Asger Roejle Christensen – DDRN

Oprindelige folk bærer på værdifuld viden – Forskningens Døgn 2025

Asger Roejle Christensen — Fri, 30 May 2025 10:07:02 +0000

Danske forskere, der har arbejdet og forsket blandt oprindelige folk i Latinamerika, ser tegn på en ny anerkendelse i forskerkredse af disse folks traditioner og visdom

Oprindelige folk bærer på værdifuld viden, som er i fare for at gå tabt i Latinamerikas moderne samfund. Det var et tema, der gik igen i tre korte foredrag af danske forskere ved et seminar i København, som DDRN havde arrangeret som en del af Forskningens Døgn i april måned. De tre forskere arbejder til daglig blandt oprindelige folk i den del af verden.

Men der var også optimistiske ord. Med Line Jespersgaard Jakobsens ord ”ser vi i øjeblikket, at der i vestlig praksis viser sig en forstærket bevægelse hen med en større anerkendelse af oprindelige folks ‘kosmovisioner’- og en anerkendelse af, at deres former for viden har en betydning”. Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen er fra 1. juni postdoc ved Institut for Fødevare- og Ressourceøkonomi (IFRO) på Københavns Universitet, og før det, postdoc på Institut for Samfund og Erhverv, Roskilde Universitet.

Mødet, der fandt sted på kulturcentret Union på Nørre Allé i København, forsøgte at skabe en dialog på tværs af forskningsfelter om oprindelige folk i Latinamerika og deres bidrag til vores verdensbillede. Antropolog Stine Krøijer, Institut for Antropologi, Københavns Universitet, fortalte om de politiske problemer i relation til oprindelige folks landrettigheder ved de store skovbrande i Amazonas. Hun definerede ved mødets start oprindelige folk som ”efterkommere af dem, der boede i et bestemt område før koloniseringen”. De behøver ikke bo der længere, de behøver ikke have det oprindelige sprog som primært sprog, det handler om ”selvidentificering”.

”Der vil blive færre, som identificerer sig som indfødte folk, men det har jo også været et fundamentalt krav fra oprindelige folk netop at have retten til selvidentifikation. Det har været et politisk krav, at man ikke bliver identificeret af andre. Man identificerer sig selv”, sagde hun. ”Og så har vi også set eksempler rundt omkring i verden på, at nogle også genopfinder deres identitet efter en periode, for eksempel i USA, hvor der har været historiske perioder, hvor det af forskellige grunde var politisk opportunt at identificere sig som oprindelige befolkning”. Men der er også, som det under mødet blev påpeget fra salen, eksempler på, at unge ikke gider være oprindelige folk og flytter væk, hvorved sprog og territorier mistes.

Oprindelige folk er ifølge definitionen i den FN-vedtagne erklæring om oprindelige folks rettigheder fra 2007 et ikke-dominerende folkeslag i et større samfund, som de oprindelige beboede, men senere er blevet et mindretal i. De har ofte ifølge denne definition i forskellig grad bevaret deres egen kultur, baseret på naturens lokale ressourcer, og de har typisk en anden kultur og et andet sprog end den dominerende befolkning. I vore dage bliver omkring 370 millioner mennesker rundt omkring i verden defineret som oprindelige folk.

”Antropologi er som fag vokset ud af en interesse for at forstå, hvordan kulturer udvikler sig forskelligt eller ens, afhængigt af deres naturgrundlag”, forklarede Stine Krøijer. ”Det førte til meget detaljerede lokale studier af, hvad folk spiste, deres narrative traditioner og deres måder at organisere sig på lokalt. Antropologer løb rundt og målte og vejede, hvad folk indsamlede fra skoven for at finde ud af, hvilke ressourcer de benyttede sig af”.

Denne arbejdsform og de teorier, den førte til, blev imidlertid i de senere årtier ”udfordret af det, man kalder den politiske økologi, der pegede på, at det grundlæggende handlede om udnyttelsen af lokale ressourcer, og at der var større politiske interesser på spil. Spørgsmålet om tilkendelse af rettigheder til lokale ressourcer havde betydning. Så derfor begyndte antropologien sammen med geografien og flere andre fag at interesserer sig specifikt for miljøkonflikter, konflikter omkring natur og ressourceudnyttelse og indfødte folks territorier”. Der skete med andre ord et historisk skifte for antropologiske studier af oprindelige folk i retning af et nyt fokus på miljøkonflikter og rettigheder.

