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Janet Roitman is an American anthropologist. She is the co-founder of the Platform Economies Research Network. Roitman is a professor at RMIT University, an Associate Investigator with the Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S), and co-Director of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre. She is also a member of the Council of Advisors for the Platform Cooperativism Consortium, New York.
From 2007-2022, Roitman was University Professor at The New School in New York City. Before that time, Roitman was a research fellow with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), a member of the Institut Marcel-Mauss (CNRS-EHESS, GSPM), and an instructor at the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (Sciences po) in Paris.
Roitman’s research focuses on the anthropology of value, economization, and emergent forms of the political. Her research has received support from The Ford Foundation, The MacArthur Foundation, The American Council of Learned Societies, the Agence Française du Développement, The Institute for Public Knowledge, and The US National Science Foundation.
Roitman has conducted extensive research in Central Africa, focusing on the borders of Cameroon, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, and Chad. Her first book, Fiscal Disobedience: An Anthropology of Economic Regulation in Central Africa (Princeton University Press, 2005), is an analysis of the unregulated commerce that transpires on those borders. This book is an anthropology of taxation and economic regulation. It is a study of unregulated commerce on the borders of Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad that documents emergent forms of economic value and the consequential transformations in state governance – ultimately raising questions about the relevance and normative consequences of claims about “state failure” on the African continent.
Roitman’s second book, “Anti-Crisis” (Duke University Press, 2013), is the first systematic account of how the concept of crisis functions as a blind spot in contemporary analyses of finance and economics. Anti-Crisis investigates the concept of crisis as an object of knowledge and social inquiry, demonstrating its significance as a foundational concept for our understanding and management of contemporary practices, taking The Great Recession of 2007-08 as a case study. This study illustrates how crisis talk diverts our attention away from primary, constitutional questions, such as how debt is constituted as a form of value.
Roitman's current research inquires into digital financial technology payments platforms as potential sources of new asset classes and domestic capital markets on the African continent, which gives insight into emerging socio-class dynamics and the geo-political contours of high finance.
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Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in west-central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Its coastline lies on the Bight of Biafra, part of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean. Due to its strategic position at the crossroads between West Africa and Central Africa, it has been categorized as being in both camps. Its nearly 27 million people speak 250 native languages and English or French or both.
At the crossroads of West Africa and Central Africa, the territory of what is now Cameroon has seen human habitation since some time in the Middle Paleolithic, likely no later than 130,000 years ago. The earliest discovered archaeological evidence of humans dates from around 30,000 years ago at Shum Laka. The Bamenda highlands in western Cameroon near the border with Nigeria are the most likely origin for the Bantu peoples, whose language and culture came to dominate most of central and southern Africa between 1000 BCE and 1000 CE.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world." Formed in 1944, started on December 27, 1945, at the Bretton Woods Conference, primarily by the ideas of Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes, it came into formal existence in 1945 with 29 member countries and the goal of reconstructing the international monetary system. It now plays a central role in the management of balance of payments difficulties and international financial crises. Countries contribute funds to a pool through a quota system, from which countries experiencing balance of payments problems can borrow money. As of 2016, the fund had SDR 477 billion. The IMF is regarded as the global lender of last resort.
Neoliberalism, also neo-liberalism, is a term used to signify the late-20th century political reappearance of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism after it fell into decline following the Second World War. A prominent factor in the rise of conservative and right-libertarian organizations, political parties, and think tanks, and predominantly advocated by them, it is generally associated with policies of economic liberalization, including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society. The neoliberal project is also focused on designing institutions and has a political dimension. The defining features of neoliberalism in both thought and practice have been the subject of substantial scholarly debate.
A country's gross government debt is the financial liabilities of the government sector. Changes in government debt over time reflect primarily borrowing due to past government deficits. A deficit occurs when a government's expenditures exceed revenues. Government debt may be owed to domestic residents, as well as to foreign residents. If owed to foreign residents, that quantity is included in the country's external debt.
The Chad–Cameroon Petroleum Development and Pipeline Project is a controversial project to develop the production capacity of oilfields near Doba in southern Chad, and to create a 1,070-kilometre (660 mi) pipeline to transport the oil to a floating storage and offloading vessel (FSO), anchored off the coast of Cameroon, near the city of Kribi. It is operated by ExxonMobil (40%) and also sponsored by partners forming the consortium, Petronas (35%) and Chevron (25%). The governments of Chad and Cameroon also have a combined 3% stake in the project. The project was launched on October 18, 2000, and completed in June 2003.
