Amanda Hammar

Primary fields of research

My research addresses interweaving themes of marginality, displacement, belonging, authority and citizenship especially in contexts of crisis. A linked thread through much of my work is the relationship between property, in its broad senses, and the inte-related processes of state-making and citizen-making.

After an initial focus on questions of land and agrarian change (1997-2012) in both Zimbabwe and Mozambique, I worked on developing a new relational approach to displacement (I have called this ‘displacement economies’). I shifted more directly to an urban focus in 2012, exploring particularly the relationship between urban displacement and resettlement, urban property, and urban governance and citizenship, with an empirical grounding in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city. At present, I am especially interested in notions of propertied citizenship, and how this is constituted, experienced, challenged, reshaped, across scales and in the interplay between the structural-material, the institutional-political and the intimate-personal.  I am also currently developing a project I call 'Certifications of Citizenship', which focuses on the multiple and interconnected dimensions and scales at and through which identity documents co-produce citizens and authorities.

Current research

Current and future lines of research, with broadly collaborative/comparative aims for knowledge production, and always combining attention to both theoretical and empirical implications, include:      

• the paradoxes of displacement and resettlement
• transformations of urban local government and the parameters and practices of urban citizenship in times of crisis
• a comparative study of classifications, production, distribution, access, exchange and use of identity documents and their role in the interplay between everyday state-making and citizen-making;
• development of a relational methodology I call ‘biography of a building’ as a means to identify and trace interconnected spatial, temporal, social, political and economic dynamics in the constructon of relationships between authorities and citizens

Recent past research projects with ongoing outputs include:

• Political Economies of Displacement (2006-2010). This culminated in a co-edited special issue of the Journal of Southern African Studies (2010), a single edited book entitled Displacement Economies in Africa: Paradoxes of Crisis and Creativity (Zed Books, 2014), and various journal articles and book chapters related especially to my research on Zimbabwean commercial farmers in Mozambique.
• Urban Property and Citizenship in Developing Societies (2012 – 2016). This has generated ongoing work on urban governance and citizenship through the lens of property and propertied citizenship in Zimbabwe (recent article published in African Studies Review 2017), as well as current collaborative work on a special journal issue on the theme ‘Juxtacities: Producing Authority and Citizenship through Urban Divides'.
• Economic Conditions of Displacement (2012-2016). Complementing the above projects, this has especially focused on the paradoxes of urban displacement and resettlement and what this generates in terms of interweaving relations between changed conditions of property and urban livelihoods and citizenship. This forms the basis for an evolving book project on Property and Personhood.

Teaching

Current primary areas of teaching on the MA in African Studies at CAS include:

• Politics, Development and Change in Africa (core course)
• Critical Development Planning and Policy Analysis (optional course)
• Introduction to African Studies
• Advanced Research Methods
• Thesis Seminar

Additional teaching:

• Urban politics and change (including New Urban Life Across the Globe – a cross-Faculty urban summer school listed within the IARU (International Union of Research Universities) summer school portfolio
• Occasional guest lectures especially around topics such as displacement, displacement economies, urban property and citizenship, Zimbabwe, African Studies
  

Supervision

MA thesis supervision
Since 2010, I have supervised close to 50 Masters theses on a range of topics. I am especially keen to supervise projects related to: the state/authority, citizenship, identity and belonging, political economies of crisis, displacement and resettlement, property, urban governance and change, critical development processes

PhD Supervision
I am currently supervising the following students:

• Toke Møldrup Wolff: working on state making in rural Somaliland
• Yingjie Zhao: working on Chinese humanitarian assistance in East Africa
• Saana Hansen (Helsinki University, co-supervision): Project on Exploring the Dynamics of Emplacement and State formation: The Case of Return Migration in Zimbabwe
  

Completed dissertations:

• Hannah Elliott (dissertation defended February 2018): Anticipating Plots:  (Re)Making Property, Futures and Town at the Gateway to Kenya’s ‘New Frontier’

Introductory remarks on publicationslist

This is a selection of publications reflecting various aspects of my work:

Hammar, Amanda, 2017. 'Urban Displacement and Resettlement in Zimbabwe: The Paradoxes of Propertied Citizenship', African Studies Review,  Vol. 60, No. 3, pp. 81-104

Hammar, Amanda, 2017. ‘‘Becoming Mozambicanised’: Nostalgic amnesia among Zimbabweans adapting to ‘disorder’ in Mozambique, African Studies, Vol. 76, No. 2, 2pp. 43-259

Hammar, Amanda (ed), 2014. Displacement Economies in Africa: Paradoxes of Crisis and Creativity, London: Zed Press, Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainsitutet

Hammar, Amanda, 2012. Review essay of ‘Whiteness in Zimbabwe’ by David McDermott Hughes, Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 39, vol. 1, pp. 216-221

Hammar, Amanda, 2011. ‘Sleepwalking Lands: Literature and Landscapes of Transformation in Encounters with Couto’, in Byron Caminero-Santangelo and Garth Myers (eds), Environment in the Margins, Athens: Ohio University Press., pp. 121-140

Hammar, Amanda, JoAnn McGregor, Loren Landau, 2010. ‘Introduction: Displacing Zimbabwe: Crisis and Construction in Southern Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 263-283

Hammar, Amanda, 2008. ‘In the Name of Sovereignty: Displacement and State Making in Post-Independence Zimbabwe’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Vol. 26, No. 4. pp. 417-434

Hammar, Amanda, 2005.  ‘Disrupting Democracy? Altering Landscapes of Local Government in Post-2000 Zimbabwe’, Crisis States Research Centre Discussion Paper No. 9, London: London School of Economics, pp.1-35

Hammar, Amanda, Brian Raftopoulos and Stig Jensen (eds) 2003. Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis. Harare: Weaver Press

Hammar, Amanda, 2001. ‘‘The Day of Burning’: Eviction and Reinvention in the Margins of Northwest Zimbabwe’, Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 1, No. 4, October 2001, pp. 550-574