Th…
Cotonou's Klondike: African traders and second-hand car markets in Bénin
This article addresses the theme of entrepreneurship in Africa by focusing on second-hand car markets in Cotonou, Bénin. At first glance this booming business seems to confirm neo-liberal and institutional models of entrepreneurship, in which entrepreneurial behaviour constitutes rational calculation in a situation of economic opportunity. The universe in which African car traders operate, however, is characterised by significant capital scarcity…
Playing Pool Along the Shores of Lake Victoria: Fishermen, Careers and Capital Accumulation in the Ugandan Nile Perch Business
The 1990s saw the emergence of a thriving Nile perch export market from East Africa. This commercial table fish species is landed by migrant fishermen at villages that have sprung up along the shores of Lake Victoria, and then exported to overseas markets. By analysing the Ugandan perch fishery as a set of careers, the article shows that, although some fishermen have benefited from the perch boom, most face an uncertain and marginal existence. Fe…
Nigerien second-hand car traders in Cotonou: A sociocultural analysis of economic decision-making
This article discusses the economic decision-making of migrant traders from Niger who operate in large second-hand car markets found in Cotonou (Benin). Like the Cotonou car-trading community at large, these traders continued to import cars despite the fact that local demand dropped in 2002. Case analysis uncovers that Nigerien car traders show a propensity to live up to the expectations of people in authority. Business decisions in geographicall…
Lebanese Traders in Cotonou: A Socio-Cultural Analysis of Economic Mobility and Capital Accumulation
Passenger cars and other small vehicles have for a long time been the backbone of transport in west Africa. The cars are usually second-hand, and they are sourced on overseas car markets, mostly in western Europe. During the 1990s the port town of Cotonou, Bénin, became one of the most prominent hubs in this car trade: car markets mushroomed, attracting large numbers and a wide variety of traders - including a prominent contingent of Lebanese. Th…
Chequered Fortunes in Global Exports: The Sociogenesis of African Entrepreneurship in the Nile Perch Business at Lake Victoria, Uganda
Ethnographies of Marginality
Africanist discourse today displays a strong, widespread and growing sense of optimism about Africa's economic future. After decades of decline and stagnation in which Africa found itself reduced to the margins of the global economic stage, upbeat Afro-optimism seems fully justified. One only needs to consider African economies' solid growth rates, the emergence of new export markets earning unprecedented quantities of foreign exchange, and the r…
Contacts in a box: Cell phones, social relations, and field research in Africa
This article discusses the impact of cell-phone use on social life in Africa, and explores its implications for field research. It focuses on new frontiers of economic activity associated with newly emerging product markets, showing how the popularity of cell phones coincides with a shift in the meaning of social ties. Young Africans in particular see in emerging markets an opportunity for personal advancement, and the cell phone is key in their …
American cars in Cotonou: Culture in African entrepreneurship and the making of a globalising trade
Traders in Cotonou (Bénin), a prominent hub in the Euro-West African second-hand car trade, traditionally sold cars imported from Europe. Since the 2000s however, more and more cars are being imported from the US. Anthropological study of one group of entrepreneurs active in this new business, traders from Niger, reveals an African entrepreneurship at work that follows a distinct social pattern: traders are groomed in close kinship ties in West A…
Coupled human and natural system dynamics as key to the sustainability of Lake Victoria's ecosystem services
Downing, A. S., E. Van Nes, J. Balirwa, J. Beuving, P. Bwathondi, L. J. Chapman, I. J. M. Cornelissen, I. G. Cowx, K. Goudswaard, R. E. Hecky, J. H. Janse, A. Janssen, L. Kaufman, M. A. Kishe-Machumu, J. Kolding, W. Ligtvoet, D. Mbabazi, M. Medard, O. C. Mkumbo, E. Mlaponi, A. T. Munyaho, L. A. J. Nagelkerke, R. Ogutu-Ohwayo, W. O. Ojwang, H. K. Peter, D. Schindler, O. Seehausen, D. Sharpe, G. M. Silsbe, L. Sitoki, R. Tumwebaze, D. Tweddle, K. E.…
Cotonou's Klondike: African traders and second-hand car markets in Bénin
