Kristin D Phillips
Biographic Data
| ID | 82914 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kristin D Phillips |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kristin D |
| FAMILY NAME | Phillips |
| SIGNATURE | PHILLIPS K D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Emory University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5117-5551 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 40 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Race, Energy, and the Patterns of Not Mattering
An analysis of two diverse landscapes—the partial electrification of villages and homes in rural central Tanzania and the disproportionate electricity bills that consume people’s paychecks in the US South’s Black Belt—highlights the role of energy infrastructure in “organized abandonment” (Gilmore 2008). The triaging of racialized places and people distributes and extracts energy resources, enhancing life and labor for some, while rendering other…
Energy Justice, Electric Cooperatives, and the Postplantation Fight for Freedom
Rural electric cooperatives—also known as electric membership corporations (EMCs)—emerged in the 1930s to electrify rural areas not served by for-profit utilities. Today, EMCs power 56% of the US landmass, including 92% of persistent-poverty counties. In Georgia, EMCs are regulated only by elected boards, who govern costs, investments, and energy mix but are unlikely to reflect the demographic diversity of their membership and have been documente…
Energy of One's Own
This article explores the intersections between energy, gender, and labor and the multiple and multidirectional transitions involved in the expansion of renewable forms of energy. Drawing on ethnographic research in the country of Tanzania between 2019 and 2024, from the island of Zanzibar, rural Singida, and peri-urban Arusha, it examines how gender organizes social life, space, labor, and the distribution of new energy resources. Rooted in inte…
State-Building, Infrastructure, and Citizenship in Rural Tanzania
An enduring feature of rural Tanzanian political life has been the organization of villages down to the 10-house cell [nyumba kumi kumi]. The cell system was established in 1963 as the smallest unit of the single-party state to eradicate rural isolation and facilitate communication, security, and self-help. Even after the 1992 turn to multipartyism, the cell has endured as a salient (though not static) feature of rural government. Existing schola…
The messy ethics of household biogas in Tanzania
Household biogas is an off‐grid energy technology that converts human, animal, and agricultural waste into fuel. This article analyses the emergence and use of household biogas technologies in Tanzania to theorize energy ethics in a postcolonial world. It engages Jane Bennett's theorization of the ‘energetics’ and aestheticization of ethics to ask how people assert and think through their own notions of good energy in postcolonial Africa. It docu…
Southern politics, southern power prices
For many middle‐income households, paying the electricity bill is a mundane, even mindless, act. But for an ever‐increasing number of low‐income families, the electricity bill—filtered through the racialized materiality of poor‐quality housing stock and antidemocratic price regulation—represents something more ominous: looming disconnection, eviction, and a deep spin of vulnerabilities. This article explores the materiality of race in the US Sout…
Eyes on the Prize
Phillips and Cheney preface an analysis of the ASA's Graduate Student Paper Prize in a discussion with past Prize winners with a review of the sociological literature on awards and scholarly critiques of the history of African Studies. They find that the Prize has played an important role in amplifying and recognizing the voices of young scholars who have pushed the thematic and theoretical boundaries of the field. But these contributions are att…
The future sits in places
This article explores the shifting landscapes of light, labor, and value produced by the politics of electrification in Tanzania. Through engaging the anthropologies of infrastructure and electricity, it asks, how do people understand the relationship between electricity and value in the landscapes that sustain them? A brief outline of the history of electrification in Tanzania highlights its role in the production of place, and analysis of field…
Working Together Apart
Prelude to a Grid
People in the Singida region of Tanzania have long utilized diverse energy sources for subsistence. The wind separates grain from chaff. The sun ripens the millet and dries it for storage. More recently, solar panels charge phones and rural electricity investments extend the national grid. Yet as an electric frontier, Singida remains only peripherally and selectively served by energy infrastructures and fossil fuels. This article sketches Singida…
Paternalism
Paternalism refers to a type of dominating behavior legitimated (as the root implies) in terms of a father's presumptive authority to determine his child's interests and to direct the child's behavior accordingly. It is an active form of subordination. Anthropologists have studied two key forms and functions of paternalism—political and economic
Educational policymaking in the Tanzanian postcolony
