Agency in Africa

Understanding large-scale transformation processes requires a focus on agency in Africa, an approach in which the local actors’ understanding of their circumstances is crucial. Their perceptions, ideas, emotions and even fantasies are taken into consideration. The theme group aims to study the processes of meaning and signification in which agency transpires, in the decisions and choices that people make and the hopes and desires they express.

The research concentrates on investigating how these processes have a bearing on all kinds of political, economic and social changes in their livelihoods, or to what extent they are affected by these changes. The approach is both empirical and reflexive. The theme group’s research focuses on three fields of study: mobility; power, contestation and confrontation; and issues of knowledge and reflexivity.

Head

Dr M.E. de Bruijn

Members

• W.E.A. van Beek
• W.M.J. van Binsbergen
• M.E. de Bruijn
• R.A. van Dijk
• J.B. Gewald
• G.S.C.M. Hesseling
• M.M.A. Kaag

Associate members

• F. Nyamnjoh
• M. Spierenburg
• M. Steegstra