Research Areas
Interests
Political economy, Agrarian Transformation, political ecology, oil and gas/decarbonization, development theory, Africa, South Asia
Contact Information
517 McCone Hall
Links
Niger Delta: Economies of Violence
The Holy Grail: In Pursuit of the Dissertation Proposal (resources, including the nuts and bolts of preparing and writing a research proposal, examples of proposals and their revision by authors, and funding resources)
Recent Work
Research
At the centre of my research and teaching interests is a longstanding engagement with the political economy of development and in particular energy and agro-food sectors in Africa. My own training at University College, London and at the University of Michigan was firmly grounded in Anthropology, Development theory, Ecology and Sociology, initially with a focus on the understanding the vulnerability of peasant communities in semi-arid Africa and the dynamics of subsistence and famine crises. My doctoral research was based on long-term field research in northern Nigeria and generated a lifelong concern with questions of food security, rural differentiation and the agrarian question. While at Berkeley I have tried to deepen my understanding of the intersections between political economy, culture and forms of power. Over the last decade I have devoted most of my time to the oil and gas sector and to the impact of oil in the Gulf of Guinea, especially in the Niger delta region of Nigeria.
During the 1980s and 1990s I extended my interests in Africa with fieldwork in Senegambia on gender and household dynamics and irrigation politics. I continue to work in Nigeria on Islam, and the political economy and political ecology of oil. Concurrently, I have published on the global agro-food system including in California and the US most notably rice in California, and the poultry industry Since 2011 I have been working closely with New York photographer Ed Kashi and produced a book on the impact of oil in Nigeria and the Niger delta entitled The Curse of the Black Gold. With colleagues Iain Boal and Cal Winslow, I have been working on the commune and back to the land movements in northern California.
For ten years I served as the Director of a research institute, the Institute of International Studies (1994-2004), which promotes cross-area and cross-disciplinary research and training on transnational and global issues. I established with Nancy Peluso the Berkeley Working Group on Environmental Politics, the major centre for cross-disciplinary political ecological research on the Berkeley campus. In addition I have served as the director of the Africa Studies Center, of the Rotary Peace Fellows program, and co-direct our undergraduate Development Studies Program with Professor Gillian Hart.
I have had occasion to work with various development organizations and philanthropic institutions. I have worked for UNDP, the Ford Foundation, OXFAM, and a number of small NGOs in Africa (most recently Environmental Rights Action and Our Niger Delta in Nigeria). I serve on the Board of a number of non-profits including the Pacific Institute in Oakland and have given expert testimony in major legal cases concerning of human and environmental rights in Nigeria, and spoken to the US Congress and other policy groups in Washington DC. I have served as Chair of the Trustees of the Social Science Research Council since 2007.
Education
1979, Ph.D., University of Michigan
Books
2017 Grassroots Environmental Governance. Edited by Leah Horowitz and Michael Watts. London:
Routledge/Earthscan.
2017 Genealogies of Environmental Thought: The Lost Works of Clarence Glacken. Edited by Ravi Rajan, Adam,
Romero and Michael Watts. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
2015 Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of the Oil and Gas. Ithaca. Cornell University Press, edited with Arthur Mason and Hannah Appel.
2012 West of Eden: Communes and Utopia in Northern California. PM Press: Oakland. Iain Boal, Cal Winslow, Janferie Stone and Michael Watts (eds).
2011 Global Political Ecology, in Editors, Michael Watts, Paul Robbins and Richard Peet (eds)., Global Political Ecology. London: Routledge.
2008 The Curse of the Black Gold. With Ed Kashi (photographer). Powerhouse Press, New York.
2005 Afflicted Powers (RETORT: I. Boal. T.J. Clark and J. Matthews). London, Verso (First and Second editions, translated in Greek, and French, Des Images et Des Bombs, Paris, Les Prairies Ordinaires, 2008).
2004 Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements. Edited with Richard Peet. Routledge, London [A Second edition expanded by 30% with eight new chapters and rewritten Introductions].
