Harry Wels
Biographic Data
| ID | 644873 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Harry Wels |
| GIVEN NAMES | Harry |
| FAMILY NAME | Wels |
| SIGNATURE | WELS H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4464-832X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 243 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Metabolising the maze
Changing bodily practices in interspecies communities with dairy cows and white lions
Research with cows, white lions, and other forms of interspecies fieldwork presents deep methodological challenges. Traditional, human-centered ethnography falls short in capturing how non-human interlocutors shape the conditions, possibilities, and dynamics of research. Drawing on two contrasting case studies – a dairy calf in the Netherlands and white lions in South Africa – we show that interspecies ethnography requires unlearning human-center…
Camel Ownership as a Passage to Adulthood in Omani Bedouin Culture
The development of adolescent humans through child–pet interaction and attachment is the focus of the current study. The context is the Omani Bedouin culture, which is inseparably linked to camel culture. This culture promotes the importance of nurturing relationships between camels and their cameleers. We suggest that proximity to and contact with camels from an early age helps camel-owning Bedouin children to navigate their journey more smoothl…
Camels in the Bedouin Community of Oman
Cultures have usually been studied as a purely human phenomenon. Recent research challenges this single-focused perspective on exclusively human agency in the formation and sustainability of cultures and offers a more inclusive format for exploring cultural processes, specifically the role that human and animal co-existence plays in them. Owing to its close historically rooted ties with such animals as camels, Bedouin culture in Oman has been sel…
Wild Pedagogies for Doing Multispecies Organizational Ethnography
Teaching and researching multispecies organizational ethnography needs a pedagogy that decentres the human animal and has a basic multisensorial approach to sensemaking in organizations, in order to try to do (more) justice to nonhuman sentience, animals, and plants, that is to be included in the research. A wild pedagogy claims that getting outdoors, and specifically avoiding lecture halls and other indoor spaces, raises awareness and skills in …
Organizational ethnography after lockdown
Multi-species ethnography
Purpose To further develop research methodologies for multi-species ethnographic fieldwork, based on researcher's experiences with multi-species fieldwork in private wildlife conservancies in South Africa and inspired by San tracking techniques. Design/methodology/approach Reflections on methodological lessons learnt during multi-species ethnographic fieldwork in South Africa. The approach is rather “Maanenesque” in telling various types of tales…
Lion Conservation and the Lion Bone Trade in South Africa
In lion conservation, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and Trade Records Analyses of Flora and Fauna in Commerce (TRAFFIC) are considered key United Nations (UN) institutions for “science-based decisions” on global policy formulation for conservation and combating wildlife crime. CITES, but probably also TRAFFIC and IUCN, still a…
Nature Conservation in Southern Africa
Nature conservation in southern Africa has always been characterised by an interplay between Capital, specific understandings of Morality, and forms of Militarism, that are all dependent upon the shared subservience and marginalization of animals and certain groups of people in society. Although the subjectivity of people has been rendered visible in earlier publications on histories of conservation in southern Africa, the subjectivity of animals…
Authenticity lost? The significance of cultural villages in the conservation of heritage in South Africa
Based on a(n) (interrupted) period of 15 years of fieldwork, this study explores the question whether cultural villages in South Africa are to be considered an effective way to conserve a particular cultural heritage in an authentic way. In order to answer this question, three notions of authenticity are juxtaposed with three types of cultural villages. The outcomes reveal a nuanced answer that suggests that some types of cultural villages do con…
Breaking white silences in South African-Dutch collaboration in higher education
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to show the complex positionality and the complexity that comes with the study of whiteness in South African higher education by Dutch, white academics. This complexity stems from the long-standing relationship between Dutch universities, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VUA) in particular, with their South African counterparts, which predominantly supported apartheid with reference to a shared religious (Prot…
I Am Human Too!” ‘Probeerruimte’ as Liminal Spaces in Search of Recognition
This paper explores the Dutch concept ‘ probeerruimte ’ in relation to the statement ‘human as a contested concept’, a highly relevant topic in disability studies. Probeerruimte encompasses the idea that people need space to ‘try things out’, a liminal space that facilitates personal development. It was conceived in a context where institutional practices exerted restrictive control over the lives of people with learning difficulties, denying the…
Juxtaposing a cultural reading of landscape with institutional boundaries
