James Ferguson (anthropologist)

James Gordon Ferguson
Ferguson at the University of Sussex in 2016
Born	(1959-06-16)June 16, 1959
Died	February 12, 2025(2025-02-12) (aged 65)
Nationality	American
Occupation(s)	Professor, anthropologist
Title	Susan S. and William H. Hindle Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences
Academic background
Education	B.A., M.A., Ph.D.
Alma mater	University of California, Santa Barbara, Harvard University
Thesis	Discourse, knowledge, and structural production in the "development" industry : an anthropological study of a rural development project in Lesotho (1985)
Academic work
Discipline	Anthropologist
Sub-discipline	Development studies
Institutions	Stanford University (2003-2025) University of California, Irvine (1986-2003)
Main interests	Political economy, Development studies, Migration

James Ferguson (June 16, 1959 – February 12, 2025) was an American anthropologist. He is known for his work on the politics and anthropology of international development, specifically his critical stance (development criticism). He was chair of the Anthropology Department at Stanford University. His best-known work is his book, The Anti-Politics Machine. He delivered the most prestigious lecture in anthropology, the Morgan Lecture, in 2009, for his work on basic income.

Early life and education

Ferguson was born on June 16, 1959. He earned his B.A. in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an M.A. and Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University.

Academic career

Ferguson has argued against reducing the issues of developing countries in terms of what they lack against Western liberal ideals of governance, and to instead closely study how social and political life actually happens in such places. He attributed his interest in the anthropology of Africa to his professors David W. Brokensha and Paul Bohannan as well as a desire to bridge the gap between traditional anthropological literature on Africa and the contemporary de-colonial struggles of the 1970s. In connection, he was heavily involved in anthropological conversations on how to connect the nuanced insights of local ethnographic studies with larger global developments and how anthropological perspectives could challenge and modify concepts such as "modernity", "globalization" and especially "development".

Ferguson was best known for his book The Anti-Politics Machine, which criticizes conceptions of development by institutions such as the IMF. Ferguson criticized depictions of nations like Lesotho as "traditional subsistence peasant [societies]" that needed the introduction of neoliberal market logic, arguing that the IMF ignored the long-standing integration of Lesotho with the modern economy through the Apartheid-era migrant labor system.

In his later book, Give a Man a Fish, Ferguson argued that development projects rely on a flawed "politics of production" that seeks to make poor people more productive in their labor through training and education. Using the case of southern Africa however, Ferguson argued that demand for new employment opportunities did not naturally keep up with this supply. Instead, he argued for a "politics of distribution" such as universal basic income in tandem with social structures of distribution and dependence already prevalent in southern Africa that are more complex than reductive ideas of "handouts" or "laziness".

Death

Ferguson died on February 12, 2025, at the age of 65.

Selected publications

• 2015, Give a Man a Fish. Duke University Press
• 2010, The Uses of Neoliberalism. Antipode, volume 41, supplement 1, 2010.
• 2006, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order, Duke University Press.
• 1999, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt, University of California Press.
• 1997, Editor, Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science (with Akhil Gupta), Univ. of California Press.
• 1997, Editor, Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology (with Akhil Gupta), Duke University Press.
• 1990, The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development,' Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, Cambridge University Press. Republished in 1994 by University of Minnesota Press.

External links

• Ferguson's faculty profile at Stanford
• Interview with James Ferguson by 'Theory Talks'