2001 Violent Environments. Edited with Nancy Peluso. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
2000 The Hettner Lectures: Geographies of Violence. Heidelberg: University of Heidelberg.
2000-09 Dictionary of Human Geography. Edited with Ron Johnston, Gerry Pratt and Derek Gregory. Oxford, Blackwell (expanded Third Edition published 2009).
1998/2007 Encyclopaedia of Sub-Saharan Africa. Co-Editor. Simon and Schuster, New York (4 volumes) [Awarded the African Studies Association Conover-Porter Prize for Reference Books, 2000]. An enlarged five volume second edition appeared in 2007.
1997 Globalizing Food: Agrarian Questions and Global Restructuring. Edited with David Goodman. London, Routledge.
1996/2004 Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements. Edited with Richard Peet. Routledge, London Second edition with 8 new chapters and new introduction).
1995 Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World in the Late Twentieth Century. Edited with P. Taylor and R.J. Johnston. Basil Blackwell, Oxford [Second Edition in 1998; the Third Edition in 2002 had eight new chapters, a new introduction and conclusion, and section essays by the editors].
1994 Living Under Contract: Contract Farming and Agrarian Transformation in Africa. Edited book with Dr. Peter Little. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
1992 Reworking Modernity: Capitalisms and Symbolic Discontent. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey (with Allan Pred).
1987 State, Oil and Agriculture in Nigeria. Edited with an Introduction by Michael Watts, Institute of International Studies Press, University of California, Berkeley.
1983/2013 Silent Violence: Food, Famine and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria. Berkeley: University of California Press. [runner-up for Herskovitz Prize, 1984]. Second Edition with a New Introduction, University of Georgia Press, 2012.
Journals and Invited Papers
Forthcoming The Resource Curse, in Noel Castree (ed), Companion to Environmental Studies, New York, Routledge.
Forthcoming Ecologies of Rule: Politics, Political Economy and Environmental Governance in Nigeria, in Carl Levan, (ed), Handbook of Nigeria. London: Oxford University Press.
2018 The spatial turn and areas of limited statehood (co-authored with Timothy Raemaekers and Bendikt Korf), in The Oxford book of Governance and Limited Statehood, A. Draude, T. Boerzel and T. Risse (eds)., London: Oxford University Press, pp.167-190.
Forthcoming Insurgent Nigeria: Authority, Ordering Power and Nigerian Capitalism, in Sylvester Akhaine (ed), Nigerian Capitalism. London: Palgrave.
2017 Oil Worlds: Life and Death in Nigeria's Petro-State, in K. Calvert and Barry Solomon (eds)., Handbook on the Geography of Energy, Edward Elgar,pp.341-355.
2018 Frontiers: Precarity, authority and insurgency at the edge of the state, World Development, 101 May, pp.477-488. (online: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X17300992(link is external))
2017 Frontiers, L'Espace, 32-2, pp.1-28.
2017 Forward, in Genealogies of Environmental Thought: The Lost Works of Clarence Glacken. Edited by Ravi Rajan, Adam Romero and Michael Watts. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, vii-xiii..
2017 Precarious Life, in Wali Adebanwi (ed)., The Political Economy of Everyday Life in Africa: Beyond the Margins; Essays in Honor of Jane Guyer. Indiana University Press, pp.177-215.
2017 Righting the resource curse, Journal of Development Studies (with Doug Porter), Vol.52/3, pp.249-263 (published onlinehttp://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220388.2016.1160062?src=recsys(link is external)).
2017 Entries on "Colonization, Decolonization and Neocolonialism", and "Violence" in The International Encyclopeadia of Geography, edited by D. Richardson, A. Kobayashi and A. Paasi, New York: Wiley Publishers.
2017 Accumulating insecurity and risk along the energy frontier, in Grassroots Environmental Governance. Edited by Leah Horowitz and Michael Watts. London: Routledge/Earthscan, pp.21-230.
2017 Introduction: engaging with industry and governing the environment form the grassroots, with Leah Horowitz, in Grassroots Environmental Governance. Edited by Leah Horowitz and Michael Watts. London: Routledge/Earthscan, pp.1-30.
2017 Petro-Violence, in Imre Szeman and Jennifer Wenzel (eds), Fueling Culture: Energy, History, Politics. New York: Fordham University Press, pp.255-258.
