School of Social and Political Science

Background

Profile

• Labour and settlement in processes of transition 
• occupational change
• women’s employment
• mining settlements
• urban economies
• work cultures
• Migration patterns
•   urban migration 
•   mineralized urbanization 
•   transnational families
•   urban transport 
•   urban growth
• Social dynamics and institutions 
•    changing nature of the family 
•    transnational families 
•    age & gender differentiation
•    creole societies 
•    alcohol drinking cultures
• Agrarian studies 
•   deagrarianization 
•    peasant studies
•    rural transport
•    sustainable livelihoods
•     marketing & food supply
• Crises situations
•     HIV/AIDS & famine 

My Career

I am an Honorary Professor at the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh. I graduated from the University of Dar es Salaam (B.A. and M.A. degrees in Geography) and have a D.Phil degree from the University of Oxford. I have held academic positions at the University of Dar es Salaam, the Architectural Association in London, the Afrika-Studiecentrum at the University of Leiden, and the University of Glasgow as well as research associateships with the Universities of Oxford, Copenhagen and Uppsala. My research consultancy work spans various United Nations agencies including the International Labour Office, FAO, UNCTAD, UNRISD, UNICEF, the United Nations University and the World Bank. In my work on African sectoral change, I pioneered the concepts of ‘de-agrarianization’ and ‘mineralized urban growth’. More recently I have gained widespread international recognition for formulation of the concept of the ‘transnational family’.

My Research Trajectory

As a geographer, I have a specific regional interest in East Africa combined with a fascination with comparing labour and lifestyles spatially in different countries. Over the years, my research interests have altered as the world has changed. In the 1970s, when I started my PhD studies there were food shortages in many parts of Africa, so I began with a study of urban grain supply in Tanzania’s capital city, Dar es Salaam, compared with secondary towns dotted around the country. In the 1980s, Tanzania faced a serious debt crisis. I was interested in the implementation of structural adjustment policies imposed by the World Bank in many countries across the African continent. I observed a strong tendency towards ‘deagrarianisation’ involving livelihood reorientation, occupational adjustment, spatial realignment of residential settlement and social re-identification, all entailing movement away from agrarian patterns. When peasant agricultural subsidies on agricultural inputs were removed under structural adjustment,  smallholder farming families lost a foothold in the production of Tanzania’s major cash crop of coffee, cotton, tea, cashewnut for global export markets, while their staple food crop productivity was declining. To survive, farming families tried to diversify their production. I started investigating the voluminous number of  income-earning activities that family members turned to in place of export crop production. This led me to the study of gold-mining, the most lucrative economic activity. Tracing the outcome of gold rushes, revealed many dimensions of rural and urban change. Labour patterns radically altered in the transition from a primarily agrarian way of life to migrating to Tanzania’s mineral-rich areas and the growth of new urban areas. Amidst broad shifts of people’s labour and consumption patterns, I became interested in change in people’s modes of transport and a notable trend towards international migration and the formation of  transnational families. I probed how family members manage to communicate, support and identify with each other despite physical separation.

Publications

Books & Special Issues

Handbook of Transnational Families around the World. 2023. (edited by Javiera Cienfuegos, Rosa Brandhorst and Deborah Fahy Bryceson) London: Springer/Taylor Francis. ISBN: 978-3-031-15278-8. 

Mining and Social Transformation in Africa: Tracing Mineralizing and Democratizing Trends in Artisanal Production. 2014. London: Routledge Development Studies series (edited with Jesper Bosse Jønsson, Eleanor Fisher and Rose Mwaipopo), 217 pp. ISBN: 9780415833707.

Mining and African Urbanisation: Population, Settlement and Welfare Trajectories. 2013. London: Routledge, 232 pp. (with Danny MacKinnon), ISBN: 9780415826259.

How Africa Works: Occupational Change, Identity and Morality in Africa. (ed.) 2010. London: Practical Action Publishing, 296 pp.

African Urban Economies: Viability, Vitality or Vitiation? (ed.) 2006. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 353 pp. (with Deborah Potts)

The Transnational Family: New European Frontiers and Global Networks. (ed.) 2002. Oxford: Berg Press, 276 pp. (with Ulla Vuorela)

Alcohol in Africa: Mixing Business, Pleasure and Politics. (ed.) 2002. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 305 pp.