The article explores theoretically the juxtaposition of local stories about landscape with institutional arrangements and exclusionary practices around a conservation area in South Africa. The Masebe Nature Reserve is used as a case study. The article argues that the institutional arrangements in which the nature reserve is currently positioned are too static, and consequently exclusionary, in their demarcation of boundaries. This stifles local c…
Ethnographic research in a changing cultural landscape
Anthropology is the study of culture. Early anthropology had its roots in colonialism impacted by theoretical constructs, such as unilineal evolution. In the 1930s, Evans-Pritchard began studying the political and economic systems of the Nuer to benefit British expansion and interest in what is now South Sudan. His early writings focus on the intermingling of cattle with human cultural rituals and everyday life. Geertz in the chapter Deep Play: N…
Animals like us
Purpose- Now that the human-animal distinction is increasingly critiqued from various disciplinary perspectives, to the point where some suggest even letting go of the distinction completely, the purpose of this paper is to argue that organizational ethnography should start to explore in more detail what this means for organizational ethnographic research, theory and analysis to include non-human animals in it.Design/methodology/approach- Revisit…
Sponsoring Nature
Saving the world's flora and fauna, especially high-profile examples such as chimpanzees, whales and the tropical rain forests, is big business. Individuals and companies channel their resources to the preservation of nature through various ways, one of which is the funding of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs). This book is the first to comprehensively address this issue and focus on a d…
Traveling ideas
In an effort to embed diversity management in South African higher education, all Higher Education institutions are presently going through a transitional phase of transformation in which institutional cultures and identities are strongly contested. The ambiguity that comes along with such a process is illustrated through two rival “narratives of change” at North West University, presented in a number of reports and institutional publications tha…
Victor Turner and liminality
2011). Victor Turner and liminality: An introduction. Anthropology Southern Africa: Vol. 34, Thinking Victor Turner's 'Liminality' from southern Africa today, pp. 1-4
Waiting in liminal space
Waiting is a common feature of everyday encounters between individuals and organisations. Government officials and private sector workers make us wait for decisions, wait for services and sometimes, simply wait our turn. Yet, little attention has been devoted to theorising and developing the concept of ‘waiting’, and it is noticeably absent in the literature on social organisations and organisational behaviour. In this article, we seek to add tex…
Conservative Philanthropists, Royalty and Business Elites in Nature Conservation in Southern Africa
The article investigates the increasingly important connections between the private sector and nature conservation agencies. It looks specifically at the connections between two important philanthropists, the late Anton Rupert, a South African business tycoon, and the late Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands. Both have been highly successful in raising funds for nature conservation, and marketing the idea of transfrontier conservation. This paper …
Studying Everyday Organizational Life
Beyond Complicity
Organizational Ethnography
Studying Everyday Organizational Life - Sierk Ybema, Dvora Yanow, Harry Wels and Frans Kamsteeg PART ONE: ETHNOGRAPHIC DOING AND WRITING Getting Going: Organizing Ethnographic Fieldwork - Kees van der Waal Ethnographic Practices: From 'Writing-up Ethnographic Research' to 'Writing Ethnography' - Michael Humphreys and Tony Watson Reading and Writing as Method: In Search of Trustworthy Texts - Peregrine Schwartz-Shea and Dvora Yanow When the 'Subje…
Securing Space
This article provides a brief history of the use of maps and fences in wildlife conservation. Analysis of the promotional materials of one of the main promoters of Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in southern Africa, the Peace Parks Foundation, reveals the importance of mapping as a planning and promotion tool. These maps, however, appear to be quite silent about the communities that are supposed to benefit from the TFCAs. The fences arou…
Resistance of local communities against marginalization in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area
The Great Limpopo is one of the largest Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in the world, encompassing vast areas in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. The TFCA concept is embraced by practically all (international) conservation agencies. The rationale for the support is that the boundaries of ecosystems generally do not overlap with those of the nation-state. Their protection requires transnational cooperation. By arguing that local co…
Organizational Ethnography
Studying Everyday Organizational Life - Sierk Ybema, Dvora Yanow, Harry Wels and Frans Kamsteeg PART ONE: ETHNOGRAPHIC DOING AND WRITING Getting Going: Organizing Ethnographic Fieldwork - Kees van der Waal Ethnographic Practices: From 'Writing-up Ethnographic Research' to 'Writing Ethnography' - Michael Humphreys and Tony Watson Reading and Writing as Method: In Search of Trustworthy Texts - Peregrine Schwartz-Shea and Dvora Yanow When the 'Subje…
Waiting in liminal space