2017 Die Politische Ökologie von Öl und Gas am Golf von Guinea - Einsichten aus Nigeria. In: Peters, Stefan Burchardt, Hans-Jürgen (Eds.): Umwelt und Entwicklung in Globaler Perspektive: Ressourcen - Konflikte - Degrowth. Frankfurt (Main): Campus, 62-90.
2016 The political ecology of oil and gas in West Africa's Gulf of Guinea, in The Handbook of the International Political Economy of Energy, T. Van der Graaf et al., (eds)., London: Palgrave,559-584.
2016 The Political Ecology of Oil and Gas in West Africa's Gulf of Guinea: State, Petroleum, and Conflict in Nigeria, in The Palgrave Handbook of the International Political Economy of Energy, Thijs Van der Graaf et al (eds)., London: Palgrave, pp.559-584.
2016 From Vulnerability to Resilience: Hans-Georg Bohle's Scholarship and Contemporary Political Ecology", DIE ERDE 147/4, pp.230-243.
2016 Life without Authority, The Berlin Journal, Fall 2016, pp.44-46.
2016 The Precarious Lives of the Commons, in Cal Winslow ed., River of Fire,. Alington, MA: PUMPING STATION, pp.200-232.
2016 Accumulating Insecurity and Manufacturing Risk along the Energy Frontier, Risking Capitalism, Susanne Soederberg (ed)., Research in Political Economy Volume 31, Emerald Press: Bingley, UK., pp197-237.
2016 Laying the foundations of the colonial state in Northern Nigeria, Introduction to, M.Tukur, The Imposition of British Colonial Domination on the Sokoto Caliphate, Borno and Neighboring States, Dakar: Amalion Publishing, pp.xxxv-xlv.
2016 Joined at the head: anthropology, geography and the environment, in S. Coleman, S. Hyatt and A. Kingsolver (eds)., Companion to Contemporary Anthropology, London: Routledge, pp.323-358
2016 Classics Revisited: Anton Block, Violent Entrepreneurs, Journal of Peasant Studies, 43/1, pp.67-91.
2015 Chronicle of a Future Foretold. Extractive Industries and Society, Vol. 2, pp.635-644.
2015 Spaces of Insurgency: Power, Place and Spectacle in Nigeria, in Heather Merrill and Lisa Hoffman (eds)., Geographies of Power: re-cognizing the present moment of danger., Athens: University of Georgia Press, pp.191-227.
2015 Now and Then: the origins of political ecology and the rebirth of adaptation as a form of thought. I James McCarthy and Thomas Perrault (eds)., Handbook of Political Ecology. London: Routledge, pp.19-50.
2015 Adapting to the Anthropocene. Geographical Research, 53/3, 288-297.
2015 Interview with Stuart Elden, Society and Space, societyandspace.com/2015/01/03/interview-with-michael-watts-on-nigeria-political-ecology-geographies-of-violence-and-the-history-of-the-discipline/
2015 All or Nothing? A review symposium on Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism v Climate. Human Geography (http://hugeog.com/(link is external)), 8/1, pp.108-111.
2015 Turtles all the way down: Bernard Nietschmann, Between Land and Water, Classics Revisited, Progress in Human Geography, 39/1, pp.1-6.
2015 Thinking the African Food Crisis: The Sahel Forty Years On, in R. Herring (ed)., Handbook on Food, Politics and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, pp.772-794.
2015 Specters of Oil: The Photography of Ed Kashi, in Oil Subterranean estates: Life Worlds of the Oil and Gas. Ithaca. Cornell University Press, edited with Arthur Mason and Hannah Appel, pp.165-188.
2015 Securing Oil: Frontiers, Risk and Accumulated Insecurity, in Oil Subterranean estates: Life Worlds of the Oil and Gas. Ithaca. Cornell University Press, edited with Arthur Mason and Hannah Appel, pp211-236.
2015 Introduction, in Oil Subterranean estates: Life Worlds of the Oil and Gas. Ithaca. Cornell University Press, edited with Arthur Mason and Hannah Appel, pp.1-27.
