The twenty-first century has seen a further dramatic increase in the use of quantitative knowledge for governing social life after its explosion in the 1980s. Indicators and rankings play an increasing role in the way governmental and non-governmental organizations distribute attention, make decisions, and allocate scarce resources. Quantitative knowledge promises to be more objective and straightforward as well as more transparent and open for public debate than qualitative knowledge, thus producing more democratic decision-making. However, we know little about the social processes through which this knowledge is constituted nor its effects. Understanding how such numeric knowledge is produced and used is increasingly important as proliferating technologies of quantification alter modes of knowing in subtle and often unrecognized ways. This book explores the implications of the global multiplication of indicators as a specific technology of numeric knowledge production used in governance.

The twenty-first century has seen a further dramatic increase in the use of quantitative knowledge for governing social life after its explosion in the 1980s. Indicators and rankings play an increasing role in the way governmental and non-governmental organizations distribute attention, make decisions, and allocate scarce resources. Quantitative knowledge promises to be more objective and straightforward as well as more transparent and open for public debate than qualitative knowledge, thus producing more democratic decision-making. However, we know little about the social processes through which this knowledge is constituted nor its effects. Understanding how such numeric knowledge is produced and used is increasingly important as proliferating technologies of quantification alter modes of knowing in subtle and often unrecognized ways. This book explores the implications of the global multiplication of indicators as a specific technology of numeric knowledge production used in governance.

Examines the commodification of land rights and the effect of international licences for resource extraction on the pastoral communities of Sudan. Nowhere has a range of case studies of Sudan been brought together in a single volume. Given the concern with the growing number and complexity of conflicts in Sudan and South Sudan there is a significant readership in academic circles and from those involved in humanitarian organisations of all kinds. Professor Peter Woodward, University of Reading "A timely contribution to an important set of debates ... tackles questions emerging from discussions about modernisation, urbanisation and globalisation from an explicitly local angle with regards to Sudan." Dr Harry Verhoeven, University of Oxford Sudan experiences one of the most severe fissures between society and territory in Africa. Not only were its international borders redrawn when South Sudan separated in 2011, but conflicts continue to erupt over access to land: territorial claims are challenged by local and international actors; borders are contested; contracts governing the privatization of resources are contentious; and the legal entitlements to agricultural land are disputed. Under these new dynamics of land grabbing and resource extraction, fundamental relationships between people and land are being disrupted: while land has become a global commodity, for millions it still serves as a crucial reference for identity-formation and constitutes their most important source of livelihood. This book seeks to disentangle the emerging relationships between people and land in Sudan. The first part focuses on the spatial impact of resource-extracting economies: foreign agricultural land acquisitions; Chinese investments in oil production; and competition between artisanal and industrial gold mining. Detailed ethnographic case studies in the second part, from Darfur, South Kordofan, Red Sea State, Kassala, Blue Nile, and Khartoum State, show how rural people experience "their" land vis-a-vis the latest wave of privatization and commercialization of land rights. Joerg Gertel is Professor of Economic Geography at Leipzig University; Richard Rottenburg is Chair of Anthropology at the University of Halle; Sandra Calkins is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle

Africa is changing and digitisation is playing a pivotal role in it. Throughout the whole continent, digital practices are emerging which radically transform African societies and their worldwide perception. However, digital infrastructures remain marked by local and global asymmetries despite the widespread use of mobile phones. Over the course of two years and in three African and European cities, the interdisciplinary exhibition and research project Digital Imaginaries took this contradictory diversity of digital phenomena as its starting point in order to explore possible digital futures in Africa. Texts by Bethlehem Anteneh, Younes Baba-Ali / Aude Tournaye, Tegan Bristow, Mehdi Derfoufi, Mamadou Diallo / Judith Rottenburg, Sunny Dolat / Njoki Ngumi (The Nest Collective), Oulimata Gueye, Thomas Hervé, Francois Knoetze, Sénamé Koffi Agbodjinou / Manuel Bürger, Bettina Korintenberg, Siri Lamoureaux / Enrico Ille / Amal Fadlalla / Timm Sureau, Achille Mbembe, Maurice Mbikayi, Julien McHardy, Christopher McMichael, Marcus Neustetter / Mwenya Kabwe, Nanjala Nyabola, DK Osseo-Asare / Yasmine Abbas, Tabita Rezaire, Richard Rottenburg, Daniel Sciboz, Joseph Tonda, Michel Wahome, Philipp Ziegler

Racial and ethnic categories have appeared in recent scientific work in novel ways and in relation to a variety of disciplines: medicine, forensics, population genetics and also developments in popular genealogy. Once again, biology is foregrounded in the discussion of human identity. Of particular importance is the preoccupation with origins and personal discovery and the increasing use of racial and ethnic categories in social policy. This new genetic knowledge, expressed in technology and practice, has the potential to disrupt how race and ethnicity are debated, managed and lived. As such, this volume investigates the ways in which existing social categories are both maintained and transformed at the intersection of the natural (sciences) and the cultural (politics). The contributors include medical researchers, anthropologists, historians of science and sociologists of race relations; together, they explore the new and challenging landscape where biology becomes the stuff of identity.

Racial and ethnic categories have appeared in recent scientific work in novel ways and in relation to a variety of disciplines: medicine, forensics, population genetics and also developments in popular genealogy. Once again, biology is foregrounded in the discussion of human identity. Of particular importance is the preoccupation with origins and personal discovery and the increasing use of racial and ethnic categories in social policy. This new genetic knowledge, expressed in technology and practice, has the potential to disrupt how race and ethnicity are debated, managed and lived. As such, this volume investigates the ways in which existing social categories are both maintained and transformed at the intersection of the natural (sciences) and the cultural (politics). The contributors include medical researchers, anthropologists, historians of science and sociologists of race relations; together, they explore the new and challenging landscape where biology becomes the stuff of identity.

This book is about the making and unmaking of socio- cultural differences, seen from anthropological, sociological, and philosophical perspectives. Some contributions are of a theoretical nature, such as when the "problem of translation," "the enigma of alienity," or "queer theory" are addressed; others shed light on contemporary issues, such as the integration of Muslims in Norway, identity-forming processes in Creole societies or neo-traditionalist movements and identity in Africa. Moreover, the book deals with strangers looked at from an "anthropology of the night" perspective. Special emphasis is placed on how globalization and the rapid spread of increasingly new technologies of information have generated new patterns of inclusion and exclusion, and how these can be theorized.

Richard Rottenburg and Burkhard Schnepel are both professors of cultural anthropology. Shingo Shimada holds a chair in Intercultural Sociology at the newly founded Institute for Ethnology (Cultural Anthropolgy) at Martin-Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg. The editors areas of interest include: anthropology of law, organization, science and technology in Africa, diaspora-migration-transculture, and intercultural comparison/translation/intercultural understanding.

In the domain of health, the relation between bodies, citizenship, nations and governments has changed beyond recognition over the past four decades, especially in Africa. In many regions, populations are now faced with a total lack of medical care, and the disciplinary regimes of modernity are faint memories. In this situation, new critical insights beyond the critique of old modernization and the disciplinary regimes of imperial times are needed. How can we keep up our sophisticated criticism of knowledge regimes and our doubts with regard to narratives of development, when so many people in Africa are dreaming about modernity and are envisioning their own renaissance?