Thomas Bierschenk

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thomas Bierschenk (born June 18, 1951 in Linz am Rhein ) is a German ethnologist and sociologist . He is Professor of Cultures and Societies in Africa at the Institute for Ethnology and African Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz .

biography

Bierschenk passed his Abitur in 1970 at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium (Trier) . In 1977 he completed his studies in history and sociology at the University of Bielefeld and received his doctorate in 1983 in sociology from the University of Bielefeld. This was followed by his habilitation at the Free University of Berlin (1991). He studied at Trier University , St Peter's College in Oxford (England), the London School of Economics , the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, the University of Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux III and the University of Bielefeld.

Before coming to Mainz in 1997, Thomas Bierschenk taught and researched at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, Bielefeld University, Free University Berlin, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Marseille and at Hohenheim University in Stuttgart . He was also visiting professor at the University of Bonn (2001/02) and the University of Uppsala (2006). In 2007/08 he was Theodor Heuss Professor at the New School for Social Research in New York.

From 1994 to 1998 Thomas Bierschenk was first general secretary, then chairman of the Association Euro-Africaine pour l'Anthropologie du Développement et du Changement Social / Euro-African Association for the Anthropology of Social Change and Development (APAD). From 2008 to 2010 he was chairman of the Association for African Studies in Germany (VAD). He was a member of the scientific advisory board of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) (2004-2010) and is a member of the editorial advisory board of the journal for ethnology (Berlin) and the scientific advisory board of the journal Africa Spectrum (Hamburg). He is also on the Advisory Board of the African Power and Politics Program of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI, London) and Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Laboratoire d'études et des recherches sur les dynamiques sociales et le développement local (LASDEL, Niamey, Niger). In 2010 he was awarded the Order of the Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Bénin by the government of the Republic of Benin for his services to German-African scientific cooperation.

Research priorities

His current research interests are in the civil service and the practices of state officials in Africa (as part of the international research project States at Work). Public Services and Civil Servants in West Africa: Education and Justice in Benin, Ghana, Mali and Niger / The state as a construction site. Civil Service and Civil Servants: Education and Justice in Benin, Ghana, Mali and Niger. He is also involved in the project Significations of Oil and Social Change in Niger and Chad: An anthropological cooperative research project on technologies and processes of creative adaptation in relation to African oil production (coordination: Prof. Schareika, Göttingen; Dr. Behrends, Halle ). He has carried out extensive field research in the Sultanate of Oman as well as in West and Central Africa. Topics were initially the social effects of oil production in Oman , later the social organization of the Fulbe in West Africa and decentralization and the local state in West and Central Africa. He is also particularly interested in the ethnological analysis of development.

Publications (selection)

  • States at Work. Dynamics of African Bureaucracies . Leiden: Brill , 2014, ed. with Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan.
  • Ethnology in the 21st Century . Berlin: Reimer, 2013, ed. with Matthias Krings and Carola Lentz .
  • Africa since 1960. Continuities, breaks, perspectives . Cologne: Köppe, 2012, ed. with Eva Spies.
  • "50 Years of Independence in Africa". Africa Spectrum 45 (3) (2010). Hamburg: GIGA, ed. with Eva Spies.
  • “Democratization without development: Benin 1989–2009”. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 22 (3) (2009): 337-357.
  • “The every-day functioning of an African public service: Informalization, privatization and corruption in Benin's legal system”. Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 57 (2008): 101-139.
  • Islam and Development in Africa . Cologne: Köppe, ed. with Marion Fischer, 2007.
  • “Powers in the Village. Rural Benin between democratization and decentralization ”. Africa 73 (2003): 145-173, with Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan.
  • Courtiers en développement. Les villages africaines en quête des projets . Paris: Kartha-la, 2000, ed. with J.-P. Olivier de Sardan & J.-P. Chauveau.
  • Les pouvoirs au village: le Bénin rural entre démocratisation et decentralization . (Ed.) Paris: Karthala, 1998.

literature

  • Nikolaus Schareika, Eva Spies, Pierre-Yves Le Meur (eds.): On the ground of the facts. Festschrift for Thomas Bierschenk (= Mainzer Contributions to Africa Research. Vol. 28). Cologne: Köppe, 2011.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Kürschner's German Scholar Calendar . 22nd edition (2009). Vol. 1, p. 309.
  2. 450 years of Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium Trier 1561–2011: The future needs an origin (Festschrift). Edited by the association of alumni of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Trier eV and the school management of the FWG. Trier: Paulinus, p. 411.