My passion for anthropology began when I traveled to Mexico as a teenager, and managed to escape the manicured confines of tourist hotels and sites. I walked the small passageways in the local people's market and residential neighborhoods, and felt that I had slipped through a secret doorway into a more complicated and compelling world than what tour operators present to American travelers. From then on I sought to know more about how local people throughout the world experience their day-to-day lives; particularly how they manage their lives in contexts of extreme social and economic differentiation, and increasing global exchange.

My research incorporates socio-cultural change and economic frameworks by exploring the political economy of resource access, population mobility, and ecological dynamics, with ethnographic research in Southern Central Africa. With this analytical approach I examine the inter-relations of individuals, families and communities, with the environment, and the role that larger scale structures (such as regional and national politics, and international aid organizations) play in these local level relationships. Currently my research program centers on an investigation of land cover change in a national park buffer zone in Central Zambia, and how host-migrant relations influence land tenure security, ecological sustainability and social dynamics in the region. A simultaneous project takes the intersection of livelihoods and food / nutritional security as the lens for examining the migrant experience in this frontier zone. Other primary research projects have included a study of the effects of migration / mobility on agricultural labor availability and household economics and intergenerational relations. I supervise a variety of PhD students with a broad range of research interests. Among these student projects are (or have been): Sustainable Consumerism in Sweden; “Peasants” and Livelihood Change in Costa Rica; Markets and Rural Livelihood Integration in the Ecuadorian Andes; Gender, Youth and Resource Use in Zambia;  Agro-Pastoral Livelihood Diversification in Morocco; and Livelihood Resilience in Malawi.

 A Gwembe Tonga Basket from Chief Sinazongwe's area.

Project Background

The Gwembe Tonga Research Project (GTRP) was initiated in 1956 by anthropologists Elizabeth Colson and Thayer Scudder, as a "before and after" study of the impacts of large scale development, in this case the building of Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River, and subsequent flooding of the Middle Zambezi Valley and the relocation of approximately 57,000 Gwembe Tonga People (Colson 1960, 1971; Scudder 1962). In addition to being one of very few longitudinal studies in the social sciences in general, the GTRP is the longest continuing and most systematic long-term study in Africa, and is particularly remarkable in that it has followed a population as it has dispersed beyond the original study sites to urban and frontier destinations (Scudder et al. 1977; Van Kemper et. al.,2002). The study addresses issues endemic throughout Africa and elsewhere in its examination of community and individual continuity and change.

Over the past sixty years, members of the GTRP have examined topics as far ranging as social and cultural repercussions of large-scale development (Colson 1960, 1967, 1971, 1987; Scudder 1966, 1981, 1993) local entrepreneurship and economic development (Colson 1985; Scudder 1960, 1972a, 1972b), indigenous religion (Colson 1966, 1969, 1970, 1977, 2000), political change (Colson 1976, 1995, 1996) gender and development (Colson 1999), ecology and environmental change (Scudder 1962, 1972a, 1972b; Petit et al. 2001), agriculture and natural resource use (Unruh et al 2005; Cliggett 2001a, 2001b, 2002b; Colson 1963, 1979; Scudder 1969, 1971, 1983, 1984), the role of education in social change (Scudder et al. 1980), growth and development (Crooks et al 2007; Gillett et al. 2001) and demographic change (Clark et al. 1995, 2001). Colson and Scudder's field notes and data from the past sixty years, held in their private collections, continue to offer a profound resource for current research in the region.

For an active list of publications related to the Gwembe Tonga people, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography_of_the_Tonga_people_(Africa)

As one of "the next generation" of researchers managing the GTRP, I  increasingly shape the direction of the multidisciplinary project (Cliggett 2002, Scudder et al. 2002). With the recent trend in migration from the Gwembe Valley to the neighboring plateau frontier tied directly to the legacy of forced relocation and subsequent ecological degradation and economic decline (Cliggett et al 2007; Cliggett 2003, 2001; Petit et al. 2001; Scudder 1983, 1984), the GTRP has given increasing attention to the migration process (Cliggett et all 2007; Cliggett & Crooks 2007; Cliggett 2005, 2003, 2000; Scudder et al. 1991).

The wealth of GTRP data provides a foundation for a vast array of potential research projects, and informs the overall study of cultural continuity and change in Southern Zambia and Southern Africa more generally. The research project offers findings relevant to theoretical and academic discussions in the social sciences, but also influences policy not just for Zambia, but for Africa and other regions in the developing world.

GTRP Data

With NSF Funding (BCS # 2257418) I am working on building an integrated ethnographic archive, through which interested scholars and community members may access GTRP data (with relevant restrictions to ensure protection of research populations). Information about the archive and the data itself will be made available via the following link:

http://gtrp.as.uky.edu/

Current Research:

Since 2012 I have begun exploring ways to build an integrated ethnographic archive, using my GTRP data of the past decade. One challenge in working on a collaborative and longitudinal research project is how best to make use of the vast data collected over the many years of field seasons.  My goals in this current research activity are to create a system of archiving that preserves data  - data which is increasingly digitized, and thus vulnerable to technological risks such as application “obsolescence” and file loss – and that facilitate useful sharing with other scholars, while simultaneously protecting confidentiality and study participants.

The project is funded by NSF (BCS-1157418).  http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1157418&HistoricalAwards=false    

As things proceed, I will post links to examples of the archive, including "anonymized" and coded data so that others can see what such an archive could look like.

Recent Field Research

In 2003 I began an NSF funded project (BCS 0236933) on migration and environmental change in a frontier region of Zambia. (http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0236933&HistoricalAwards=false) The project has been a collaboration with two geographers specializing in environmental change, GIS and remote sensing (Jon Unruh, McGill U.; Rod Hay, Cal State Dominguez Hills), and examines migrants' land tenure insecurity in relation to deforestation in a frontier farming region bordering Africa's largest national park - Kafue National Park - in central Zambia.

Primary field research on the project is complete, although we continue to work with data from the 646 household survey that includes  household demographics, livelihoods, agricultural practices, environmental change at the household and community level, tenure systems, local political relationships and migration history. There are approximately 400 qualitative and quantitative variables for each case. In conjunction with analyzing this survey data, we are also analyzing interview and other qualitative ethnographic data in order to create a synthesized and comprehensive ethnographic view of this region of Zambia. We continue to publish on this data set.

In 2005 my colleague at UK, Deb Crooks and I received another grant from NSF (BCS 0517878) to examine food and nutrition security in the context of migration. (http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0517878&HistoricalAwards=false) During summers 2005-2008 we conducted field research collecting migration and livelihood histories with Gwembe Tonga migrants from the environmentally degraded Gwembe Valley, who have moved to the frontier zone bordering Kafue National Park. In addition to collecting data on migration, food security and livelihood repertoires we collected anthropometric measures as indices of household and individual well being. We continue to publish from this data set.

Students in the Zambian Research Sites

From 2001 to 2007 I took undergraduate and graduate anthropology students to Zambia to help collect data and participate in an NSF funded field school for anthropological research methods. Currently we are not hosting the fieldschool, although we discuss ideas to restart the program in the Zambian field site.

Beyond the fieldschool, a number of students with whom I have worked have conducted PhD research in the Zambia field sites. Among them are: Dr. Allison Harnish, Dr. Nick Sitko, and Dr. Christa Herrgers.