Livelihoods, Linkages and Policy Paradoxes. (ed.) 2001. Special Issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 19 (1), 160 pp (with Leslie Bank)

Disappearing Peasantries? Rural Labour in Africa, Asia and Latin America. (ed.) 2000. London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 333 pp (with Cristobal Kay and Jos Mooij)

Farewell to Farms: De-Agrarianization and Employment in Africa. (ed.) 1997. Aldershot: Ashgate, 265 pp. (with Vali Jamal)

Women Wielding the Hoe: Lessons from Rural Africa for Feminist Theory and Development Practice. (ed.) 1995. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 282 pp.

Liberalizing Tanzania's Food Trade: Public & Private Faces of Urban Marketing Policy 1939-1988. 1993. London: James Currey Publishers, 305 pp.

Food Insecurity and the Social Division of Labour in Tanzania, 1919-1985. 1990. London: Macmillan, 285 pp.

Journal articles

  ‘Wealth and Poverty in Mining Africa: Migration, Settlement and Occupational Change in Tanzanian Mineral Boom Settlements’, 2023. Journal of Eastern African Studies 17(3): 489-514 (with J.B. Jønsson & M. Shand), https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2023.2265726 (Open Access 2023.10.26) + supplementary data: rjea_a_2265726_sm0934)

  ‘Mineralized Urbanization in 21st Century Africa: Becoming Urban via Mining Extraction’, 2022. International Journal of Urban & Rural Research, 46(3): 342-369. doi:10.1111/1468-2427.13086 (with M. Shand, K. Gough, J.B. Jønsson, C. Kinabo, C.U. Rodrigues and P. Yankson) 

  ‘The Transnational Family and Neo-liberal Globalization: Past, Present and Future’ 2022. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 12(2): 120–138. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33134/njmr.36

  ‘Mining Habitat, House and Home in Gold Boom Africa: Economic and Emotional Dimensions’, 2021. Journal of Eastern African Studies. 15(4). 663-684. (with J.B. Jønsson, M.C. Shand) https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2021.1989135

  ‘Mining in Africa after the Supercycle: New Directions and Geographies’, 2021. Area 53(4): 647-658. (Bowman, A., Frederiksen, T., Bryceson, D.F., Childs, J., Gilberthorpe, E., McFarlane, D. and Newman, S.), https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12723

  ‘Mining Mobility and Settlement during an East African Gold Boom: Seeking Fortune and Accommodating Fate’ 2020. Mobilities 15(3): 446-463 (with J.B.Jønsson and M.Shand)

  ‘Getting Grounded? Miners’ Migration, Housing and Urban Settlement in Tanzania, 1980-2012’. 2019. Extractive Industries and Society 6: 948-959 (with J.B. Jønsson, C. Kinabo and M. Shand)

  ‘Transnational families negotiating migration and care life cycles across nation-state borders’ 2019.  in Bryceson, D.F. Transnational Families in Global Migration: Navigating Economic Development and Life Cycles across Blurred and Brittle Borders, in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 45(16), 3042-3064. 

  ‘Gender and Generational Patterns of African Deagrarianization: Evolving Labor and Land Allocation in Smallholder Peasant Household Farming, 1980-2015’. 2019. World Development113: 60-72.

  ‘Beyond the Artisanal Mining Site: Migration, Housing Capital Accumulation and Indirect Urbanization in East Africa’. 2017. Journal of Eastern African Studies 11(1): 3-23. (with J.B. Jønsson)

  ‘Artisanal Frontier Mining of Gold in Africa: Labour Transformation in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo’ 2016. (with S. Geenen) African Affairs, April 115(459), 296-317.

  ‘For Richer, For Poorer: Marriage and Casualized Sex in East African Artisanal Gold Mining Settlements’, 2014. Development and Change 45(1), 79-104. (with J.B. Jønsson & H. Verbrugge)

   ‘Prostitution or Partnership? Wifestyles in Tanzanian Artisanal Gold-mining Settlements’, 2013. Journal of Modern African Studies 51(1), 33-56 (with J.B. Jønsson & H.Verbrugge).

  ‘Eureka and Beyond: Mining’s Impact on African Urbanisation’, 2012. (with D. MacKinnon), 513-27.

