• carcerality and abolition
• security, insecurity, violence, militarism
• Africa, South Africa, southern Somalia, US
• border crossing
• engaged anthropology
• visual anthropology

I have studied these issues ethnographically in South Africa, Somalia, and the U.S. After conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Somalia in the late 1980s, I reunited with my former neighbors from Somalia when they began moving to Maine as resettled refugees in 2006. Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine, chronicles their journey from war-torn Somalia, to Kenya’s massive refugee camps, and, finally, to Lewiston. Previous books include Transforming Cape Town (2008) and Unraveling Somalia (1999), and the edited volumes Life by Algorithms (2019), The Insecure American (2009), Why America’s Top Pundits are Wrong (2005), and Violence: A Reader (2002).

I am passionate about the power of the public humanities, having organized statewide collaborative public humanities initiatives, including, most recently, Freedom & Captivity in 2021, which promoted abolitionist visions for Maine through exhibitions, webinars, performances, workshops, classes, and podcasts.

A past President of the Association of Political and Legal Anthropologists and a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow, my work has also been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, Wenner Gren, The National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Philosophical Society, Sigma Xi, School of Advanced Research, Tinker Foundation and the Institutes for Advanced Study at Stellenbosch and Durham.

Migration and Borders. The Somali civil war sent millions of Somalis across borders as refugees, precipitating one of the largest refugee movements at the time. For the past two decades I have studied how borders, nationalisms, statecraft, neoliberalism, and militarism shape mobilities and migratory routes. Some of this work has been ethnographic and focused on the trajectories and experiences of Somalis I have known since the late 1980s, as in Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine. Other work analyzes structural and systemic dimensions at the global level, as in Militarized Global Apartheid, published in 2020.

Security, Militarism and Militarization. As discourses of security and risk continue to feed militarization, anthropologists need to be attentive to their effects. My edited series at Duke University Press, Global Insecurities, showcases ethnographic work on security and insecurity, and my 2020 book, Militarized Global Apartheid argues that a new form of security imperialism is producing a racialized global order maintained by interlinked militarized efforts by the global North to control mobility and labor. The Network of Concerned Anthropologists critically analyzes militarism and militarization in our 2020 book: Militarization: A Reader (Duke University Press). My co-edited volumes The Insecure American (University of California Press, 2009) and Life by Algorithms: How Roboprocesses are Reshaping our World (University of Chicago Press, 2019) analyze permutations of risk and insecurity across a range of domains in contemporary American life.

Experimental, Speculative, and Engaged Anthropology. In addition to teaching and writing op-eds, I’m acutely interested in exploring ways to bring anthropological critiques and perspectives outside the academy through other registers, such as websites, films, art exhibitions, co-learning communities, and fiction. One example is Post-COVID Fantasies, a collection of speculative essays. Another is Making Migration Visible: Traces, Tracks, Pathways, an exhibition and statewide calendar of events I curated with artist Julie Poitras Santos. The co-edited volume Why America's Top Pundits are Wrong (University of California Press, 2005) features accessible essays by anthropologists who are challenging predominant narratives in the media about the post-Cold War world.