Website: Sibelkusimba.com - Economic Anthropology - Money and Digital Money - Archaeology - Ethnohistory - Iron Age and Hunter-gatherers - East Africa - Kenya
Information Technologies and International Development, 2015
This research examines the interplay between social networks and mobile money remittances in West... more This research examines the interplay between social networks and mobile money remittances in Western Kenya. Research was conducted in Kenya’s Bungoma and Trans-Nzoia counties in 2012, 2013, and 2014, involving 12 family networks of between 8—70 people. Using small and frequent digital money transfers, relatives provide for household and emergency needs, contribute to ceremonies, and help pay school fees and medical bills. We find that digital money transfers follow and reinforce preexisting forms of emotional support and social relationships. In these families, the transfers strengthen maternal kinship ties as well relationships among siblings and cousins. Money networks are reciprocal, such that senders are also receivers, and individuals have many connections through which to access resources. Some individuals are “central” in networks, having more connections; others broker flows of e-value from one group of relatives to another. Mobile money strengthens social bonds but can also...
Ethics of DNA research on human remains: five globally applicable guidelines, 2021
We are a group of archaeologists, anthropologists, curators and geneticists representing diverse ... more We are a group of archaeologists, anthropologists, curators and geneticists representing diverse global communities and 31 countries. All of us met in a virtual workshop dedicated to ethics in ancient DNA research held in November 2020. There was widespread agreement that globally applicable ethical guidelines are needed, but that recent recommendations grounded in discussion about research on human remains from North America are not always generalizable worldwide. Here we propose the following globally applicable guidelines, taking into consideration diverse contexts. These hold that: (1) researchers must ensure that all regulations were followed in the places where they work and from which the human remains derived; (2) researchers must prepare a detailed plan prior to beginning any study; (3)
This article reviews major issues and evidence related to hunter-gatherers in East Africa, includ... more This article reviews major issues and evidence related to hunter-gatherers in East Africa, including archaeological sites of the Middle and Later Stone Age and the archaeological record of the transition to food production. The relevance of the ethnographic record to our understanding of ancient hunter-gatherers is also discussed.
... in Southern Kenya Sibel B. Kusimba and Cbapurukha M. Kusimba 1 2 The East African Neolithic: ... more ... in Southern Kenya Sibel B. Kusimba and Cbapurukha M. Kusimba 1 2 The East African Neolithic: A Historical Perspective Karega-Munene 17 3 ... at Kivinja, Tanzania Felix Chami 87 7 Ironworking on the Swahili Coast of Kenya Chapurukha M. Kusimba and David Killick 99 8 Iron ...
Archaeologists and historians have long believed that little interaction existed between Iron Age... more Archaeologists and historians have long believed that little interaction existed between Iron Age cities of the Kenya Coast and their rural hinterlands. Ongoing archaeological and anthropological research in Tsavo, Southeast Kenya, shows that Tsavo has been continuously inhabited at least since the early Holocene. Tsavo peoples made a living by foraging, herding, farming, and producing pottery and iron, and in the Iron Age were linked to global markets via coastal traders. They were at one point important suppliers of ivory destined for Southwest and South Asia. Our excavations document forager and agropastoralist habitation sites, iron smelting and iron working sites, fortified rockshelters, and mortuary sites. We discuss the relationship between fortified rockshelters, in particular, and slave trade.
... Holl, Philip Kilbride, David Kuehn, Sally MacBrearty, Curtis Marean, Harry Merrick, Charles N... more ... Holl, Philip Kilbride, David Kuehn, Sally MacBrearty, Curtis Marean, Harry Merrick, Charles Nel-son, Peter Peregrine, James Phillips, Ronald Mason, Carol Mason, Anna Roosevelt, Fred Smith, Olga Soffer, Gil Stein, Thomas J. Riley ... The index was prepared by Amanda Halpin. ...
In a world of social inequality, health disparities, and poverty, the economic value of people re... more In a world of social inequality, health disparities, and poverty, the economic value of people remains unrecognized, undervalued, and exploited. Recently, the ongoing conflict between capitalist markets and human value came to the fore again during the coronavirus pandemic, when many health systems were unprepared. In the United States, business and government leaders feared that quarantines would damage the economy. Their public statements urging the reopening of stores and public spaces pitted market value against the value of human lives. How can anthropology bring the value of people to light? How have varied societies valued human lives, qualities, and works? The articles in this special issue develop the 2019 Society for Economic Anthropology conference theme "Wealth-in-People." Inspired by ethnographies of certain African societies, the wealth-in-people literature has moved from politics and demography to inequality and marginalization to the pricing of life, and has settled on wealth-in-people as a collective that assembles individuals with diverse and complementary qualities. Collectives of wealth-in-people build on these qualities, including knowledge, skill, beauty, emotional and distributive labor, and artistic expression. They become more than the sum of their parts. Seen from our current moment, wealth-in-people as a theory of value takes us beyond false choices between the economy and people. By illuminating forms of economic life from the ground up, the wealth-in-people approach, like similar recent concepts, including the human economy and social worth, can catalyze a more democratic economy.