Waiting is a common feature of everyday encounters between individuals and organisations. Government officials and private sector workers make us wait for decisions, wait for services and sometimes, simply wait our turn. Yet, little attention has been devoted to theorising and developing the concept of ‘waiting’, and it is noticeably absent in the literature on social organisations and organisational behaviour. In this article, we seek to add tex…
Victor Turner and liminality
2011). Victor Turner and liminality: An introduction. Anthropology Southern Africa: Vol. 34, Thinking Victor Turner's 'Liminality' from southern Africa today, pp. 1-4
Securing Space
This article provides a brief history of the use of maps and fences in wildlife conservation. Analysis of the promotional materials of one of the main promoters of Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in southern Africa, the Peace Parks Foundation, reveals the importance of mapping as a planning and promotion tool. These maps, however, appear to be quite silent about the communities that are supposed to benefit from the TFCAs. The fences arou…
Conservative Philanthropists, Royalty and Business Elites in Nature Conservation in Southern Africa
The article investigates the increasingly important connections between the private sector and nature conservation agencies. It looks specifically at the connections between two important philanthropists, the late Anton Rupert, a South African business tycoon, and the late Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands. Both have been highly successful in raising funds for nature conservation, and marketing the idea of transfrontier conservation. This paper …
African dreams of cohesion
In this paper we argue that there is a paradox in the managerial attempt of the South African Peace Park Foundation, to foster cohesion within the development of Trans Frontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in southern Africa by focusing on community participation and development. Cohesion is mainly found at the level of the elite – both European and African – promoting the idea of the TFCAs, which provides them with opportunities to develop ‘Super‐…
Animals like us
Purpose- Now that the human-animal distinction is increasingly critiqued from various disciplinary perspectives, to the point where some suggest even letting go of the distinction completely, the purpose of this paper is to argue that organizational ethnography should start to explore in more detail what this means for organizational ethnographic research, theory and analysis to include non-human animals in it.Design/methodology/approach- Revisit…
Camels in the Bedouin Community of Oman
Cultures have usually been studied as a purely human phenomenon. Recent research challenges this single-focused perspective on exclusively human agency in the formation and sustainability of cultures and offers a more inclusive format for exploring cultural processes, specifically the role that human and animal co-existence plays in them. Owing to its close historically rooted ties with such animals as camels, Bedouin culture in Oman has been sel…
Organizational ethnography after lockdown
Authenticity lost? The significance of cultural villages in the conservation of heritage in South Africa
Based on a(n) (interrupted) period of 15 years of fieldwork, this study explores the question whether cultural villages in South Africa are to be considered an effective way to conserve a particular cultural heritage in an authentic way. In order to answer this question, three notions of authenticity are juxtaposed with three types of cultural villages. The outcomes reveal a nuanced answer that suggests that some types of cultural villages do con…
Resistance of local communities against marginalization in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area
The Great Limpopo is one of the largest Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in the world, encompassing vast areas in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. The TFCA concept is embraced by practically all (international) conservation agencies. The rationale for the support is that the boundaries of ecosystems generally do not overlap with those of the nation-state. Their protection requires transnational cooperation. By arguing that local co…
Camel Ownership as a Passage to Adulthood in Omani Bedouin Culture
The development of adolescent humans through child–pet interaction and attachment is the focus of the current study. The context is the Omani Bedouin culture, which is inseparably linked to camel culture. This culture promotes the importance of nurturing relationships between camels and their cameleers. We suggest that proximity to and contact with camels from an early age helps camel-owning Bedouin children to navigate their journey more smoothl…
Breaking white silences in South African-Dutch collaboration in higher education
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to show the complex positionality and the complexity that comes with the study of whiteness in South African higher education by Dutch, white academics. This complexity stems from the long-standing relationship between Dutch universities, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VUA) in particular, with their South African counterparts, which predominantly supported apartheid with reference to a shared religious (Prot…
I Am Human Too!” ‘Probeerruimte’ as Liminal Spaces in Search of Recognition