2014 Building Resilience, Making Secure: Biopolitical Security, Catastrophism and the Food-Climate Question, in Nancy Chen and Lesley Sharp (eds)., Biosecurity. Santa Fe: School of American Research, pp.145-172.
2014 Commentary, a response to Douglas Rogers, Petro-barter, Current Anthropology, 55/2, pp.148-149.
2014 Banal Globalization, in A. Tickell, S. Woolgar, W. Rupp, and N. Thrift (eds)., Globalization in Practice: An A-Z Guide, London: Oxford University Press, pp.97-103.
2014 Oil Frontiers, in Daniel Worden an Ross, Barrett (eds)., Oil Culture. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, pp.189-210.
2014 Resource Violence, with Nancy Peluso in Carl Death (editor), Critical Environmental Politics, London: Routledge, pp.184-197.
2013 Geographie des aufstands im Nigerdelta [Insurgent Geographies (in German)]. Geographishs Rundschau, 9, pp.44-52.
2013 A tale of Two Insurgencies, in Alex Houen (ed)., States of War in the 'War on Terror', Cambridge: Polity Press, pp.103-129.
2013 Oil Talk, Development and Change, Vol. 44/4, pp.1013-1026.
2013 Imperiales Ol und vergessene Verbrechen: Grenzgebiete de Enteignung in Niger-Delta (Imperial Oil and Forgotten Crimes: Frontiers of Dispossession in the Niger Delta, Nigeria). PROKLA, 43/1, pp61-71.
2013 Toward a Political Ecology of Environmental Security, in Rita Floyd and Richard Matthew (eds), Environmental Security. London: Routledge, pp.82-102.
2012 Sweet and Sour: The Oil Curse in the Niger delta, The Energy Reader edited by Tom Butler, Daniel Lerch and George Wuerthner, Post Carbon Institute, Santa Rosa, California,pp.247-256.
2012 A tale of two gulfs: life, death and dispossession along two oil frontiers, American Quarterly, Vol. 64/3, pp.437-467 (reprinted in Paula Chakrabarty and Denise da Silva (eds)., Race, Empire and the Crisis of the Subprime. Baltimore; The Johns Hopkins Press, 2013).
2012 Globophobia, entry in Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, editor George Ritzer, London: Blackwell (available online. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9780470670590(link is external)).
2012 Bare Life and the New Interregnum, new Introduction to the second edition of Silent Violence: Food, Famine and peasantry in northern Nigeria. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
2012 Modular Development, Diminutive Capitalists and the Financialization of Capitalism, Antipode,44/2, pp. 535-541.
2012 Of Bats, Birds and Mice, in Gunnar Olsson: On the Geographies of Gunnar Olsson, eds., C. Abrahamson and M. Gren (Ashgate), Ashgate: Farnham, pp.143-155.
2012 Nigeria and the Politics of Price, The Mark, January 25th (http://www.themarknews.com/authors/1569-(link is external)
michael-j-watts).
2012 Economies of Violence: A Critique of the World Development Report 2011. Humanity, 3/1 (Spring), pp.115-130.
2012 Caught on the hop of history: Communes and Communards on the Canvas of 1968, in West of Eden: Communes and Utopia in Northern California. PM Press: Oakland. Iain Boal, Cal Winslow, Janferie Stone and Michael Watts (eds), pp.249-271.
2011 Viille Petroliere: Petro-paysages et futures soutenables. Ecologie et Politique 42, pp. 65-71.
2011 Petroland: Schaften Unde Die Nachhaltigkeit der Zukunft, in The Oil Show, curated by Inke Arns, Hartware MeienKunstVerein, (Dortmund U). Berlin: Verlag (Revolver Publishing), pp.39-51.
2011 Blood Oil, in Stephen Reyna and Andrea Behrends, Stephen Reyna and Gunther Schlee (eds)., Crude Domination: An Anthropology of Oil, Oxford, Berghahn, pp.49-80.
2011 Crimini dimenticati. vita, morte e inganno nei giacimenti petroliferi della Nigeria (Forgotten Crimes: Life, Death and Illusion on the Nigerian Oilfields), '900', La Fine del Petrolio, No. 4, pp.133-166.