Why is social inequality a feature of so many societies? Every generation of archaeologists has s... more Why is social inequality a feature of so many societies? Every generation of archaeologists has sought to understand the transformation from egalitarian bands to today’s world of ‘savage inequalities.’ In this chapter, we draw from recent archaeological research in Eastern and Southern Africa to explain the emergence of socially and politically hierarchical chiefdoms, polities, and states. We identify three main sources of social power: trade, investment in extractive technologies , and elite monopolization of wealth-creating resources. Along the East African Coast, we find that autonomous city-states developed here on local, regional, and trans-continental scales because of Indian Ocean trade. In spite of the wealth the Swahili elites amassed, their city-states remained independent. In Southern Africa, the Southern Zambezian Culture developed similar political formations, but in this highland fertile plain some polities were able to extend their political control over larger geographical areas. Like the Swahili , the Zimbabwe elites were wealthy through trade, taking tribute from foot caravans of gold and ivory bound for the southern Swahili Coast. In the case of Zimbabwe, militarism was a second strategy to consolidate power over the geography of these trade conduits. Studying the evolution of social complexity among the Swahili city-states and the Zimbabwe Plateau demonstrates that trade and militarism are sources of political power for African elites, as they were in other parts of the ancient world. We discuss the impact of these findings in understanding today’s dilemmas of power and inequality.
This article examines the role of gender in the use of digital finance in Kenya, including the we... more This article examines the role of gender in the use of digital finance in Kenya, including the well-known case of mobile money but also the emerging use of smartphone apps, payment tills, digital credit services, and digital fund-raising computer programs. Development professionals have explicitly feminist goals in bringing digital finance to women in the Global South. In several recent reports, they outline the belief that gender norms are a barrier to women's use of finance. They hope digital finance will bring women agency and control over money and consequently shift restrictive gender norms. This article offers a critique of these assumptions based on ethnographic conversations, a diary exercise, and network self-portraiture conducted in Kenya in 2016 among both rural farmers and urbanites. Adopting a distributed agency perspective, the ethnographic study demonstrates that Kenyan women and men use digital finance not to seek individual control of their money but to produce themselves as connected and trustworthy members of financial groups and collectivities. Gender norms may not hinder women from finance but rather enhance and deepen women's and men's financial relationships and bring women success in amassing funds.
Kenyans use mobile money services to transfer money to friends and relatives via mobile phone tex... more Kenyans use mobile money services to transfer money to friends and relatives via mobile phone text messaging. Kenya's M-Pesa is one of the most successful examples of digital money for financial inclusion. This article uses social network analysis and ethnographic information to examine ties to and through women in 12 mobile money transfer networks of kin, drawn from field data collected in 2012, 2013, and 2014. The social networks are based on reciprocal and dense ties among siblings and parents, especially mothers. Men participate equally in social networks, but as brothers and mother's brothers more often than as fathers. The matrilineal ties of mobile money circulate value within the hearthhold (Ekejiuba 2005) of women, their children, and others connected to them. Using remittances, families negotiate investments in household farming or work, education, and migration. Money sending supports the diverse economic strategies, flexible kinship ties, and mobility of hearthholds. Gifts of e-money are said to express a natural love and caring among mothers and siblings and are often private and personal. Consequently, the money circulations of the hearthhold avoid disrupting widely shared ideals of patrilineal solidarity and household autonomy.