This paper explores the Dutch concept ‘ probeerruimte ’ in relation to the statement ‘human as a contested concept’, a highly relevant topic in disability studies. Probeerruimte encompasses the idea that people need space to ‘try things out’, a liminal space that facilitates personal development. It was conceived in a context where institutional practices exerted restrictive control over the lives of people with learning difficulties, denying the…
Formidable Fences
In the white-dominated wildlife-utilization industry in southern Africa, farms sometimes pooled their land together to create large areas for wildlife conservation and wildlife tourism. These were called “private wildlife conservancies,” or just “conservancies” and developed mainly in South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. Electrified fences enclosed many of these conservancies. Officially, these fences were constructed for the purposes of keeping …
Private Wildlife Conservation in Zimbabwe
This book is the first about private wildlife conservation and community involvement in Zimbabwe. It is a case study based on ethnographic fieldwork done in 1998. It focuses on the joint venture between a private wildlife conservation initiative, the Save Valley Conservancy, and its surrounding communities in terms of reciprocal exchange and the land question. It makes clear, amongst other things, that the current political tragedy in Zimbabwe ab…
African dreams of cohesion
In this paper we argue that there is a paradox in the managerial attempt of the South African Peace Park Foundation, to foster cohesion within the development of Trans Frontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in southern Africa by focusing on community participation and development. Cohesion is mainly found at the level of the elite – both European and African – promoting the idea of the TFCAs, which provides them with opportunities to develop ‘Super‐…
Competing Jurisdictions
This book is about the politicking and strife over land between various stakeholders on the African continent, including Madagascar. It is about attempts to control land tenure ‘from above’ and about local manoeuvring ‘from below’. The contributing authors analyse the intricate relations between the central government, the local government and grassroots level institutions.
Securing Space
This article provides a brief history of the use of maps and fences in wildlife conservation. Analysis of the promotional materials of one of the main promoters of Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in southern Africa, the Peace Parks Foundation, reveals the importance of mapping as a planning and promotion tool. These maps, however, appear to be quite silent about the communities that are supposed to benefit from the TFCAs. The fences arou…
Resistance of local communities against marginalization in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area
The Great Limpopo is one of the largest Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) in the world, encompassing vast areas in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. The TFCA concept is embraced by practically all (international) conservation agencies. The rationale for the support is that the boundaries of ecosystems generally do not overlap with those of the nation-state. Their protection requires transnational cooperation. By arguing that local co…
Studying Everyday Organizational Life
Beyond Complicity
Organizational Ethnography
Studying Everyday Organizational Life - Sierk Ybema, Dvora Yanow, Harry Wels and Frans Kamsteeg PART ONE: ETHNOGRAPHIC DOING AND WRITING Getting Going: Organizing Ethnographic Fieldwork - Kees van der Waal Ethnographic Practices: From 'Writing-up Ethnographic Research' to 'Writing Ethnography' - Michael Humphreys and Tony Watson Reading and Writing as Method: In Search of Trustworthy Texts - Peregrine Schwartz-Shea and Dvora Yanow When the 'Subje…
Conservative Philanthropists, Royalty and Business Elites in Nature Conservation in Southern Africa
The article investigates the increasingly important connections between the private sector and nature conservation agencies. It looks specifically at the connections between two important philanthropists, the late Anton Rupert, a South African business tycoon, and the late Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands. Both have been highly successful in raising funds for nature conservation, and marketing the idea of transfrontier conservation. This paper …
Victor Turner and liminality
2011). Victor Turner and liminality: An introduction. Anthropology Southern Africa: Vol. 34, Thinking Victor Turner's 'Liminality' from southern Africa today, pp. 1-4
Waiting in liminal space
Waiting is a common feature of everyday encounters between individuals and organisations. Government officials and private sector workers make us wait for decisions, wait for services and sometimes, simply wait our turn. Yet, little attention has been devoted to theorising and developing the concept of ‘waiting’, and it is noticeably absent in the literature on social organisations and organisational behaviour. In this article, we seek to add tex…
Traveling ideas
In an effort to embed diversity management in South African higher education, all Higher Education institutions are presently going through a transitional phase of transformation in which institutional cultures and identities are strongly contested. The ambiguity that comes along with such a process is illustrated through two rival “narratives of change” at North West University, presented in a number of reports and institutional publications tha…
Sponsoring Nature