2011 Turbulent Oil: Conflict and Insecurity in the Niger Delta (with Ibaba Samuel Ibaba), African Security, 4 (1), 1-19.
2011 Planet of the wageless, Indentities, 18/1, pp.69-80.
2011 Ecologies of Rule, in Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derlugian (eds)., Possible Futures, New York, New York University Press, pp. 67-92.
2011 Blood Oil: The anatomy of an insurgency in the Niger delta, in A. Behrands and S. Reyna (eds)., Crude Domination, Oxford, Berghahn, pp.49-80.
2011 Convergences and Divergences, Dialogues in Human Geography, Vol. 1 (1) 84-89.
2011 Global Political Ecology, in R.Peet, P. Robbins and M. Watts (eds)., Global Political Ecology. London: Routledge, pp. 1-48.
2010 Ed Kashi: Curse of the Black Gold, PORTFOLIO, 51, May, pp. 34-44.
2010 Foreword: Insurgency and the prospects fro development and democracy in the Niger delta, in K. Aaron and D. George (eds)., Placebo as Medicine: The Poverty of Development Intervention And Conflict Resolution Strategies in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria, Port Harcourt, pp.vii-xii.
2010 Gould's Book of Fish, in C.Withers and H. Lorimer (ed)., Geographers: Bibliographical Studies, Volume 29, London: Continuum, pp. 151-176.
2010 Blind Faith: Reflections on Fieldwork in Africa, Cultural Geography, Vol 27/3, pp. 275-285.
2010 Oil City: Petro-Landscapes and Sustainable Future, in Gareth Doherty & Mohsten Mostafavi (ed)., Ecological Urbanism. Baden: Lars Muller Publishers, pp. 420-430 (reprinted in African Cities Reader II: Mobilities and Fixtures, Chimurega Press: Vlaeberg, pp.92-99., 2011, & reprinted in Inke Arnes (curator),
The Oil Show. Exhibition catalogue, Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV), Dortmund).
2009 Editor of a special issue of the Journal of African Development, including the Introduction (with Drs Ibaba and Osagie) pp.9-26, and lead paper 'The Rule of Oil: Petro-Politics and the Anatomy of An Insurgency', Volume 11, # 2, pp.27-56.
2009 Now and Then, Antipode, 41/6, pp. 1152-1168 (reprinted in N. Castree et al., (eds)., The Point is to Change It. Oxford: Blackwell, 2010, pp.10-26).
2009 Reflections, Development and Change, 40/5, 1191-1214.
2009 27 new entries, in The Dictionary of Human Geography, Editors Derek Gregory, Michael Watts et al., (Fifth Edition). London: Blackwell.
2009 Neo-colonialism, and Developmentalism, in Nigel Thrift and Rob Kitchin (editors)., International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Oxford, Elsevier, Volume 3, pp. 123-130, and Volume 7 pp. 360-64.
2009 Radicalism, Writ Large and Small, in Jonathan Pugh (ed)., What Is Radical Politics Today?, London., Palgrave, pp. 103-112.
2009 Slipping into Darkness: Nigeria on the brink, Counterpunch, August 12th (http://www.counterpunch.org/watts08122009.html(link is external)).
2009 Oil, Development and the Politics of the Bottom Billion, MacCalaster International, Volume 24 (summer), 79-130.
2009 Has Globalization failed in Nigeria? Q5 (Yale School of Management), Spring Issue, pp. 72-79.
2008 Exploitation, in William Darity (editor)., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, New York, Gale, Volume 2, 63-65.
2008 Petroleum in Africa, Encyclopedia of the Modern World, New York, Oxford University Press., Volume 3 (e-reference editions hhtp://www.oxford-modernworld.com/entry?entry=t254.e1233-s2(link is external)).
2008 Soft machine: Notes on Oil Addiction, Human Geography 1/2., pp. 33-41.
2008 Nigeria: les guerilleros de l'or noir. Alternatives Internationales, #41, December, pp.16-19.
2008 The Totality for Grownups (RETORT), Public Culture, 20/3, pp. 583-595.
2008 What might resistance to neoliberalism consist of? In James McCarthy and Scott Prudham (eds)., Neoliberal Environments. London, Routledge, pp. 273-279.