This paper, based on fieldwork in Western Kenya from 2012 to 2016, describes how life cycle ritua... more This paper, based on fieldwork in Western Kenya from 2012 to 2016, describes how life cycle rituals collect and distribute different forms of money, including land, property, personhood, animals, cash, and digital moneys. It specifically examines a ritual coming of age for adolescent boys. By organizing multiple forms of money relative to the phases of a human life, the past, and the future, these rituals serve to manage and transfer wealth across generations and to give these transfers social and moral dimensions. The study provokes a critique of financial initiatives in the Global South that often assume that the financial goals of the poor are short-term. Résumé: Basé sur des recherches de terrain dans l'ouest du Kenya de 2012 à 2016, cet article décrit comment des rites du cycle de vie sont mobilisés pour collecter et distribuer différentes formes d'objets de valeur, y compris la terre, la propriété, la personnalité, les animaux, l'argent comptant et l'argent numérique. Spécifiquement, nous examinons un rite de puberté pour des adolescents. En organisant plusieurs formes d'argent relatives aux phases d'une vie humaine, le passé et le futur, ces rites aident à gérer et transférer la richesse à travers les générations et donnent à ces transferts des dimensions sociales et morales. L'étude amène vers une critique des nouvelles initiatives financières introduites dans les pays du Sud qui souvent estiment que les objectifs des pauvres ne sont qu'à court terme.
Information Technology in International Development 2015
family networks of between 8-70 people. Using small and frequent digital money transfers, relativ... more family networks of between 8-70 people. Using small and frequent digital money transfers, relatives provide for household and emergency needs, contribute to ceremonies, and help pay school fees and medical bills. We ªnd that digital money transfers follow and reinforce preexisting forms of emotional support and social relationships. In these families, the transfers strengthen maternal kinship ties as well relationships among siblings and cousins. Money networks are reciprocal, such that senders are also receivers, and individuals have many connections through which to access resources. Some individuals are "central" in networks, having more connections; others broker ºows of e-value from one group of relatives to another. Mobile money strengthens social bonds but can also disrupt social relationships as when hiding digital value and remittances from in-laws or spouses.
Remittances. In Digital Finance in Africa's Future. Proceedings of an international Colloquium he... more Remittances. In Digital Finance in Africa's Future. Proceedings of an international Colloquium held in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 22—26 October 2018. Organized by the Human Economy Research Programme at the University of Pretoria and the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), in association with Disrupting Africa. Edited by John Sharp, Lena Gronbach and Riaan de Villiers. University of Pretoria, South Africa, pp. 42-48.
Information Technologies and International Development, 2015
This research examines the interplay between social networks and mobile money remittances in West... more This research examines the interplay between social networks and mobile money remittances in Western Kenya. Research was conducted in Kenya’s Bungoma and Trans-Nzoia counties in 2012, 2013, and 2014, involving 12 family networks of between 8—70 people. Using small and frequent digital money transfers, relatives provide for household and emergency needs, contribute to ceremonies, and help pay school fees and medical bills. We find that digital money transfers follow and reinforce preexisting forms of emotional support and social relationships. In these families, the transfers strengthen maternal kinship ties as well relationships among siblings and cousins. Money networks are reciprocal, such that senders are also receivers, and individuals have many connections through which to access resources. Some individuals are “central” in networks, having more connections; others broker flows of e-value from one group of relatives to another. Mobile money strengthens social bonds but can also...
Ethics of DNA research on human remains: five globally applicable guidelines, 2021
We are a group of archaeologists, anthropologists, curators and geneticists representing diverse ... more We are a group of archaeologists, anthropologists, curators and geneticists representing diverse global communities and 31 countries. All of us met in a virtual workshop dedicated to ethics in ancient DNA research held in November 2020. There was widespread agreement that globally applicable ethical guidelines are needed, but that recent recommendations grounded in discussion about research on human remains from North America are not always generalizable worldwide. Here we propose the following globally applicable guidelines, taking into consideration diverse contexts. These hold that: (1) researchers must ensure that all regulations were followed in the places where they work and from which the human remains derived; (2) researchers must prepare a detailed plan prior to beginning any study; (3)
This article reviews major issues and evidence related to hunter-gatherers in East Africa, includ... more This article reviews major issues and evidence related to hunter-gatherers in East Africa, including archaeological sites of the Middle and Later Stone Age and the archaeological record of the transition to food production. The relevance of the ethnographic record to our understanding of ancient hunter-gatherers is also discussed.
... in Southern Kenya Sibel B. Kusimba and Cbapurukha M. Kusimba 1 2 The East African Neolithic: ... more ... in Southern Kenya Sibel B. Kusimba and Cbapurukha M. Kusimba 1 2 The East African Neolithic: A Historical Perspective Karega-Munene 17 3 ... at Kivinja, Tanzania Felix Chami 87 7 Ironworking on the Swahili Coast of Kenya Chapurukha M. Kusimba and David Killick 99 8 Iron ...