”Der, hvor jeg selv har arbejdet i Amazonas, har der været en meget lang konflikt om olieudvinding, som på ret voldsom vis har forandret det lokale miljø og dermed også de strategier, folk har kunnet have i forhold til deres livsgrundlag”, forklarede Stine Krøijer på mødet. ”Denne forskning, som jeg nu har gang i, tager udgangspunkt i, hvordan alle disse forskellige miljøkonflikter udfolder sig, og hvordan indfødte folk og andre sociale grupper går ind i disse og organiserer sig politisk og forsøger at få deres for deres egen sag fremført politisk”.

Den erfarne arbejdsmediciner Erik Jørs fra Odense Universitetshospital, som gennem NGO’er som IMCC (International Medical Cooperation Committee) og Dialogos i årtier har været involveret i sundhedsprojekter i Bolivia, Uganda, Filippinerne og Nepal, fortalte ved mødet specifikt om arbejdet med interkulturel medicin i Bolivia. Han understregede vigtigheden af samarbejde mellem på den ene side traditionelle medicinmænd af begge køn og på den anden side vestlige læger.

I Bolivia har omkring halvdelen af landbefolkningen ikke let adgang til sundhedssystemet, og det er et af de få lande i verden, hvor størstedelen af befolkningen tilhører et oprindeligt folk. Hans oplæg indeholdt en lang række konkrete eksempler på, at de oprindelige folks sundhedsråd og traditionelle måde at helbrede sygdomme på har givet mening.

”Allerede i 1986 brugte vi et halvt år på at gå rundt mellem landsbyerne og interviewe folk for at finde ud af, hvordan bor de? Hvor mange penge tjener de? Tjener de noget overhovedet? Hvilke afgrøder dyrker de? Og hvilke sygdomme optræder der? Og der fandt vi ud af, at selv om man lokalt ikke var meget for at fortælle om det, at de faktisk havde et fungerende sundhedssystem. Det var bare ikke et vestligt sundhedssystem, men et traditionelt sundhedssystem, som de ofte havde større tiltro til end det, de kunne møde på sygehuset”, fortalte han.

”Når vi gik rundt i gaderne, så kunne vi købe alle mulige mærkelige forskellige former for medicin, som var et resultat af den viden, de havde samlet sammen”. En viden, som handlede meget om forholdet mellem ”varmt og koldt”. Der var bestemte fødevarer i handelen, som blev opfattet som henholdsvis ”varme eller kolde”, og der var behandlinger mod sygdomme, som blev opfattet som ”varme eller kolde”.

”Det er klart, at hvis man har en varm sygdom, så skal man have nogle kolde behandlinger eller kolde ting at spise. På den måde forsøger man at genskabe balancen i kroppen” forklarede Erik Jørs, som på baggrund af sine erfaringer mener, at vi i den vestlige verden kan lære meget af oprindelig medicin, en lærdom, som vi har haft i Europas traditionelle medicin, og som også genfindes i Afrika og Asien.

”Vi kunne nedsætte vores medicinforbrug ganske betydeligt, hvis man gik mere over til baldrian, kamillete og citronmelisse. Vi har et overforbrug af medicin, fordi folk selvfølgelig gerne vil behandles. Der kan vi lære, at naturen stadigvæk har meget at byde på, også medicinsk, uden at det nødvendigvis skal være fremstillet på et farmaceutisk institut”, konkluderede Erik Jørs.

Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen, der blandt andet forsker i naturens rettigheder i forhold til udvinding af naturressourcer i Colombia, supplerer med, at ”der er en sandhed i fortællingen om, at de oprindelige folk er dygtige til at beskytte naturen”.