  ‘Unearthing Treasure and Trouble: Mining as an Impetus to Urbanisation in Tanzania’, 2012. 631-49. (with J.B.Jønsson, C.Kinabo & M.Shand). Journal of Contemporary African Studies, October 2012.

  ‘Discovery and Denial: Social Science Theory and Inter-disciplinarity in African Studies’, 2012. African Affairs, April issue, 281-302.

  ‘Birth of a Market Town in Tanzania: Towards Narrative Studies of Urban Africa’, 2011. Journal of Eastern African Studies 5(2), 274-293.

  ‘Miners’ Magic: Artisanal Mining, the Albino Fetish and Murder in Tanzania’, 2010. Journal of Modern African Studies 48(3), 353-82. (with J.B. Jønsson & R. Sherrington).

  ‘Gold Digging Careers in Rural Africa: Small-Scale Miners’ Livelihood Choices’, 2010. World Development 38(3), 379-92. (with J.B. Jønsson).

  ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’s Vanishing Peasantries and the Specter of a Global Food Crisis’, 2009. Monthly Review. July-August, 48-62.

  ‘Rushing for Gold: Mobility and Small-Scale Mining in East Africa’, 2009. Development and Change 40(2), 249-79. (with J.B. Jønsson)

  ‘World Bank Urban Geography: Critical Commentary on the World Development Report 2009.    “Reshaping Economic Geography”’, 2009. Urban Studies 46(4), 723-38 (with K. Gough, J. Rigg and J. Agergaard)

  ‘Roads to Poverty Reduction? Exploring Rural Roads’ Impact on Mobility in Africa and Asia’, 2008. Development Policy Review 26(4), 459-82 (with A. Bradbury & T. Bradbury).

Book chapters

  ‘Past, present and future uncertainties acting on transnational familyhood’, 315-328. 

in Cienfuegos, J., R. Brandhorst & D. Bryceson (eds) 2023. Handbook of Transnational Families around the World. London: Springer.

  ‘Domestic Work’, in Bellucci, S. and A. Eckert (eds). 2019. General Labour History of Africa: Workers,  Employers and Governments 20th-21st Centuries. Geneva, International Labour Office, 301-333. 

  ‘Artisanal Gold Rush Mining and Frontier Democracy: Juxtaposing experiences in America, Australia, Africa and Asia, Lahiri-Dutt, K. (ed.) 2018. Between the Plough and the Pick: Informal, Artisanal and Small-scale Mining in the Contemporary World. Canberra, Australia National University Press, 31-61. 

  ‘Deagrarianisation and Depeasantisation in Africa’ in Binns, T., K. Lynch and E. Nel (eds) 2018. The Routledge Handbook of African Development. Routledge. 368-377.

  ‘Reflections on the Unravelling of the Tanzanian Peasantry, 1975-2015’. in M.Stahl (ed.) Looking back, Looking Ahead: Land, Agriculture and Society in East Africa. 2015. Uppsala. Nordic Africa Institute. 

  ‘Re-evaluating the Influence of Urban Agglomeration in Sub-Saharan Africa: Population Density, Technological Innovation and Productivity’, in S.Parnell & S.Oldfield (eds) 2014. The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South, London, Routledge, 206-18.

  ‘Mineralizing Africa and Artisanal Mining’s Democratizing Influence’ (with J.B.Jønsson), 1-22.
  ‘Artisanal Miners’ Democratizing Directions and Deviations’ (with E.Fisher), 179-206.  
in Bryceson et al. Mining and Social Transformation in Africa: Mineralizing and Democratizing Trends in Artisanal Production, Development and Society series, 

  ‘Ganyu in Rural Malawi: Transformation of Local Labour Relations under Famine and HIV/AIDS Duress’, in J.Abbink (ed.) 2012. Fractures and Reconnections and the Redefining of African Political and Economic Space. Leiden, African Studies Centre / Zurich, Lit Verlag, 37-59.

  ‘Who Cares? Family and Lineage Coherence and Caring Capacity during Rural Malawi’s AIDS Crisis’, in Bertram, H. & N.Ehlert (eds) 2011. Family, Ties and Care, Berlin, Barbara Budrich Publisher, 503-20. 

  ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’s Vanishing Peasantries and the Spectre of a Global Food Crisis’ in F.Magdoff & B.Tokar (eds). 2010. Agriculture and Food in Crisis: Conflict, Resistance and Renewal, New York, Monthly Review Press, 69-84.

  ‘The Proletarianization of Women in Tanzania’. in M.Turshen (ed.) 2010. African Women: A Political Economy, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 53-69.

  ‘Agrarian Fundamentalism or Foresight?  Revisiting Nyerere’s Vision for Rural Tanzania’. in K.Havnevik & A. Isinika (eds). 2010. Tanzania in Transition: From Nyerere to Mkapa, Dar es Salaam, Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, 71-98.

  ‘Africa at Work: Transforming Occupational Identity and Morality’, 

in D.F.Bryceson (ed.) 2010. How Africa Works: Occupational Change, Identity and Morality, London, Practical Action Publishing. 3-26.

  ‘Dar es Salaam as a “Harbour of Peace” in East Africa: Tracing the Role of Creolized Urban Ethnicity in Nation-State Formation’. in J.Beall, B.Guha-Khasnobis & R. Kanbur (eds), 2010. Urbanization and Development: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 219-34.

  ‘Rural-Urban Transitions in Northwestern Tanzania’s Mining Frontier’ (with R.Mwaipopo), 158-174.

  ‘Frontier Mining Settlements: Livelihood Promises and Predicaments’ (with P.Yankson), 189-197. 

in J.Agergaard, N.Fold and K.Gough (eds). 2010. Rural Urban Dynamics: Livelihoods, Mobility and Markets in African and Asian Frontiers. London, Routledge. 

‘Swahili Creolization: The Case of Dar es Salaam’. in R.Cohen & P.Toninato (eds) 2010. The Creolization Reader: Studies in Mixed Identities and Cultures, London, Routledge, 364-75.

  ‘The Urban Melting Pot in East Africa: Ethnicity and Urban Growth in Kampala and Dar es Salaam’ in F.Locatelli and P.Nugent (eds) 2009. African Cities: Competing Claims on Urban Space. Leiden, Brill, 241-260.

  ‘Fragile Cities: Fundamentals of Urban Life in East and Southern Africa’, 2-38

  ‘African Urban Economies: Searching for the Sources of Sustenance’, 39-66

  ‘Vulnerability and Viability of East and Southern Africa’s Apex Cities’, 319-40 in Bryceson, D.F. & D. Potts (eds). 2006.  African Urban Economies: Viability, Vitality or Vitiation?, Palgrave Macmillan

  ‘Alcohol in Africa: Substance, Stimulus and Society’. 3-21

  ‘Changing Modalities of Alcohol Usage’, 22-52

  ‘Pleasure and Pain: The Ambiguity of Alcohol in Africa’, 267-291 

in Bryceson, D.F. (ed.) 2002. Alcohol in Africa: Mixing business, Pleasure and Politics, Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann

  ‘Peasant Theories and Smallholder Policies: Past and Present’, 1-36

  ‘African Peasants’ Centrality and Marginality: Rural Labour Transformations’, 37-63

  ‘Disappearing Peasantries? Rural Labour Redundancy in the Neo-liberal Era and Beyond’, 299-326 

in Bryceson, D.F., C. Kay & J. Mooij (eds). 2000. Disappearing Peasantries? Rural Labour in Africa, Asia and Latin America, London: Intermediate Technology Publications 

Selected research, training and consultancy reports

Rural Development Priorities in the 21st Century: Towards a Strategy for FAO, FAO, Rome, 2008.

Social Pathways from the HIV/AIDS Deadlock of Disease, Denial and Desperation in Rural Malawi. CARE International, 100 pp. + appendices. May 2004. (with J. Fonseca, & J. Kadzandira) 

Framework for the Inclusion of Social Benefits in Transport Planning: Final Report. 2004. DFID/TRL Report PR/INT/276/04, Crowthorne, United Kingdom.  May 2004. (with A.S.C. Davis, F. Ahmed & T. Bradbury). 

Sustainable Livelihoods, Mobility and Access Needs. 2003. TRL Report 544, United Kingdom, DFID/Transport Road Laboratory (with D.A.C. Maunder, T.C. Mbara, R. Kibombo, A.S.C. Davis & J.D. Howe).