Saving the world's flora and fauna, especially high-profile examples such as chimpanzees, whales and the tropical rain forests, is big business. Individuals and companies channel their resources to the preservation of nature through various ways, one of which is the funding of environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs). This book is the first to comprehensively address this issue and focus on a d…
Ethnographic research in a changing cultural landscape
Anthropology is the study of culture. Early anthropology had its roots in colonialism impacted by theoretical constructs, such as unilineal evolution. In the 1930s, Evans-Pritchard began studying the political and economic systems of the Nuer to benefit British expansion and interest in what is now South Sudan. His early writings focus on the intermingling of cattle with human cultural rituals and everyday life. Geertz in the chapter Deep Play: N…
Animals like us
Purpose- Now that the human-animal distinction is increasingly critiqued from various disciplinary perspectives, to the point where some suggest even letting go of the distinction completely, the purpose of this paper is to argue that organizational ethnography should start to explore in more detail what this means for organizational ethnographic research, theory and analysis to include non-human animals in it.Design/methodology/approach- Revisit…
I Am Human Too!” ‘Probeerruimte’ as Liminal Spaces in Search of Recognition
This paper explores the Dutch concept ‘ probeerruimte ’ in relation to the statement ‘human as a contested concept’, a highly relevant topic in disability studies. Probeerruimte encompasses the idea that people need space to ‘try things out’, a liminal space that facilitates personal development. It was conceived in a context where institutional practices exerted restrictive control over the lives of people with learning difficulties, denying the…
Juxtaposing a cultural reading of landscape with institutional boundaries
The article explores theoretically the juxtaposition of local stories about landscape with institutional arrangements and exclusionary practices around a conservation area in South Africa. The Masebe Nature Reserve is used as a case study. The article argues that the institutional arrangements in which the nature reserve is currently positioned are too static, and consequently exclusionary, in their demarcation of boundaries. This stifles local c…
Authenticity lost? The significance of cultural villages in the conservation of heritage in South Africa
Based on a(n) (interrupted) period of 15 years of fieldwork, this study explores the question whether cultural villages in South Africa are to be considered an effective way to conserve a particular cultural heritage in an authentic way. In order to answer this question, three notions of authenticity are juxtaposed with three types of cultural villages. The outcomes reveal a nuanced answer that suggests that some types of cultural villages do con…
Breaking white silences in South African-Dutch collaboration in higher education
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to show the complex positionality and the complexity that comes with the study of whiteness in South African higher education by Dutch, white academics. This complexity stems from the long-standing relationship between Dutch universities, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VUA) in particular, with their South African counterparts, which predominantly supported apartheid with reference to a shared religious (Prot…
Nature Conservation in Southern Africa
Nature conservation in southern Africa has always been characterised by an interplay between Capital, specific understandings of Morality, and forms of Militarism, that are all dependent upon the shared subservience and marginalization of animals and certain groups of people in society. Although the subjectivity of people has been rendered visible in earlier publications on histories of conservation in southern Africa, the subjectivity of animals…
Multi-species ethnography
Purpose To further develop research methodologies for multi-species ethnographic fieldwork, based on researcher's experiences with multi-species fieldwork in private wildlife conservancies in South Africa and inspired by San tracking techniques. Design/methodology/approach Reflections on methodological lessons learnt during multi-species ethnographic fieldwork in South Africa. The approach is rather “Maanenesque” in telling various types of tales…
Lion Conservation and the Lion Bone Trade in South Africa
In lion conservation, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and Trade Records Analyses of Flora and Fauna in Commerce (TRAFFIC) are considered key United Nations (UN) institutions for “science-based decisions” on global policy formulation for conservation and combating wildlife crime. CITES, but probably also TRAFFIC and IUCN, still a…
Organizational ethnography after lockdown
Wild Pedagogies for Doing Multispecies Organizational Ethnography
Teaching and researching multispecies organizational ethnography needs a pedagogy that decentres the human animal and has a basic multisensorial approach to sensemaking in organizations, in order to try to do (more) justice to nonhuman sentience, animals, and plants, that is to be included in the research. A wild pedagogy claims that getting outdoors, and specifically avoiding lecture halls and other indoor spaces, raises awareness and skills in …
Sociology (21 works) · Political science (19 works) · Geography (14 works) · Anthropology (13 works) · Law (13 works) · Ethnography (11 works) · Politics (8 works) · African history and culture studies (7 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (7 works) · Archaeology (6 works)