Richard Borshay Lee is a Canadian anthropologist. Lee has studied at the University of Toronto and University of California, Berkeley, where he received a Ph.D. He holds a position at the University of Toronto as Professor Emeritus of Anthropology. Lee researches issues concerning the indigenous people of Botswana and Namibia, particularly their ecology and history.
Michael Jay Boskin is the T. M. Friedman Professor of Economics and senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He also is chief executive officer and president of Boskin & Co., an economic consulting company.
Hyman Philip Minsky was an American economist, a professor of economics at Washington University in St. Louis, and a distinguished scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His research attempted to provide an understanding and explanation of the characteristics of financial crises, which he attributed to swings in a potentially fragile financial system. Minsky is sometimes described as a post-Keynesian economist because, in the Keynesian tradition, he supported some government intervention in financial markets, opposed some of the financial deregulation of the 1980s, stressed the importance of the Federal Reserve as a lender of last resort and argued against the over-accumulation of private debt in the financial markets.
Piers Vitebsky is an anthropologist and is the Head of Social Science at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, England.
Isaac Schapera FBA FRAI, was a social anthropologist at the London School of Economics specialising in South Africa. He was notable for his contributions of ethnographic and typological studies of the indigenous peoples of Botswana and South Africa. Additionally, he was one of the founders of the group that would develop British social anthropology.
Jean Comaroff is Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, Oppenheimer Fellow in African Studies at Harvard University. She is an expert on the effects of colonialism on people in Southern Africa. Until 2012, Jean was the Bernard E. & Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago and Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town.
The term exorbitant privilege refers to the benefits the United States has due to its own currency being the international reserve currency. For example, the US would not face a balance of payments crisis, because their imports are purchased in their own currency. Exorbitant privilege as a concept cannot refer to currencies that have a regional reserve currency role, only to global reserve currencies.
John L. Comaroff is Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, Oppenheimer Fellow in African Studies at Harvard University. He is recognised for his study of African and African-American society. Comaroff and his wife, anthropologist Jean Comaroff, have collaborated on publications examining post-colonialism and the Tswana people of South Africa. He has written several texts describing his research and has presented peer-reviewed anthropological theories of African cultures that have relevance to understanding global society.
Chad–China relations refers to the current and historical relationship between the Republic of Chad and the People's Republic of China. Bilateral relations were initially established in 1972 but were severed by China in 1997 due to Chad's recognition of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Relations resumed in August 2006 when Chad ended its relationship with Taiwan and pledged adherence to the One China Policy. The ties between the two nations are primarily economic, although there is some cooperation in security. The economic ties are profitable for both countries, with China providing aid and investment in exchange for natural resources to fuel its economic growth.
Emmanuel Nnadozie is an educator, economist, professor of economics, entrepreneur and author. His scholarly works are in the area of economics and development in Africa and the world. This includes African Economic Development. He has also contributed to research journals such as the "Journal of African Finance and Economic Development", Journal of College Student Development. He has been a research fellow at the University of Oxford and a visiting professor at the University of Carolina - Charlotte.
Jane I. Guyer is the George Armstrong Kelly Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University.
Agnes Allafi is a Chadian politician and sociologist. During her political career, Allafi was the Minister of Social Services two times between the late 1990s to early 2000s.
Doris Sommer is a literature scholar. She is Ira Jewell Williams, Jr., Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She is also Director of the Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard. Sommer received her PhD from Rutgers University.
Peter Lein Geschiere is a Dutch anthropologist, Africanist and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. He studied at the Free University of Amsterdam obtaining a MA in history in 1967, a MA in anthropology in 1969, and a PhD in anthropology in 1978. Geschiere performed field work in Tunisia, Zaire, French- and English-speaking Cameroon and Senegal (1968-2001), and was a lecturer (1969-1978) and senior lecturer (1978-1988) at the Free University of Amsterdam. Then he held a professorship in Non-Western History at Erasmus University Rotterdam (1985-1988) and was a researcher at the African Studies Centre Leiden (1986-1988). At Leiden University Geschiere worked as Professor of Anthropology and Sociology of Sub-Saharan Africa (1988-2002). From 2000 onward he was Professor of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. Geschiere specialised on Cameroon and the comparative study of processes of change in Africa. In 2002 he won the Distinguished Africanist Award from the US-based African Studies Association.
