Africa

United States of America

Professor of Anthropology and African Studies

Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan

derman@pilot.msu.edu

354 Baker Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1118 USA

phone: 515-355-0208
fax: 517-432-2363

http://anthropology.msu.edu/faculty/derman.shtml

Malawi ; Zimbabwe

His interests are in environment and change, planned rural development,
analyses of development projects, and, more recently, decentralization of
natural resource management institutions. For five years, beginning in
1989, he conducted a study of the Mid-Zambezi Rural Development Project,
one of the only resettlement projects carried out in communal lands in
Zimbabwe. He then turned to an examination of Zambezi Valley land-use
planning in general. He critiqued the government for employing a
technocratic, ecologically insensitive, and top-down approach to this
area.

With the Centre for Applied Social Sciences, he began a long-term
study of the processes of water reform, water management institutions, and
decentralization. The project will be carried out in Malawi and Zimbabwe with most of the field
research being carried out by African researchers from the University of
Zimbabwe and the University of Malawi.

2007 Citizenship and Identity: Conflicts over Land and Water in
Contemporary Africa edited with Rie Odgaard and Espen Sjaastad. London,
Durban and East Lansing: James Currey, University of Kwa-Zulu Press and
Michigan State University Press.

2007 Introduction to Citizenship and Identity in Conflicts over Land and
Water in Contemporary Africa co-authored by Rie Odgaard and Espen
Sjaastad. London, Durban and East Lansing: James Currey, University of
Kwazulu Press and Michigan State University Press, pp. 1-30.

2007 Land, Identity and Violence in Zimbabwe co-authored by Anne Hellum
in Citizenship, Identity and Conflicts over Land and Water in Contemporary
Africa edited with Rie Odgaard and Espen Sjaastad. London, Durban and East
Lansing: James Currey, University of Kwazulu Press and Michigan State
University Press, pp. 161-186.

2007 Livelihood rights perspective on water reform: Reflections on rural
Zimbabwe (co-authored by Anne Hellum) Land Use Policy 24(4), in a special
issue in Exploring New Understandings of Resource Tenure and Reform in the
Context of Globalisation edited by T.A. Benjaminsen, B. Derman and E.
Sjaastad, pp. 664-673.

2007 Exploring new understandings of resource tenure and reform in the
context of globalisation co-authored by Tor. A. Benjaminsen and Espen
Sjaastad. Land Use Policy 24(4), in Exploring New Understandings of
Resource Tenure and Reform in the Context of Globalisation edited by T.A.
Benjaminsen, B. Derman and E. Sjaastad, pp. 611-612.

2007 Intersections of Law, Human Rights and Water Management in
Zimbabwe: Implications for Rural Livelihood co-authored by Anne Hellum,
Emmanuel Manzungu, Pinimidzai Sithole and Rose Machiridza in
Community-Based Water Law and Water Resource Management Reform in
Developing Countries Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in
Agriculture Series, Vol 5 Edited by B van Koppen, M Giordano, J
Butterworth. Wallingford, U.K.: CABI Publications, Chapter 15.

2005 The Incredible Heaviness of Water: Water Policy and Water Reform
in the new Millennium in Southern Africa in Globalization, Water and Health:
Resource Management in Times of Scarcity edited by Linda and Scott
Whiteford. Sante Fe: School of American Research, pp. 209-230.

2005 Negotiating Water Rights in the Context of a New Political and
Legal Landscape in Zimbabwe (co-authored by Anne Hellum) in Mobile People,
Mobile Law: Expanding Legal Relations in a Contracting World edited by
Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Anne Griffiths.
Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, pp.177-198.

2005 Whose Water? The Political Ecology of Water Reform in Zimbabwe
(co-authored by Anne Ferguson) in Political Ecology Across Spaces, Scales
and Social Groups edited by Lisa Gezon and Susan Paulson, Rutgers
University Press, Fall, pp. 61-75.

rural development ; decentralization ; resource management ; applied social sciences.