2008 The Price of our oil addiction, in David Elliot Cohen (ed)., What Matters. Sterling Publishers: New York/London, pp. 222-242.
2008 Blood Oil: Anatomy of an oil insurgency in the Niger Delta, FOCAAL: European Journal of Anthropology, 52/08, pp. 18-38.
2008 The Southern Question, in C. Kay and H.Akram-Lodhi (eds)., Peasants and Globalization. London: Routledge, pp. 262-288.
2008 Economies of Violence., in Amita Baviska (Editor)., Contested Grounds: Essays on Nature, Culture and Power. New Delhi, Oxford University Press, p. 1061-36.
2008 Economies of Violence: More Blood, More Oil, in A.Baviskar (ed)., Contested Grounds: Essays on Nature, Culture and Power. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 106-136.
2008 Imperial Oil: The anatomy of an oil insurgency, in Erdkunde, 62/1, pp. 27-39.
2008 Anatomy of an oil insurgency, in K. Omeje (ed)., Extractive Economies and Conflicts in the Global South. London: Ashgate, pp. 51-74.
2007 Petro-Insurgency or Criminal Syndicate?, Review of African Political Economy, No.114, pp. 637-660 (reprinted in Rita Abrahamsen (editor), Conflict and Security in Africa. London: James Currey, 2013).
2007 So Goes Port Harcourt….: Violence and Political Disorder in the Niger Delta, CSIS Forum, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC.( http://forums.csis.org/africa/?cat=8(link is external)).
2007 Crisis in Nigeria, Alexander's Oil and Gas Journal, 12/2, January 31st 2007 (http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/nta70590.htm(link is external)) [reprinted as 'Oil Inferno' in Counterpunch January 2007).
2007 Revolutionary Islam and Modern Terror, Allan Pred and Derek Gregory (eds)., Violent Geographies, London, Routledge.
2006 An Exchange on Afflicted Powers. October 115, pp. 3-13.
2006 Neither There War nor their Peace/All Quiet on the Eastern Front, in Okwui Enwezor (ed)., The Unhomely. BIACS @: Seville, pp. 27-31 (reprinted in New Left Review, 41, September 2006, pp. 88-92.), RETORT.
2006 The Liberal International (with I. Boal), Radical Philosophy, #140, December 2006, pp. 40-45.
2006 Empire of Oil, Monthly Review, Vol. 58/4, pp. 1-16.
2006 The Sinister Life of the Community in G. Creed (ed)., The Seductions of Community. School of American Research, Santa Fe, pp. 101-142.
2006 Imperial Oil, Socialist Review, April, 2006 (with Anna Zalik), the web version is available at: http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=9712(link is external)
2006 Culture, Development and Global Neoliberalism, in S.Radcliffe (ed)., Culture and Development in a Globaising World, London, Routledge, pp. 30-58..
2006 In Search of the Holy Grail: Projects, Proposals and Research Design, in Ellen Perecman (ed)., Method is the Madness. New York, Sage, pp. 175-197.
2005 Blood for Oil? London Review of Books, March 31st (with I.Boal and J.Matthews), pp. 12-17.
2005 Left Retort, Antipode, 37/4, pp. 643-654.
2005 Righteous Oil?: Human rights, the oil complex and corporate social responsibility, Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 30, pp. 9.1-9.35.
2005 Revolutionary Islam, Terror and The Colonial Present, Progress in Human Geography, 25/3 , pp. 7-16.
2005 Andre Gunder Frank, in D. Simon (ed)., Fifty Key Thinkers in Development. London, Routledge, pp. 90-96.
2005 Baudelaire over Berea. Public Culture. 17/1 pp. 181-192 (reprinted in S.Nuttall and A. Mbembe (eds)., Johannesburg: the elusive metropolis, Duke University Press, 2005).
2005 Nature/Culture: A Natural History, in R.Johnston and P.Cloke (eds).,Spaces of Geographical Thought. London: Sage, pp. 142-174.