”Det betyder ikke, at jeg ønsker at sige til de oprindelige folk, at i og med at I er dygtige til at beskytte naturen, så bør I gå forrest i miljøkampen. Dét er et fælles ansvar. Men vi kan lære noget af den omgang med naturen, det forhold til naturen, som de har, den enorme evne, de har til at lytte og indgå i harmoni med naturen. Det er jo det, vi fuldstændigt har aflært, så der er stadigvæk noget at hente”, sagde Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen. Hun har i sin forskning med eksempler fra Colombias særlige domstol for fred set på vanskelige juridiske spørgsmål omkring ”naturen som offer” og ”naturen som subjekt for rettigheder”. Hun arbejder i, hvad hun kalder et ”krydsfelt mellem vestlig jura og det oprindelige folks viden og ’kosmovision’s sammenstød med den vestligt definerede jura”.

Det handler om, hvordan skader og lidelse i naturen bør kunne defineres som kriminelle handlinger, hvilket de i vid udstrækning ikke bliver i dag. Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen har sammen med sine kolleger set på den måde, hvorpå man forstår straffrihed inden for international lov og politik og udfordringerne ved at retsforfølge de ansvarlige for en skade på naturen.

”Vi vil gerne bryde med den nuværende fastlåste forståelse af retfærdighed, skyld og ansvar. Den måde at forstå retfærdighed på, der kommer fra vestlig jura, er fokuseret på staten og har mennesket i centrum. Mens nogle af de her folk, de taler om skade og lidelse og smerte på en helt ny måde. Hvordan dokumenterer man den her form for skade på for eksempel en flod eller på et træ eller på et bjerg? Og hvordan kan vi afgøre ansvar og sanktioner i sådan nogle sager? Her opstår der nogle interessante krydsninger mellem oprindelige folks viden og den vestlige jura.”

Til sidst på mødet kom Stine Krøijer med nogle ord om, at det næppe i ret mange tilfælde kan lade sig gøre at overføre viden fra et oprindeligt folk ”en til en” til et moderne samfund, men at det handler om at lære i højere grad at respektere hinanden og hinandens viden. ”Det bedste, vi kan bestræbe os på, er at gå i retning af at anerkende, at der er mange måder at se tingene på og mange måder at gøre det på. Det handler om at respektere andres kosmologi eller spiritualitet, men uden nødvendigvis at kopiere den en til en”.

Lydoptagelse af oplæg v/ Line Jespersgaard Jacobsen, Stine Krøijer og Erik Jørs, samt diskussion v/ moderator Lise Josefsen Hermann

https://ddrn.dk/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/250422_004-2.mp3

Global South Countries are more Vulnerable to Climate Change than we are in the North

Asger Roejle Christensen — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 13:14:21 +0000

Global climate change has exactly the same consequences in north and south. They are truly global. But the Global South can to a lesser degree afford to defend itself against them, compared with the North. This is an important difference which often makes the climate effects look more extreme in countries of the South.

“The climate effects that we currently observe in the Global South are not different from those the rest of us are observing. They may be more extreme than the ones we have, but they are basically the same. Climate change is essentially a global problem”, the renowned climate biologist, Professor Katherine Richardson from University of Copenhagen, said recently in an interview.

“We all experience that more of the sun’s heat is stored closer to us on the surface of the earth than before. This causes changes in relation to storm strength, rainfall and temperatures. We all feel the effects, in some areas more extreme than others. There is too little water, alternating with too much water, which causes floods. There are stronger and more destructive storms. There are interruptions of usual supply routes. It is actually developing faster than we thought a few years ago, and it is all the same in south and north”.

“But as it for us in the North is just a question of foods in the supermarket becoming more expensive, for those in the South it is often a question of getting food on the table at all. They are basically less equipped to cope with these kinds of problems. We can afford to eat differently than before or build differently than we did before, we already have better infrastructure, and we are willing to pay a little more in insurance fees as new risks are identified. In Denmark, there is now talk of building a two meters high and two kilometers long dike at Esbjerg. In most countries in the South, you would not be able to afford that at all. In a similar situation, they would have to simply allow themselves to be flooded”.

“That’s the difference”, notes Katherine Richardson, “a very significant difference indeed”, she adds.

“Now, there is a lot of talk in the Global North about solving the problems by ‘capturing’ carbon, but who do you think is going to pay for that kind of plant in the Global South? There is no one to do that, because they cannot afford it. It will only increase global inequality and shift the effects to an even greater extent to the South”.