Archaeologists and historians have long believed that little interaction existed between Iron Age... more Archaeologists and historians have long believed that little interaction existed between Iron Age cities of the Kenya Coast and their rural hinterlands. Ongoing archaeological and anthropological research in Tsavo, Southeast Kenya, shows that Tsavo has been continuously inhabited at least since the early Holocene. Tsavo peoples made a living by foraging, herding, farming, and producing pottery and iron, and in the Iron Age were linked to global markets via coastal traders. They were at one point important suppliers of ivory destined for Southwest and South Asia. Our excavations document forager and agropastoralist habitation sites, iron smelting and iron working sites, fortified rockshelters, and mortuary sites. We discuss the relationship between fortified rockshelters, in particular, and slave trade.
... Holl, Philip Kilbride, David Kuehn, Sally MacBrearty, Curtis Marean, Harry Merrick, Charles N... more ... Holl, Philip Kilbride, David Kuehn, Sally MacBrearty, Curtis Marean, Harry Merrick, Charles Nel-son, Peter Peregrine, James Phillips, Ronald Mason, Carol Mason, Anna Roosevelt, Fred Smith, Olga Soffer, Gil Stein, Thomas J. Riley ... The index was prepared by Amanda Halpin. ...
In a world of social inequality, health disparities, and poverty, the economic value of people re... more In a world of social inequality, health disparities, and poverty, the economic value of people remains unrecognized, undervalued, and exploited. Recently, the ongoing conflict between capitalist markets and human value came to the fore again during the coronavirus pandemic, when many health systems were unprepared. In the United States, business and government leaders feared that quarantines would damage the economy. Their public statements urging the reopening of stores and public spaces pitted market value against the value of human lives. How can anthropology bring the value of people to light? How have varied societies valued human lives, qualities, and works? The articles in this special issue develop the 2019 Society for Economic Anthropology conference theme "Wealth-in-People." Inspired by ethnographies of certain African societies, the wealth-in-people literature has moved from politics and demography to inequality and marginalization to the pricing of life, and has settled on wealth-in-people as a collective that assembles individuals with diverse and complementary qualities. Collectives of wealth-in-people build on these qualities, including knowledge, skill, beauty, emotional and distributive labor, and artistic expression. They become more than the sum of their parts. Seen from our current moment, wealth-in-people as a theory of value takes us beyond false choices between the economy and people. By illuminating forms of economic life from the ground up, the wealth-in-people approach, like similar recent concepts, including the human economy and social worth, can catalyze a more democratic economy.
Why is social inequality a feature of so many societies? Every generation of archaeologists has s... more Why is social inequality a feature of so many societies? Every generation of archaeologists has sought to understand the transformation from egalitarian bands to today’s world of ‘savage inequalities.’ In this chapter, we draw from recent archaeological research in Eastern and Southern Africa to explain the emergence of socially and politically hierarchical chiefdoms, polities, and states. We identify three main sources of social power: trade, investment in extractive technologies , and elite monopolization of wealth-creating resources. Along the East African Coast, we find that autonomous city-states developed here on local, regional, and trans-continental scales because of Indian Ocean trade. In spite of the wealth the Swahili elites amassed, their city-states remained independent. In Southern Africa, the Southern Zambezian Culture developed similar political formations, but in this highland fertile plain some polities were able to extend their political control over larger geographical areas. Like the Swahili , the Zimbabwe elites were wealthy through trade, taking tribute from foot caravans of gold and ivory bound for the southern Swahili Coast. In the case of Zimbabwe, militarism was a second strategy to consolidate power over the geography of these trade conduits. Studying the evolution of social complexity among the Swahili city-states and the Zimbabwe Plateau demonstrates that trade and militarism are sources of political power for African elites, as they were in other parts of the ancient world. We discuss the impact of these findings in understanding today’s dilemmas of power and inequality.
This article examines the role of gender in the use of digital finance in Kenya, including the we... more This article examines the role of gender in the use of digital finance in Kenya, including the well-known case of mobile money but also the emerging use of smartphone apps, payment tills, digital credit services, and digital fund-raising computer programs. Development professionals have explicitly feminist goals in bringing digital finance to women in the Global South. In several recent reports, they outline the belief that gender norms are a barrier to women's use of finance. They hope digital finance will bring women agency and control over money and consequently shift restrictive gender norms. This article offers a critique of these assumptions based on ethnographic conversations, a diary exercise, and network self-portraiture conducted in Kenya in 2016 among both rural farmers and urbanites. Adopting a distributed agency perspective, the ethnographic study demonstrates that Kenyan women and men use digital finance not to seek individual control of their money but to produce themselves as connected and trustworthy members of financial groups and collectivities. Gender norms may not hinder women from finance but rather enhance and deepen women's and men's financial relationships and bring women success in amassing funds.
