Catherine L. Besteman

Sabbatical: 09/01/2018 - 08/31/2019

Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology

Office: Diamond 302 [ campus map ]
Box 4702

Phone: 207-859-4702
Fax: 207-859-4425
Mailing Address:
4702 Mayflower Hill
Waterville, Maine 04901-8847
Besteman, Catherine L.

Education

B.A. Amherst
M.A.; Ph.D. University of Arizona

Areas of Expertise

  • Inequality and racism
  • security, insecurity, violence, militarism
  • Africa, South Africa, southern Somalia, US
  • migration and mobility
  • engaged anthropology
  • visual anthropology

Professional Information

I have taught Anthropology and African Studies at Colby since 1994. My teaching and research interests focus on analyzing power dynamics that produce and maintain inequality, racism and violence, as well as activist and community efforts for social change. I have studied these issues in southern Somalia, South Africa, and the U.S. My work has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the School of Advanced Research, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Current Research


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 and some analyzes structural and systemic dimensions at the global level, as in my current book project, Militarized Global Apartheid.
Visual Anthropology. In addition to teaching and writing op-eds, I’m acutely interested in exploring ways to bring anthropological critiques to broader audiences through visual registers, such as websites, films, and most especially art exhibitions, as in my fall 2018 project Making Migration Visible: Traces, Tracks, Pathways at Portland’s Institute of Contemporary Art, co-curated with artist Julie Poitras Santos and funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The exhibition is accompanied by a wide range of events about migration, mobility, and border crossings hosted by partner organizations, such as performances, exhibitions, films, lectures, community conversations, and poetry readings.
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 I continue to work with the Network of Concerned Anthropologists to critically analyze and challenge militarism and militarization.
Click on this link to read the pledge against anthropological involvement in covert intelligence work: Pledge
Public Anthropology. Anthropology is a discipline of profound importance in a globalized world. Demonstrating anthropology's critical insights on contemporary issues is the central project of three coedited books with anthropologist Hugh Gusterson (George Washington University). The Insecure American (University of California Press, 2009), Why America's Top Pundits are Wrong (University of California Press, 2005), and Life by Algorithms: How Roboprocesses are Reshaping our World (forthcoming from University of Chicago Press).

Publications




The Insecure American, coedited with Hugh Gusterson, University of California Press, 2009





Transforming Cape Town, University of California Press, 2008 (Leeds Honor Book Award, Society for Urban, National, and Transnational Anthropology, 2009)





In Why America's Top Pundits Are Wrong: Anthropologists Talk Back (University of California Press 2005), coedited with Hugh Gusterson, anthropologists challenge the portrait of the post Cold War world promoted by some of American's foremost commentators.





Violence: A Reader (Palgrave Press and New York University Press 2002) is a collection of significant theoretical and ethnographic studies of violence by social scientists.





Unraveling Somalia: Race, Violence, and the Legacy of Slavery (University of Pennsylvania Press 1999) is an ethnographic account of life in the Middle Jubba Valley of Somalia just before the civil war began.





The Struggle for Land in Southern Somalia: The War Behind the War (Westview Press and Haan Publishing 1996), edited with Lee V. Cassanelli, analyzes the historical factors that contributed to the patterns of violence in southern Somalia during the civil war.


Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston Maine (Duke University Press, 2016). How do people who have survived the ravages of war and displacement rebuild their lives in a new country when their world has totally changed? This book follows the trajectory of Somali Bantus from their homes in Somalia before the onset of Somalia’s civil war, to their displacement by violence to Kenyan refugee camps, to their resettlement in cities across the United States, to their settlement in Lewiston, Maine as “secondary migrants” grappling with the struggles of xenophobia, neoliberalism, and grief. Tracking their experiences over three decades of mobility from refugee camps to places of refuge in the US, the book asks what humanitarianism feels like to those who are its objects and what happens when refugees move in next door. The competing and contradictory responses by Lewiston’s residents to the unexpected arrival of thousands of refugees illuminates contemporary debates about economic responsibility, moral responsibility, security and community that immigration provokes.

Selected Recent Journal Articles


2019 "Refuge and Security Panics." Public Anthropology.
2019 "Militarized Global Apartheid." Cultural Anthropology.
2019 "Hostile Charity: Somali Refugees and Risk in a New Security Age." In Erica Caple James, ed., Governing Gifts, Faith, Charity, and the Security State. Santa Fe, NM: School of Advanced Research Press.
2017 "Experimenting in Somalia: The New Security Empire." Anthropological Theory 17(3): 404-420. 2014 "On Ethnographic Love." In Roger Sanjek, ed., Mutuality. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
2013 "Refuge Fragments, Fragmentary Refuge." Ethnography.
2013 “Three Reflections on Public Anthropology.” Anthropology Today 29(6): 3-6.
2013 “Somali Bantus in a State of Refuge.” Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies 12: 11-33.
2012 “Translating Race Across Time and Space: The Creation of Somali Bantu Ethnicity.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 19(3): 1-18.
2010 "“In and Out of the Academy: The Case for a Strategic Anthropology.” Human Organization 69(4): 407-417.
2009 “A Refuge Odyssey: A Story of Globalization and Somali Bantu Refugees.” Anthropology Now 1(2): 96-108.
2009 “Counter Africom.” In The Counter-Counter Insurgency Manual, or Notes on Demilitarizing American Society. Network of Concerned Anthropologists Steering Committee. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, p. 115-135.

 

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