There is no way around the fact that “the solution is a matter of distribution and distribution policy. Every time a COP World Climate Summit is held under the auspices of the UN, agreements are made that the rich countries have to support the poor countries with so and so much money. At the last COP meeting in 2023, a fund was established to help developing countries in the Global South with so-called “loss and damages” due to climate change. A little money was put aside for that purpose it, and Denmark unfortunately settled for just moving already granted money from one box to another”.

A gigantic amount is needed, and after the summit – “as usual”, says Katherine Richardson – the promised amount has not been found. “The money never materialize”.

At previous COP summits, solemn promises from the North have mainly revolved around amounts to “mitigate” climate change in the South, but according to Katherine Richardson, you now have to find money for “mitigation” as well as “loss and damages”. Of course, that doesn’t make the bill smaller.

“If everyone in the world were to have a daily life as we have in Denmark and use resources as we do, more than four planets’ resources would be needed if it should be done in a sustainable way. Therefore, the societal and social challenge we face is how we will distribute the limited resources between the almost ten billion people as well as other living organisms on Earth. It is very much a question about ethics and distribution politics”.

“When we started taking these things seriously not so many years ago, ‘mitigation’ was most important for the southern countries. We were discussing how we could prevent these things from happening. But now we are forced to fight ‘mitigation’ and ‘loss and damages’ at the same time”.

The challenge of ‘Loss and damages’ is simply to find money to try to re-establish infrastructure that has been destroyed by a strong storm or to build dikes after a flood, or to make sure that a well is dug deeper so people can get water”.

Now, climate change has begun to happen for everybody to see, and it is hitting everybody of us through our post box. The bills are getting more and more expensive, and we can’t just pass them on to the Global South. They have nothing to pay with”.

Some voices in the global debate have begun to argue that ‘mitigation’ is hopeless, and that the world would benefit more from letting climate change happen in north as well as south – and then pay for the major changes in our everyday lives that are obviously necessary.

“The problem with betting on one over the other is that if you just bet on paying for the damages, it will be very expensive”, explains Katherine Richardson. “If we find out that it will be four or five degrees Celsius warmer on earth, then large areas of the globe will be too hot for humans to survive there. There will suddenly be a much smaller area where we can produce our food, and there will be stronger and more frequent storms and floods, which will be very destructive”.

“Many of the plants and animals we know will disappear. And we probably can’t fly in aeroplanes, because turbulence during the frequent storms will be far too strong. So civilization as we know it today will probably not be able to continue”.

In other words, according to Katherine Richardson, “there are simply some things that we cannot adapt to, and therefore it is necessary to walk on two legs. We have to try reducing the damage being done to the climate, while at the same time paying for what has already been done”.

In that situation, the leaders of many countries in the Global South tell their colleagues in the North that “You have had your chance. Now it’s our turn so that we can develop”. But the leader in the North insist that “we are ahead of you in inventing new solutions, and don’t worry, we will distribute them to you”. In the meantime, that should make it possible for countries in the North to continue to consume a large portion of the planet’s remaining resource stock.

Katherine Richardson acknowledges that “in Denmark, people have been reasonably good at finding models for development of for instance renewable energy under poorer conditions in developing countries”.

“But in general, the North have actually failed a lot. People in the South have right to development, and when we come and tell them it must be done in a way that does not burden the global climate or at least is less burdensome to the climate than before, then we also have a moral responsibility to help them doing that. That help is on its way, but it is not happening to the necessary extent. It really is a huge task. It requires global agreements like those that have already been concluded. But it also requires that these agreements will be implemented and carried out in practice”.

In the North, people are “afraid of being faced with huge compensation claims”

“The moment we admit that our activity has resulted in ‘loss and damages’ for countries in the south, we risk being faced with huge demands for compensation. But the whole discussion is generally an expression of an enormous need for compensation. And here it all rests on ethics. So, did we have the right to have used resources we now say others may not use?”.

“I believe that, regardless of all these global agreements, you have to go out and do something yourself, where you are. It actually happens. In the North, we are currently focusing on good examples that show ‘green conversion’ can pay off, and parts of the business community have become involved in these initiatives”.

“But you have to be careful saying that everything in this field has to pay off. In relation to green energy, it is the case that prices for wind and solar have reached a point where it pays off. In that area, we have been clever at letting the state step in and take the risk by transferring new forms of energy to the South and poorer areas. But you don’t just have to think about climate. It is also about biodiversity. When politicians constantly ask: ‘Can it pay off?’, the answer is no, it cannot. But we can even less afford to do nothing.”