2004 Antinomies of Community, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, special issue, 29, 195-216
2005 Scarcity, Modernity, Terror, in C. Zerner and B.Subramanian (eds)., Making Threats. Rowanheld, pp. 99-106.
2004 Encyclopaedia of International Development, S. Rogers (ed)., (eighteen entries), London: Routledge.
2004 Economies de la Violence: or noir et espaces gouvernables du Nigeria, Politique Africaine. 93, pp. 125-142.
2004 Politics, Ecology, Genealogies (with Susan Paulson and Lisa Gezon), Political Ecology Across Spaces, Scales and Social Groups, edited by Susan Paulson and Lisa Gezon, Rutgers University Press, 2004, pp. 17-41.
2004 Are Chickens like hogs? in A.Hughes and S.Reimer (eds)., Geographies of Commodity Chains, Pearson London, pp. 39-62.
2004 Afflicted Powers, New Left Review, 27, 5-23 [with I.Boal, T.J.Clark and J. Matthews].
2004 Natural Resources, in S. Harrison, S. Pile and N. Thirift (eds)., Patterned Ground. London: Reaktion, pp. 177-179.
2004 Enclosure: A Spatiality of Nature, in Envisioning Human Geographies, P. Cloke, P. Crang and M. Goodwin (eds)., London: Arnold, pp. 48-64.
2004 Liberating Political Ecology (with R.Peet)., in M. Watts and R. Peet (eds)., Liberation Ecologies. London: Routledge, pp. 3-47.
2004 Violent Environments, in M. Watts and R. Peet (eds)., Liberation Ecologies. London: Routledg, pp. 273-299.
2004 Resource Curse?: Oil, Violence and Governmentality in the Niger Delta, Geopolitics [Special issue] 9/1.50-80 (reprinted in Philippe le Billon (ed)., The Geopolitics of Resource Wars, Cass, London, pp. 50-81, 2005; reprinted in B. Braun and Kay Anderson (eds)., Critical Essays in Human Geography, Ashgate, 2008 & reprinted in N. Castree and D.Gregory, Human Geography, Volume 4, Sage, London, 2012).
2003 Verwundbarkeit, Sicherheit und Globalisierung (with Hans-Geog Bohle) in Gebhardt, H., P. Reuber und G. Wolkersdorfer (Hrsg.): Kulturgeographie. Spektrum Akademischer Verlag: Heidelberg/Berlin, 67-83.
2003 Interview on the 1960s, in Global Village: The 1960s, edited by Stephane Aquin, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Quebec.
2003 Alienation and Militancy in the Niger Delta, The Progressive 7/23 (with I. Okonta, O. Douglas) [Reprinted in Robert Bullard (ed).,The Quest For Environmental Justice. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 2005, pp. 239-255].
2003 The Niger Delta, in The World Encyclopaedia of Environmental History, edited by C. Merchant et al., London: Routledge.
2003 Exchange with Homer-Dixon, Environmental Change and Security Project Report, #9, pp. 89-96.
2003 Development as Governmentality. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 24/1, pp. 6-35 (reprinted in S. Corbridge (ed)., Development: Critical Essays in Human Geography, Ashgate, 2008, and in Michael Clifford (ed), Essays in Political Genealogy, London, Routledge, 2008).
2003 Economies of Violence: More Oil, More Blood, Economic and Political Weekly, 38 /48, November 28 2003, pp. 5089-5100.
2003 Alternative Modern: Toward a Cultural Geography of Development, in S.Pile, N.Thrift and K.Anderson M.Domosh, (eds)., Handbook of Cultural Geography, Sage: London, pp. 433-453.
2003 Migrations. Commentary on Sebastiao Salgado. Occasional Paper # 26, Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California, Berkeley.
2002 Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Oesterreichische Zeitschrift fuer Geschichtswissenschaften, 4, pp. 22-51 (and commentary pp. 51-61)
2002 Hour of darkness. Geographica Helvetica, 57/1, pp. 1-14.
2002 Green Capitalism, Green Governmentality, American Behavioral Scientist , 45/9, pp. 1313-1317.
2001 Lost in Space, Progress in Human Geography, 25/4, pp. 581-584.
2001 Black Acts, New Left Review, 9, pp. 125-140.
2001 Petro-Violence: Nation, Identity and Extraction in Nigeria and Ecuador, in N. Peluso and M. Watts (eds) Violent Environments. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 189-212.
