Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Postconflict peacebuilding has come to exemplify the process of consolidating peace in war-torn socieities. For the international community, repatriation and reintegration are viewed not only as the most durable solution to addressing refugees but also as critical to postconflict peacebuilding success. This paper uses environmental constraints as an explanatory lens to understand outcomes of refugee repatriation and reintegration. Specifically, it examines two key environmental constraints – access to productive land and natural resources extraction to meet livelihood needs. This paper focuses on the refugee repatriation and reintegration processes in postconflict Mozambique, Guatemala and Rwanda and makes three substantive arguments. First, the underlying norms, assumptions and decisions of national governments and the international community – which emphasizes repatriation and reintegration to one’s home of origin or home community – may actually be counterproductive to short-term protection, sustainable reintegration and long-term stability. Second, although refugees frequently want to return home, their choices are made with the intention of seeking out better livelihoods over time and space. And third, environmental constraints are significant, and can have either positive or negative repercussions for sustained peace in postconflict societies. In the end, this paper is a preliminary assessment that raises questions for further empirical work.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In the following paper I argue that in our contemporary global political climate ? which is characterized by gross power differentials between the global North and South ? the ?international humanitarian regime? conceptualizes refugees as a "problem" to be "solved". It is through this conceptualization that repatriation has become the preferred ?durable solution? to refugees? plight. Rather than solving refugees? problems, however, I contend that repatriation today serves to solve the problem of refugees. As such, I argue that repatriation is not only far from a durable solution, but far from a solution at all. I suggest that if we wish to truly help refugees find durable solutions to their problems we must first interrogate the unequal global power dynamics that produce refugee situations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The repatriation of archaeological materials to their countries and cultures of origin is a hotly debated issue among several interest groups, including archaeologists, professionals, policymakers and numerous ‘publics’ both here and abroad. As archaeologists and anthropologists become more involved in legal and policy issues, we need to take a more serious look at what repatriation is about and resist quick and easy solutions which may be counterproductive to the disciplines’ larger ethical goals. For instance, what does the material at issue mean to people today in its current context? Moreover, does the notion of ‘patria’ adequately characterize the interests involved? Does returning things to a nation necessarily put right past wrongs?
This paper examines two distinct ways that archaeological positions on repatriation, once moved out of academic discourse and into policy, depart from its own contemporary theorizing about cultural materials, thus allowing the development of misguided and perhaps detrimental policy positions. First, by unquestioningly supporting repatriation policies while at the same time critiquing nationalism, we not only risk undermining our own theoretical program, but repatriation under such circumstances may not return the material to the group with the strongest claim. Second, while many archaeologists recognize that the meanings of objects are not static but continually shifting, we fail to take this view in repatriation disputes, and instead prioritize ‘original’ cultural identifications over present concerns, thus missing that it is not economic property per se, but the recognition of rights, that is the heart of such disputes.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper I explore the complex politics of advocacy, specifically within the context of anthropology museums. In the process of conducting a series of interviews with anthropologists at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum (regarding the politics of repatriation and community engagement with Native American groups), the concept of advocacy was repeatedly evoked. It was considered by most anthropologists within the department to be an important standard of academic practice – one that absolutely predated the repatriation legislation that calls into question the ethics of collecting and curating items such as human remains, sacred objects and funerary goods. Interestingly, the enactment of this advocacy is by no means standard: degrees and styles of community involvement and collaboration vary greatly among anthropologists in the department. The spectrum of advocacy ranges from somewhat abstract, philosophical understandings that are not quite actualized, to deep scholarly commitments resulting in projects that are formed by and dependent upon community involvement every step of the way. While many of these efforts have resulted in collaborations benefiting both museum and native communities alike, the concept of advocacy remains politically complex and not unproblematic. For instance, one anthropologist discussed the astonishment within the archaeology community at having been portrayed by native activists as exploitative:

I think there was a lot of frustration on the part of the department in particular in [relation to] its history…. I think there was a feeling that the department had been much more engaged in a positive way in relations with Native Americans and with indigenous peoples than we were given credit for and were engaged in that really from early on as well. There were also people like [John Wesley] Powell and [William Henry] Holmes … who went out of their way to advocate for Native Americans, when the west was changing, for the preservation of culture and the preservation of life-ways… [these include] people [who were] part of the BAE. And that kind of more of an advocacy position continued up to the present day and I think there was a huge amount of frustration within the part of the department that [they] were being cast as … exploitative.*

This reference to late nineteenth-century anthropological practice raises some difficult questions about the political realities of advocacy. It forces uncomfortable questions about who has the power to be an advocate, who determines what kind of advocacy is needed, whether it is even asked for and to what extent notions of advocacy are imbricated within larger structures of power and inequity? I am interested in problematizing the concept, especially as it relates to interpretive authority (embedded as it is within (neo)colonial socio-political contexts). The presumption that the work of anthropologists necessarily suits the needs and interests of the communities indicates a sort of authority that is taken for granted; it is the product of unrecognized power and privilege. I argue the necessity of recognizing this dynamic in the process of forging new, more equitable collaborative relationships.

*Tape 13, Personal Interview, 13 January 2006.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: Scholarship on the transatlantic slave trade has advanced rapidly over the last two decades. There are
now, for example, several huge datasets available online to anyone who has access to a computer. Collectively,
the datasets are believed to account for over 35,000 voyages –about 90% of the total voyages that crisscrossed
the Atlantic during transatlantic slave trade. These datasets have greatly enhance the statistical profile and, to a
lesser extent, qualitative knowledge of the slave trade. However these important advances have done little to
resolve the vexing question of whom, if anyone, can or should be held accountable for the slave trade and its
aftermath. Who benefited from slavery and who was harmed by it? Were Africans overwhelmed victims or
willing collaborators? Consensus on the transatlantic slave trade frequently breaks down into resolutely
opposed camps when it comes to sorting out this issue. On one end are those who believe that Europeans and
Euro-Americans were primarily responsible for the imposition “peculiar institution”; and on the other extreme
are those who suggest that Africans were mainly responsible for facilitating the slave trade.
Accountability matters here for one concrete, if controversial, reason: reparations. Determining
accountability speaks directly to the question of compensatory and restorative justice for the slave trade. In this
paper, I will discuss and analyze several ways in which the reparations debate has played out in Ghana
including, most significantly, the Fihankra movement. The Fihankra movement, initiated in 1994, has
established a township on 30,000 acres of “free” land in the Eastern region of Ghana for African diasporan
“returnees.” The settlement was a culmination of a series of sacred rituals of atonement and reconciliation for
the central role that some Ghanaian traditional rulers played in the transatlantic slave trade. It is, as far as I
know, the only documented instance wherein the demand for slavery reparations has been met with
compensation.