Dr. David Parduhn
ehemaliger wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter
Anschrift
Wissenschaftlicher Werdegang
01/2018 Defence of his PhD thesis 'Deforestation or Development: Exploring the actors, practices and drivers of forest loss on Zambia’s Central Plateau'
Since 11/2017 Research fellow at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Hamburg in the project Local Institutions in Globalized Societies (LINGS), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)
Since 01/2014 Research fellow at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Hamburg; member of the Forestry task Deforestation and Development of the BMBF-funded Southern African Science Service Center for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL)
09/2013 - 12/2013 Conduct of qualitative interviews in the Lower Oder Valley International Park on the perception of landscape changes and the impact of tourism development (Faculty of Business, Landscape Management and Nature Conservation, Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development)
10/2011 - 09/2013 Assistant lecturer, tutor and student advisor at the Institute of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin
since 11/2012 Swahili teacher at Sprachenatelier Berlin – School of Languages, Arts and Culture
03/2012 - 08/2012 Youth Officer and Programme Assistant Social Sciences at the Kenya National Commission for UNESCO, Nairobi
09/2012 - 11/2012 Student research assistant at the Human Remains Project, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin
04/2012 Invitation to present the paper Othering in the 'War on Terror' at the Brussels School of International Studies post-graduate conference, University of Kent, UK
08/2011 - 09/2011 Summer School on inter-ethnic and inter-faith relations tolerance in Kazan (Republic of Tatarstan, Russian Federation); scholarship provided by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
10/2010 - 11/2011 Postgradudate studies at the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton UK, scholarship provided by the Heinrich Böll Foundation
MA Anthropology of Development and Social Transformation
Title of the disseration: The Religious Turn: On the shifting perception of Turkish migrants in Germany; awarded the Bill and Scarlett Epstein Prize for the best dissertation in Anthropology
10/2010 Trained on participatory methods in international development planning, power relations in development projects (workshop series by Robert Chambers, Institute of Development Studies, UK)
09/2010 - 08/2011 Conduct of qualitative interviews for the University of Sussex based project Hidden histories of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Brighton and Hove, UK
07/2010-10/2010 Swahili language course at the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA), Tanzania, including history and ethnographic studies; scholarship provided by DAAD
10/2007 - 07/2010 Undergraduate studies at the Institute of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin, scholarship provided by the Heinrich Böll Foundation
BA Area Studies Asia/Africa and Social Sciences
Title of the dissertation: Political Ethnicity in Kenya: On the development of an ethnic consciousness and its political relevance in the Rift Valley Province (in German)
03/2009 - 09/2009 Studies at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
10/2007 - 02/2008 Preparation and participation at the international conference Perspectives of democratisation and peace-building in the Great Lakes Region at the Centre for Conflict Studies of the Philipps University of Marburg (DAAD-sponsored)
1987 born in Radebeul
Projekte
Since November 2017 "Local Institutions in Globalized Societies"
January 2014 - October 2017
Collaborator in "Deforestation and Development" (Subproject of SASSCAL - Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adapative Land Management)
Funded by BMBF, 2012-2017
With over 300,000 ha of forest lost annually, Zambia is one of the most affected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Knowledge on the precise drivers of forest loss, however, is largely based on anecdotes and an array of assumptions, but not on everyday experiences on the ground, or interactions with those said to be responsible. In a fieldwork lasted over 12 months David Parduhn dedicated himself to some central aspects:
- The practices leading to this phenomenon
- The knowledge embedded in those practices
- The strategies and motivations of the actors
- The regional, national, and global drivers behind the practices
The application of a variety of methods well established in anthropology, such as ethnographic censi, semi-structured/open narrative interviews and participant observation lead to some foreshadowing findings:
- Agricultural expansion has become a major strategy form any rural households as the Zambian government is a stable, reliable buyer of maize.
- A severe lack of land on the plateau, which is in stark contrast to the land abundancy narrative that prevails in politics, has forced the landless poor to move in to protected forest reserves to develop new settlements with adjoining farmland. In addition, distant urban speculators have cleared the forest for commercial farming.
- The current understanding of deforestation in Zambia is flawed and one-sided, with a focus on the production of charcoal. Charcoal is, however, often a by-product of agricultural expansion, produced opportunistically and driven by massive load shedding of electricity in urban areas.
- Other ‘productive practices’ leading to forest loss such as large-scale agriculture or mining are not recognized as part of the problem and are consequently not addressed. This predominant focus on ‘the ignorant poor‘ represents a continuation of the dominant discourse on deforestation in Africa.
A comprehensive monograph is scheduled to be published in 2018.
Forschungsschwerpunkte
- Anthropology of Development
- Political ecology (deforestation, land-use change, land rights)
- Environmental knowledge (ethnobotany, sexual medicine, wildlife)
- Collective identities and identity politics
- Participatory research methods, oral history, narrative interviews
- Research/Response biases (cognitive biases, memory biases)
- Regional: Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Swahili coast, Germany
Publikationen
David Parduhn. Deforestation or Development – Exploring the actors, practices and drivers of forest loss on Zambia's Central Plateau. 2018. hier
De Cauwer, V., Knox, N., Kobue-Lekalake, R., Lepetu, J.P., Ompelege, M., Naidoo, S., Nott, A., Parduhn, D., Sichone, P., Tshwenyane, S., Yeboah, E. & Revermann, R . “Woodland resources and management in southern Africa”. Biodiversity & Ecology Vol. 6. (2018): S. 296-308.
Parduhn, D. & Frantz, D . “Seeing deforestation in Zambia - On the discrepancy between biophysical land-use changes and social perception”. Biodiversity & Ecology Vol. 6. (2018): S. 317-323.
Parduhn, D.. “Review of Katherine Smith, James Staples and Nigel Rapport (eds.) "Extraordinary Encounters. Authenticity and the Interview"”. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015, Anthropological Notebooks 22,1. (2016): S. 135-137.
Parduhn, D.. “Review on 'Moberg, Mark (2013): Engaging Anthropological Theory. A Social and Political History. London: Routledge', in: Anthropological Notebooks, 21, 1, pp. 147-149”. Anthropological Notebooks 21, 1. (2015): S. 147-149.