2001 Introduction, in N. Peluso and M. Watts (eds)., Violent Environments. Ithaca: Cornell University, Press, pp. 3-33.
2001 1968 and all that…… Progress in Human Geography, 25/2, pp. 157-188.
2000 Violent geographies, City and Society, XIII/1, pp . 83-115.
2001 Development Ethnographies, Ethnography 2/2, pp. 283-300
2001 W.W. Rostow, in R. Jones (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of International Political Economy. London, Routledge
2000 Development at the Millennium. Geographische Zeitschrift, 88/2, pp. 67-93.
2000 Political Ecology, in T. Barnes and E. Sheppard (eds.), A Companion To Economic Geography, Oxford, Blackwell, pp. 257-275
2000 The Great Tablecloth, in G. Clark, M. Gertler and Feldmann (eds.), A Handbook of Economic Geography. London, Oxford University Press, pp. 195-215.
2000 Marx and Recombinant Capitalism: Agrarian Question Reduxe, in African Rural and Urban Studies, 4/2-3, pp. 127-160.
2000 Enclosure, in C. Philo and C. Wilbert (eds.), Animal Spaces, Beastly Places. London: Routledge, pp. 292-304.
2000 Contested Communities, Malignant Market and Gilded Governance, in Charles Zerner (ed)., People, Plants and Justice. New York, Columbia University Press, pp. 21-51.
2000 Poverty and the politics of Alternatives at the end of the Millennium, in Jan Nederveen Pieterse (ed.), Global Futures. London, Zed Press, pp. 133-147.
2000 Dictionary of Human Geography edited by R. Johnston et al. (eds.), Oxford, Blackwell, thirty seven entries.
Information for Graduate Students
Writing research and grant proposals is one of the most difficult — and unavoidable — requirements of graduate study in the social sciences. When it comes time to write them, however, many graduate students feel left to their own devices. This website is designed to help you navigate the hazards this process entails.
This site comprises a collection of tips, samples, and links. It is not meant as a class, nor a substitute for feedback from colleagues and advisors. It is merely an amiable guide meant to help you through an important phase in your academic career. Although biased in favor of “area studies” specialists and those planning to spend extended periods overseas, the content of this workshop is intended to be useful for all students hoping to conduct empirical social-scientific fieldwork.
Effective research or funding proposals are products of what is often a long, lonely, and frustrating process. What is more, many social science graduate students face this challenge with little guidance from teachers or supervisors. While significant differences exist among projects, disciplines, and funders, this site is intended to provide guidance on some common objectives and obstacles. It raises questions to consider, reflections from those who have survived the process, and sage advice from those who are likely to read and evaluate your proposal. It is intended for those just thinking about a research proposal and for those who are already further along.
The site is organized into five inter-related sections, all accessible from the home page. Each of these sub-sections is oriented to a some specific aspect of the grant writing process and includes a series of concise priority lists, links, and samples. There is no best way to use this site. We suggest you spend a couple of minutes looking around to see what might be useful for you now, and what you might need later on. If there is something specific you want to find, or a page you want to re-visit, please use the search engine included on the home page. What follows below is a brief description of the site’s five major sub-sections.
The site’s process and parameters section provides the most explicit advice. Here you will find both general guidelines for what to do (and what to avoid) as well critical characteristics of the proposal’s various sections (e.g., the introduction, methodology, etc.). The nuts and bolts section works as a supplement, providing key practical advice as to how to piece together your work; finding an appropriate and realistic research design, developing a budget, and other concrete tasks which are often ignored in departments’ methodology classes. Our style section offers tips on crafting the proposal as a written document; editing, integrating, and revising. Examples of successful proposals and commentaries from their authors (on both the writing process and their post-field work impressions of their original ideas) are found in the examples area. We have organized these by both discipline and funding body, so you can find those are most relevant to your own work. If you are still searching for the right funder, or feel you need further information on grant writing, the resources section may be just what you need.