Doctoral Candidate in Anthropology and History
About
Economic and Environmental History and Anthropology; 20th century to present; Morocco and the United States; Political Economy; Rural Investment; gender; commons and joint property; ownership of land; collective savings and investment practices; 'earning' rights to shared resources; household economics
I use oral historical, archival, and ethnographic methods to examine changing household political economy in rural Morocco. Over the past three decades, investments in rural communities have emphasized 'job creation,' encouraging a shift away from family production and toward individuated monetized income. This income comes from wage work (an increasing proportion of which is undertaken by women), but also from remittances, and rents from the leasing of tribal communal lands, which are held by lineage groups throughout the region. I examine how this individualized income gets channeled into collective coffers of households, and how individuals and families allocate these monetary incomes/savings along with other means of storing wealth (in sheep, land, gold etc.). I also compare the distributive politics within rural families to those of other rural institutions, including collectively-owned grazing commons, rural mutual aid societies, and rotating credit associations, considering the material underpinnings of kin relations. My dissertation highlights the rural families as sites of both material redistribution and of the renegotiation of gendered and generational relations.
I'm also interested in the pricing of labor, intergenerational wealth transfers, and collective property regimes. In addition to my work in Morocco, I've worked with Moroccan migrants in the US, examining remittance payments to rural family members and for property investment in rural Morocco.
My research is largely based in participant observation, oral/life histories, and archival research, but I also try to integrate more collaborative methods into my anthropological and historical work. I developed a project with Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco to archive oral histories from the Middle Atlas Mountains, working with three collaborators based in communities across the Province. I also worked with local associations and community members to organize a symposium in honor of the work of rural community historians (within and outside of academia), co-organized a three-day Anthro-History Symposium at Michigan, and organize various workshops and events in my capacity as the current Graduate Student Association President for the American Institute for Maghrib Studies.
