We are a world leader in the anthropological study of economic life, focusing on global economic justice and how this intersects with environmental issues. This work links to five themes:
Industrial production, manufacturing and resource extraction
- Rebecca Prentice and Geert De Neve on garment manufacturing in Trinidad and Tamil Nadu
- Dinah Rajak on South African gold mining and Corporate Social Responsibility
- Peter Luetchford on Fairtrade.
Market contexts
- Jon Mitchell on Sport
- Dinah Rajak on Bottom of the Pyramid markets
- Anke Schwittay on microfinance
- Raminder Kaur Kahlon on the nuclear industry.
International trade
Magnus Marsden has conducted work on diasporic Afghan merchants from a range of social, ethnic and political backgrounds, and who work in different settings across the former Soviet Union.
He has started work on a large-scale European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant project: Trust, Global Traders, and Commodities in a Chinese International City and has published a book Trading Worlds: Afghan Merchants across Modern Frontiers on the topic.
Charity and philanthropy
- Roderick Stirrat and Filippo Osella are conducting an innovative study looking at the role of charity and philanthropy in economic, social and health development with a focus on Colombo, Sri Lanka
- Anne-Meike Fechter is conducting work into ‘Do-it-yourself-Aid’ and the role of small-scale, Western-based charities in developing countries.
Ecology
Our interest in ecology covers issues including agrarian transformation, environmentalism and the commodification of nature (Pamela Kea, James Fairhead, Evan Killick and Peter Luetchford).
Centre for New Economies of Development
Critical Engagements with the Bottom of the Pyramid
Over the last decade, business has increasingly been cast as the engine of development. Private sector initiatives are now said to deliver 'win-win outcomes' both to the world's poor and the financial bottom line.
The Centre for New Economies of Development is a collaboration between anthropologists at the Universities of Sussex, Edinburgh and Oxford. Using ethnographic field-based studies, we examine the implications of market-centred paradigms for development and raise new questions about responsibility, accountability, entitlement and sustainability.
Trust, Global Traders and Commodities in a Chinese International City
Yiwu in China is known by international traders as the world’s hub for the wholesale of ‘small commodities. 'Trust, Global Traders, and Commodities’ is an integrated research programme that will provide new data and comparative analysis on the global trade in low-grade Chinese-made commodities.
The project’s focus is on how transnational trading activities are conducted in Yiwu and its connections to the world through networks and flows of people, commodities and knowledge. Research from the project will yield new perspectives on the ways in which trade, while facilitating the exchange of commodities, does or does not simultaneously promote the transfer of practices, ideas and identities.
Charity and Philanthropy in Development
An innovative study looking at the role of charity and philanthropy in economic, social and health development is being launched in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Conducted by Roderick Stirrat and Filippo Osella, they are investigating Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Muslim and secular forms giving, assessing their contribution towards achieving development goals.
Run and Become
'Run and Become' is a Creative Campus Initiative cultural and research project run from Sussex Anthropology. The aim of 'Run and Become' is to improve understanding of the human factors involved in training for, and completing, a marathon.
The two main themes are motivation and transformation including:
- what motivates people to carry on training and running, through the dark days of winter, and when the pain of ‘the wall’ hits them?
- how are people transformed through the act of training and running a marathon – bodily, emotionally, personally?
We have a long history of engagement with politics and activism in academic study and the contemporary world. Our work includes:
- Andrea Cornwall and Paul Boyce’s work on sexuality in development including critical explorations of sexual rights and critiques of heteronormativity
- Anne-Meike Fechter's work on International Development professionals and ‘Do-it-yourself-Aid’
- Elizabeth Harrison's work on community engagement and participation in sub-Saharan Africa
- Raminder Kaur Kahlon's work on nuclear technology
- Geert De Neve's work on electoral politics, democracy and citizenship in Tamil Nadu, South India.
Perceptions of nuclear technology in India
This research looks at the way nuclear issues pervade peoples' lives in India, through focusing on their perceptions and representations of nuclear science and missiles. Through fieldwork, the research reassesses nuclear issues so that they do not remain simply as the concern of nation-states and political parties, but are closely linked to notions of self, community and imaginings of 'national' and 'international' communities.
This is complemented with a focus on how nuclear debates have entered into Indian popular culture and their reception. This research will contribute to literature on nuclear issues and film/popular culture in post-war Europe and America.
This theme builds on our research into Development and Social Transformation to explore the intersection of economy, politics, ethics and morality. Examples include:
- Peter Luetchford on Fairtrade
- Dinah Rajak and Geert De Neve on Corporate Social Responsibility
- Filippo Osella and Anne-Meike Fechter on the moral dimensions of philanthropy and volunteering
- Pamel Kea on the household moral economy, kinship and migration
- Paul Boyce’s work on queer anthropology and particularly on the livelihoods and socio-economic exclusion of sexual and gender minorities. Paul also recently co-founded the European Network for Queer Anthropology (ENQA).
This work also engages with broader aspects of religious practice:
- Jon Mitchell’s work on concepts of belief, religious practice and the body
- Magnus Marsden’s work on Islam, including his book Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan's North-West Frontier.
Ethics and Morality: recent publications
Jon Mitchell, Ritual, Performance and the Senses (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015)
James Carrier & Peter Luetchford (eds.) Ethical Consumption: Social Value and Economic Practice (London: Berghahn Books, March 2012)
Sussex has an international reputation as a leading force in the Anthropology of Rights and International Justice. Our work includes:
- Jane Cowan, Nigel Eltringham and Lyndsay McLean Hilker's work on the institutionalisation of rights and reconciliation
- Mark Leopold and Nigel Eltringham's work on narration and making sense of violence and evil
- Nigel Eltringham and Lyndsay McLean Hilker's work on the place of ethnicity in discourses of reconciliation.
We also work closely with The Centre for Rights and Anti-Colonial Justice
We are renowned for our work in medical anthropology and in the anthropology of science, technology and society. This work uses grounded ethnographic research to bridge the gap between particular contexts and broader global contexts.
Our work focuses on:
- governance and moral economies of international science collaborations in and with Asia (Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner and Maya Unnithan)
- the shifting relationship between science and technology, the state and society, relating to reproductive technologies (Maya Unnithan), biotechnologies (Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner) or immunisation and the recent Ebola outbreak (James Fairhead).
We also conduct research looking at gender issues including:
- selective abortion and assisted reproductive technologies in India (Maya Unnithan and Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner)
- HIV and Sexual Subjectivities – including questions of ethics and representation (Paul Boyce)
- occupational health (Rebecca Prentice)
Health, Science and the Body: current research projects
Bionetworking in Asia – anthropology and transnational biomedical collaborations
Project led by Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner
The three-year Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded project is studying transnational collaboration in the life sciences. Worth over £1.1 million, it includes researchers from China, India, Japan, Thailand and Europe.
Researchers involved in the project are looking at bio-medical innovation, with a focus on how contemporary research is increasingly reliant on clinical research conducted through international collaborations with Asian countries.
It is also considering how these initiatives are challenged by uncertainties about research quality and therapeutic practices, and the variation between different states in their healthcare provision and socio-political regimes.
This work is being conducted through the International Science and Bioethics Collaborations research project, together with the University of Cambridge and Durham University
Exploring generational changes in family-decision making, son preference and gender expectations among South Asian communities in the UK.
Ebola Response Anthropology Platform
The Ebola Response Anthropology Platform is an innovative online resource. It is bringing anthropologists from around the world together to provide advice on how to engage with socio-cultural and political dimensions of the Ebola outbreak and build locally-appropriate interventions.