This article addresses the theme of entrepreneurship in Africa by focusing on second-hand car markets in Cotonou, Bénin. At first glance this booming business seems to confirm neo-liberal and institutional models of entrepreneurship, in which entrepreneurial behaviour constitutes rational calculation in a situation of economic opportunity. The universe in which African car traders operate, however, is characterised by significant capital scarcity…
Nigerien second-hand car traders in Cotonou: A sociocultural analysis of economic decision-making
This article discusses the economic decision-making of migrant traders from Niger who operate in large second-hand car markets found in Cotonou (Benin). Like the Cotonou car-trading community at large, these traders continued to import cars despite the fact that local demand dropped in 2002. Case analysis uncovers that Nigerien car traders show a propensity to live up to the expectations of people in authority. Business decisions in geographicall…
Lebanese Traders in Cotonou: A Socio-Cultural Analysis of Economic Mobility and Capital Accumulation
Passenger cars and other small vehicles have for a long time been the backbone of transport in west Africa. The cars are usually second-hand, and they are sourced on overseas car markets, mostly in western Europe. During the 1990s the port town of Cotonou, Bénin, became one of the most prominent hubs in this car trade: car markets mushroomed, attracting large numbers and a wide variety of traders - including a prominent contingent of Lebanese. Th…
Striking Gold In Cotonou? Three Cases Of Entrepreneurship In The Euro-West African Second-Hand Car Trade In Benin
This chapter shows how this Euro-West African second-hand car trade network has expanded rapidly over the past two decades. It discusses the significance of a new form of entrepreneurship connected to it. The chapter focuses on the entrepreneurial behaviour of individual car traders. It highlights the significance of non-economic factors in investment decisions that become logical when viewed from the car traders' perspective. It presents a brief…
Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda by Sverker Finnström Conflict, Transformation and Social Change in Uganda by Susanne Buckley-Zistel
Playing Pool Along the Shores of Lake Victoria: Fishermen, Careers and Capital Accumulation in the Ugandan Nile Perch Business
The 1990s saw the emergence of a thriving Nile perch export market from East Africa. This commercial table fish species is landed by migrant fishermen at villages that have sprung up along the shores of Lake Victoria, and then exported to overseas markets. By analysing the Ugandan perch fishery as a set of careers, the article shows that, although some fishermen have benefited from the perch boom, most face an uncertain and marginal existence. Fe…
Being Dutch, More or Less
Playing information games: Démarcheurs in the second-hand car markets of Cotonou, Bénin
This paper discusses , intermediaries in the second‐hand car markets in Cotonou, Bénin. An ethnographic case study shows how make a profit by creating barriers between car buyers and sellers. In this way the paper presents an alternative interpretation of intermediaries: not as brokers of market information in fragmented business networks but as skilful information manipulators who pretend to be important. By analysing how interpret the car busin…
Chequered Fortunes in Global Exports: The Sociogenesis of African Entrepreneurship in the Nile Perch Business at Lake Victoria, Uganda
Globalization and the Cultures of Business in Africa: From Patrimonialism to Profit
Migrants and Strangers in an African City: Exile, dignity, belonging by Bruce Whitehouse
n Contains fulltext :\n 122550.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access)\n
Coupled human and natural system dynamics as key to the sustainability of Lake Victoria's ecosystem services
Downing, A. S., E. Van Nes, J. Balirwa, J. Beuving, P. Bwathondi, L. J. Chapman, I. J. M. Cornelissen, I. G. Cowx, K. Goudswaard, R. E. Hecky, J. H. Janse, A. Janssen, L. Kaufman, M. A. Kishe-Machumu, J. Kolding, W. Ligtvoet, D. Mbabazi, M. Medard, O. C. Mkumbo, E. Mlaponi, A. T. Munyaho, L. A. J. Nagelkerke, R. Ogutu-Ohwayo, W. O. Ojwang, H. K. Peter, D. Schindler, O. Seehausen, D. Sharpe, G. M. Silsbe, L. Sitoki, R. Tumwebaze, D. Tweddle, K. E.…
Doing Qualitative Research: The Craft of Naturalistic Inquiry
Spatial diversity in small‐scale fishing: A socio‐cultural interpretation of the Nile perch sector on L ake V ictoria, U ganda
This paper discusses spatial patterns in small‐scale fishing in A frica. It is located in L ake V ictoria where since the 1990s a vibrant N ile perch fishing for overseas export developed. Focusing on a very small area in the U gandan part of the lake, the paper uncovers a larger diversity in fishermen's responses to the dynamic environment of the N ile perch sector than a widely adopted generic model predicts. To understand this better, the pape…