In this article I explore the political event of the Tanzanian government's interdiction of a prominent educational civil society organization in order to theorize the emerging policy heterarchy in Tanzania. In the context of the ensuing public debate about the interdiction, I ask two questions: (1) what tensions are emerging from the democratization reforms embedded in national iterations of international EFA policies and (2) to what end are suc…
Human Rights
Pater Rules Best
In 2005 Tanzanians elected Jakaya Kikwete to the presidency with 80 percent of the popular vote. Like his predecessors, Kikwete emerged from the ranks of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party (CCM). CCM also secured 96 percent of mainland parliamentary constituencies. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Singida region between 2004 and 2006, I examine the production and performance of a political rhetoric in Tanzania that centers on notions of fatherhood an…
Hunger, Healing, and Citizenship in Central Tanzania
This article draws on newspaper commentary, Nyaturu hunger lore, and ethnographic research to describe how central Tanzanian villagers accessed food aid from the state during the East African food crisis of 2006. Through leveraging their political support and their participation in national development agendas, rural inhabitants claimed their rights. Yet it was through these exchanges that the state converted food aid into political power. The ar…
Pater Rules Best
In 2005 Tanzanians elected Jakaya Kikwete to the presidency with 80 percent of the popular vote. Like his predecessors, Kikwete emerged from the ranks of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party (CCM). CCM also secured 96 percent of mainland parliamentary constituencies. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Singida region between 2004 and 2006, I examine the production and performance of a political rhetoric in Tanzania that centers on notions of fatherhood an…
Hunger, Healing, and Citizenship in Central Tanzania
This article draws on newspaper commentary, Nyaturu hunger lore, and ethnographic research to describe how central Tanzanian villagers accessed food aid from the state during the East African food crisis of 2006. Through leveraging their political support and their participation in national development agendas, rural inhabitants claimed their rights. Yet it was through these exchanges that the state converted food aid into political power. The ar…
Prelude to a Grid
People in the Singida region of Tanzania have long utilized diverse energy sources for subsistence. The wind separates grain from chaff. The sun ripens the millet and dries it for storage. More recently, solar panels charge phones and rural electricity investments extend the national grid. Yet as an electric frontier, Singida remains only peripherally and selectively served by energy infrastructures and fossil fuels. This article sketches Singida…
The future sits in places
This article explores the shifting landscapes of light, labor, and value produced by the politics of electrification in Tanzania. Through engaging the anthropologies of infrastructure and electricity, it asks, how do people understand the relationship between electricity and value in the landscapes that sustain them? A brief outline of the history of electrification in Tanzania highlights its role in the production of place, and analysis of field…
Southern politics, southern power prices
For many middle‐income households, paying the electricity bill is a mundane, even mindless, act. But for an ever‐increasing number of low‐income families, the electricity bill—filtered through the racialized materiality of poor‐quality housing stock and antidemocratic price regulation—represents something more ominous: looming disconnection, eviction, and a deep spin of vulnerabilities. This article explores the materiality of race in the US Sout…
Working Together Apart
Educational policymaking in the Tanzanian postcolony
In this article I explore the political event of the Tanzanian government's interdiction of a prominent educational civil society organization in order to theorize the emerging policy heterarchy in Tanzania. In the context of the ensuing public debate about the interdiction, I ask two questions: (1) what tensions are emerging from the democratization reforms embedded in national iterations of international EFA policies and (2) to what end are suc…
Hunger, Healing, and Citizenship in Central Tanzania
This article draws on newspaper commentary, Nyaturu hunger lore, and ethnographic research to describe how central Tanzanian villagers accessed food aid from the state during the East African food crisis of 2006. Through leveraging their political support and their participation in national development agendas, rural inhabitants claimed their rights. Yet it was through these exchanges that the state converted food aid into political power. The ar…
Pater Rules Best
In 2005 Tanzanians elected Jakaya Kikwete to the presidency with 80 percent of the popular vote. Like his predecessors, Kikwete emerged from the ranks of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party (CCM). CCM also secured 96 percent of mainland parliamentary constituencies. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Singida region between 2004 and 2006, I examine the production and performance of a political rhetoric in Tanzania that centers on notions of fatherhood an…
Educational policymaking in the Tanzanian postcolony
