I received both of my graduate degrees in Anthropology from the University of Toronto, after having completed a first degree in English Languages and Literature in the United States Since my initial work with the Őmie of Papua New Guinea, focused on the rare form of gender specific group...
Renee Sylvain
I joined the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Guelph in 2002. I received my undergraduate degree in Anthropology from Wilfrid Laurier University and my M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Toronto. I spent two years at Dalhousie University as a postdoctoral fellow where my research focused on indigenous peoples’ rights issues.
Current Project(s):
My research interests include the intersections of gender, race/ethnic and class inequalities, human rights, and indigenous peoples’ issues in southern Africa. I have conducted fieldwork in the Omaheke Region of eastern Namibia among the San (Bushmen) who live and work on white-owned farms since 1996. My current research examines human rights issues and concepts of social justice from the perspective of indigenous minorities in southern Africa. I focus in particular on the perspectives of the San on the changing nature of harms and injustice from apartheid to post-apartheid contexts.
Selected Publications:
2011. “At the Intersections: San Women and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Africa”, the International Journal of Human Rights 15(1):89-110.
2007. “Structural Violence and Social Suffering among the San in Southern Africa”, Indigenous Affairs (Special Issue: Social Suffering). 4/07.
2006. “Drinking, Fighting and Healing: San Struggles for Survival and Solidarity in the Omaheke Region, Namibia”, in Updating the San: Image and Reality of an African People in the 21st Century, Robert K. Hitchcock, Kazunobu Ikeya, Richard B. Lee, and Megan Biesele, eds. Senri Ethnological Series, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka.
2005. “Disorderly Development: Globalization and the Idea of Culture in the Kalahari”, American Ethnologist 32(3): 354-370. Reprinted in:
Accessing Anthropology: Introducing the Field of Cultural Anthropology. Candace Coffman, ed. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company. 2010.
The Anthropology of Globalization, 2nd edition. Renato Rosaldo and Jonathan Xavier Inda, eds. Blackwell, 2008.
Inclusion and Exclusion in the Global Arena. Max Kirsch, ed. Routledge. 2006.
2005. “Loyalty and Treachery in the Kalahari”, in Auto-ethnographies: The Anthropology of Academic Practices, Donna Young and Anne Meneley, eds. Broadview Press.
2004. “Between Rock Art and a Hard Place: A Kalahari Family as Ethnographic Argument”, Visual Anthropology Review, 19(1 and 2):141-148.
2004.“San Women Today: Inequality and Dependency in a Post-Foraging World”, Indigenous Affairs (special issue: “Indigenous Women”) 1-2/04.
2003. “Class, Culture, and Recognition: San Farm Workers and Indigenous Identities”, Anthropologica 45(1):105-113. Reprinted in:
Political Anthropology: Theory and Practice. Essays in Honour of Richard Lee. Jacqueline Solway, ed. Berghahn Press. 2006.
2002. “‘Land, Water, and Truth’: San Identity and Global Indigenism”, American Anthropologist 104(4):1074-1084. Reprinted in:
Social Movements: A Reader, June Nash, ed. Blackwell Publishers. Series: Blackwell Readers in Anthropology.2004.
2002. “After Foraging: the Omaheke San”, Cultural Survival Quarterly (special issue “The Kalahari San: Self-Determination in the Desert), 26(1):17-18.
2001. “Bushmen, Boers and Baasskap: Patriarchy and Paternalism on Afrikaner Farms in the Omaheke Region, Namibia”, Journal of Southern African Studies 27(4):717-737.
Email:
rsylvain@uoguelph.ca Phone:
52721
Office Number:
601