American cars in Cotonou: Culture in African entrepreneurship and the making of a globalising trade
Traders in Cotonou (Bénin), a prominent hub in the Euro-West African second-hand car trade, traditionally sold cars imported from Europe. Since the 2000s however, more and more cars are being imported from the US. Anthropological study of one group of entrepreneurs active in this new business, traders from Niger, reveals an African entrepreneurship at work that follows a distinct social pattern: traders are groomed in close kinship ties in West A…
How African Households Shop: Evidence from Dairy Chains in Ethiopia
Ethnographies of Marginality
Africanist discourse today displays a strong, widespread and growing sense of optimism about Africa's economic future. After decades of decline and stagnation in which Africa found itself reduced to the margins of the global economic stage, upbeat Afro-optimism seems fully justified. One only needs to consider African economies' solid growth rates, the emergence of new export markets earning unprecedented quantities of foreign exchange, and the r…
The anthropologist as jester, anthropology as jest
This article argues that anthropologists in the field are often attributed the role of jester. Anthropologists are transient figures in the societies they study, and they stand out in behaviour or in physical appearance. Society symbolically resolves their strange presence with humour: anthropologists involuntarily elicit joking remarks and laughter. Over time, the role of jester may shade into one of accepted outsider, and that promotes direct o…
Disentangling Poor Smallholder Farmers’ Risk Preferences and Time Horizons: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Ethiopia
Contacts in a box: Cell phones, social relations, and field research in Africa
This article discusses the impact of cell-phone use on social life in Africa, and explores its implications for field research. It focuses on new frontiers of economic activity associated with newly emerging product markets, showing how the popularity of cell phones coincides with a shift in the meaning of social ties. Young Africans in particular see in emerging markets an opportunity for personal advancement, and the cell phone is key in their …
Ethnography’s future in the big data era
This essay explores knowledge claims about Big Data/BD from an ethnographic viewpoint. This epistemological exploration was triggered by social scientist/BD analyst Seth Stephens-Davidowitz’ best-selling book Everybody Lies (2017). In my reading, it portrays BD in a way that evokes affinity with ethnography: as a naturalistic research practice that makes visible small subpopulations and discloses people’s hidden motives. This threefold assertion …
Teaching qualitative research in adverse times
This article discusses how the teaching of qualitative research in higher education is threatened by the effects of new public management, by academic culture wars and by a growing belief in big data. The controversy over Alice Goffman’s book On the Run presents one recent example of this. In an effort to counterbalance these developments, this article stresses the importance in social science curricula of ‘naturalistic inquiry’ – the artisanal c…
Theorizing Entrepreneurship for the Future: Stories from Global Frontiers
Prologue
This is an anthropological study that tells stories about entrepreneurship, so let me open this book with one.It is a Tuesday morning, halfway through January 2001, still very early with sunrise a few hours away.I get off the city bus that has taken me from the central station to a residential area in the northeast of the city of Utrecht, The Netherlands.Given the early hour, it is surprising that the bus is filled to capacity: it will be another…
Class and kinship in problem debt: Navigating the “debt maelstrom” in the Netherlands
This article discusses problem debt in the Netherlands by considering debtors' social connectedness, focusing especially on the role of kinship. The socioeconomic stratification approach entails problematic assumptions about class in private debt, but we contend that stratification offers only a partial explanation of why some groups acquire problem debt, and others do not. By instead drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's processual class interpretation, …
Sociology (14 works) · Political science (13 works) · Economics (11 works) · Business (10 works) · African history and culture studies (9 works) · Anthropology (7 works) · Geography (7 works) · Social science (6 works) · Entrepreneurship (5 works) · Aquatic Ecosystems and Biodiversity (4 works)