In this article I explore the political event of the Tanzanian government's interdiction of a prominent educational civil society organization in order to theorize the emerging policy heterarchy in Tanzania. In the context of the ensuing public debate about the interdiction, I ask two questions: (1) what tensions are emerging from the democratization reforms embedded in national iterations of international EFA policies and (2) to what end are suc…
Human Rights
Paternalism
Paternalism refers to a type of dominating behavior legitimated (as the root implies) in terms of a father's presumptive authority to determine his child's interests and to direct the child's behavior accordingly. It is an active form of subordination. Anthropologists have studied two key forms and functions of paternalism—political and economic
Prelude to a Grid
People in the Singida region of Tanzania have long utilized diverse energy sources for subsistence. The wind separates grain from chaff. The sun ripens the millet and dries it for storage. More recently, solar panels charge phones and rural electricity investments extend the national grid. Yet as an electric frontier, Singida remains only peripherally and selectively served by energy infrastructures and fossil fuels. This article sketches Singida…
Working Together Apart
The future sits in places
This article explores the shifting landscapes of light, labor, and value produced by the politics of electrification in Tanzania. Through engaging the anthropologies of infrastructure and electricity, it asks, how do people understand the relationship between electricity and value in the landscapes that sustain them? A brief outline of the history of electrification in Tanzania highlights its role in the production of place, and analysis of field…
Southern politics, southern power prices
For many middle‐income households, paying the electricity bill is a mundane, even mindless, act. But for an ever‐increasing number of low‐income families, the electricity bill—filtered through the racialized materiality of poor‐quality housing stock and antidemocratic price regulation—represents something more ominous: looming disconnection, eviction, and a deep spin of vulnerabilities. This article explores the materiality of race in the US Sout…
Eyes on the Prize
Phillips and Cheney preface an analysis of the ASA's Graduate Student Paper Prize in a discussion with past Prize winners with a review of the sociological literature on awards and scholarly critiques of the history of African Studies. They find that the Prize has played an important role in amplifying and recognizing the voices of young scholars who have pushed the thematic and theoretical boundaries of the field. But these contributions are att…
The messy ethics of household biogas in Tanzania
Household biogas is an off‐grid energy technology that converts human, animal, and agricultural waste into fuel. This article analyses the emergence and use of household biogas technologies in Tanzania to theorize energy ethics in a postcolonial world. It engages Jane Bennett's theorization of the ‘energetics’ and aestheticization of ethics to ask how people assert and think through their own notions of good energy in postcolonial Africa. It docu…
Energy of One's Own
This article explores the intersections between energy, gender, and labor and the multiple and multidirectional transitions involved in the expansion of renewable forms of energy. Drawing on ethnographic research in the country of Tanzania between 2019 and 2024, from the island of Zanzibar, rural Singida, and peri-urban Arusha, it examines how gender organizes social life, space, labor, and the distribution of new energy resources. Rooted in inte…
State-Building, Infrastructure, and Citizenship in Rural Tanzania
An enduring feature of rural Tanzanian political life has been the organization of villages down to the 10-house cell [nyumba kumi kumi]. The cell system was established in 1963 as the smallest unit of the single-party state to eradicate rural isolation and facilitate communication, security, and self-help. Even after the 1992 turn to multipartyism, the cell has endured as a salient (though not static) feature of rural government. Existing schola…
Race, Energy, and the Patterns of Not Mattering
An analysis of two diverse landscapes—the partial electrification of villages and homes in rural central Tanzania and the disproportionate electricity bills that consume people’s paychecks in the US South’s Black Belt—highlights the role of energy infrastructure in “organized abandonment” (Gilmore 2008). The triaging of racialized places and people distributes and extracts energy resources, enhancing life and labor for some, while rendering other…
Energy Justice, Electric Cooperatives, and the Postplantation Fight for Freedom
Rural electric cooperatives—also known as electric membership corporations (EMCs)—emerged in the 1930s to electrify rural areas not served by for-profit utilities. Today, EMCs power 56% of the US landmass, including 92% of persistent-poverty counties. In Georgia, EMCs are regulated only by elected boards, who govern costs, investments, and energy mix but are unlikely to reflect the demographic diversity of their membership and have been documente…
Sociology (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Tanzania (6 works) · Energy and Environment Impacts (5 works) · Geography (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Water Governance and Infrastructure (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Political economy (4 works)