Kenyans use mobile money services to transfer money to friends and relatives via mobile phone tex... more Kenyans use mobile money services to transfer money to friends and relatives via mobile phone text messaging. Kenya's M-Pesa is one of the most successful examples of digital money for financial inclusion. This article uses social network analysis and ethnographic information to examine ties to and through women in 12 mobile money transfer networks of kin, drawn from field data collected in 2012, 2013, and 2014. The social networks are based on reciprocal and dense ties among siblings and parents, especially mothers. Men participate equally in social networks, but as brothers and mother's brothers more often than as fathers. The matrilineal ties of mobile money circulate value within the hearthhold (Ekejiuba 2005) of women, their children, and others connected to them. Using remittances, families negotiate investments in household farming or work, education, and migration. Money sending supports the diverse economic strategies, flexible kinship ties, and mobility of hearthholds. Gifts of e-money are said to express a natural love and caring among mothers and siblings and are often private and personal. Consequently, the money circulations of the hearthhold avoid disrupting widely shared ideals of patrilineal solidarity and household autonomy.
This paper, based on fieldwork in Western Kenya from 2012 to 2016, describes how life cycle ritua... more This paper, based on fieldwork in Western Kenya from 2012 to 2016, describes how life cycle rituals collect and distribute different forms of money, including land, property, personhood, animals, cash, and digital moneys. It specifically examines a ritual coming of age for adolescent boys. By organizing multiple forms of money relative to the phases of a human life, the past, and the future, these rituals serve to manage and transfer wealth across generations and to give these transfers social and moral dimensions. The study provokes a critique of financial initiatives in the Global South that often assume that the financial goals of the poor are short-term. Résumé: Basé sur des recherches de terrain dans l'ouest du Kenya de 2012 à 2016, cet article décrit comment des rites du cycle de vie sont mobilisés pour collecter et distribuer différentes formes d'objets de valeur, y compris la terre, la propriété, la personnalité, les animaux, l'argent comptant et l'argent numérique. Spécifiquement, nous examinons un rite de puberté pour des adolescents. En organisant plusieurs formes d'argent relatives aux phases d'une vie humaine, le passé et le futur, ces rites aident à gérer et transférer la richesse à travers les générations et donnent à ces transferts des dimensions sociales et morales. L'étude amène vers une critique des nouvelles initiatives financières introduites dans les pays du Sud qui souvent estiment que les objectifs des pauvres ne sont qu'à court terme.
Information Technology in International Development 2015
family networks of between 8-70 people. Using small and frequent digital money transfers, relativ... more family networks of between 8-70 people. Using small and frequent digital money transfers, relatives provide for household and emergency needs, contribute to ceremonies, and help pay school fees and medical bills. We ªnd that digital money transfers follow and reinforce preexisting forms of emotional support and social relationships. In these families, the transfers strengthen maternal kinship ties as well relationships among siblings and cousins. Money networks are reciprocal, such that senders are also receivers, and individuals have many connections through which to access resources. Some individuals are "central" in networks, having more connections; others broker ºows of e-value from one group of relatives to another. Mobile money strengthens social bonds but can also disrupt social relationships as when hiding digital value and remittances from in-laws or spouses.
Remittances. In Digital Finance in Africa's Future. Proceedings of an international Colloquium he... more Remittances. In Digital Finance in Africa's Future. Proceedings of an international Colloquium held in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 22—26 October 2018. Organized by the Human Economy Research Programme at the University of Pretoria and the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), in association with Disrupting Africa. Edited by John Sharp, Lena Gronbach and Riaan de Villiers. University of Pretoria, South Africa, pp. 42-48.
Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution, 2020
Technology is rapidly is changing the way we think about money. Digital payment has been slow to ... more Technology is rapidly is changing the way we think about money. Digital payment has been slow to take off in the United States but is displacing cash in countries as diverse as China, Kenya, and Sweden. In Reimagining Money, Sibel Kusimba describes the rise of M-Pesa, and offers a rich portrait of how this technology changes the economic and social landscape, allowing users to create webs of relationships as they exchange, pool, borrow, lend, and share digital money in user-built networks. These networks, Kusimba argues, will shape the future of financial technologies and their impact on poverty, inclusion, and empowerment. She describes how urban and transnational migrants maintain a presence in rural areas through money gifts; how families use crowdfunding software to assemble donations for emergency medical care; and how new financial groups invest in real estate and fund weddings. The author presents fascinating accounts that challenge accepted wisdom by examining the notion of money as wealth-in-people-an idea long-cultivated in sub-Saharan Africa and now brought to bear on the digital age with homegrown financial
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