This article first surfaced in Danish at the POV International website.

Strengthening South Voices in Danish Mainstream Media

Asger Roejle Christensen — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 15:46:33 +0000

The successful completion of last year’s ambitious project, “South Voices in Mainstream Danish Media”, has inspired DDRN to try to define a just as ambitious follow-up project.

“South Voices in Danish Mainstream Media” was an ambitious project, which ran from the summer of 2023 until the spring of 2024. It was initiated and run by Danish Development Research Network (DDRN) and funded by the OpEn Fund of the Danish Foreign Ministry, and the purpose was to introduce works with “South angles” of professional journalists and photographers from the Global South to a broader Danish audience.

Six reporters and photographers from the Global South (Uganda, India, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia) who were known for their professionalism by DDRN from earlier cooperation, were asked to contribute with pitches from the beginning, and through three rounds we have chosen three contributions from each of them. The communication with the South contributors was carried out by the DDRN secretariat. In the end, we were able to afford two more contributions, so the project resulted in altogether twenty articles/photo-series.

Seven Danish media were associated with the project from the beginning, later supplemented with two more. Articles and photos were published or will be published in magazines like Ud&Se and Samvirke and Sjællandske Medier’s weekend magazine, newspapers like Politiken, Information, Kristeligt Dagblad and Jyllands-Posten, as well as websites like POV International and økonu.dk.

From the beginning, we have consciously been targeting far broader target groups among the Danish public, than the special interest media of the development and South issues sector are normally targeting. As prescribed in the OpEn program, we have been targeting people who are neutral (not necessarily positive) towards development efforts in the South as well as people who know very little about conditions in the Global South. We have chosen the participating Danish media from this viewpoint, and all of them have published at least one South contribution.

I have earlier in my life worked as foreign editor as well as foreign correspondent for Danish news media, and I was in charge of communication and cooperation with leading editors of the involved Danish media. They were generally kind, cooperative, positive towards the project and its purpose – but very busy.

It became a major challenge that the involved news media understandably were forced to prioritize grave international news that have dominated the news during 2023 and 2024, especially the Gaza War and the Ukraine War. The space for foreign news has already been diminished in recent years, and these events made potential non-breaking contributions from the Global South even more a niche priority than they would otherwise have been. Several of our articles were accepted by the news media, but in the end they had to wait in queue for months before being published.

Also, the fact that three of our six “South Voices” were photographers collided with the reality that very few Danish media are able to give ambitious photo series a proper showing. Even though the contributions were excellent, some of these series surfaced in a few cases as text-dominated articles in the chosen media, even though the South voice actually was meant to be expressed primarily through the pictures.

I gave most of the articles a rather tough editing, and some of the texts were considerably shortened. The South angles were of course kept, but otherwise I tried – based on my experience – to present the material in a way which looked like the way Danish editors – and Danish media consumers – normally meet interesting material from abroad. In the end, we believe we were able to present a number of strong and interesting stories that enriched the picture in Denmark of conditions in the Global South.

Good examples of published contributions which have introduced significant Southern angles that would otherwise not have been visible in Danish media are the following:

Marta Apablaza Riquelme’s interview from Chile with the Danish film-maker Lone Scherfig, published by Sjællandske Medier, October 21st, 2023. It has its Danish angle, but no Danish reporter would have been able to make the same interview. It takes to a remarkable degree its starting point in the local area’s geography and history.
Charlie Cordero’s photo report about the use of coca in food in Colombia, published by Samvirke, November 2023. The report is focusing on honest people trying to make a living, showing solidarity with them. A very different angle on the coca isuue than we usually see in Western media.
Wara Vargas’ three photo series about a local fisherwoman at the Titicaca Lake, published by “Ud&Se”, September 2023, a female farmer, becoming a politician, published by Sjællandske Medier, February 17th, 2024, as well as the Chipaya people suffering from climate change, published by POV International, December 21st, 2023. Wara Vargas is indigenous herself, and her pictures reveals the closeness of an insider to the issues.
William Odinga Balikuddembe’s article about how Uganda farmers’ response to climate change is undermined by the country’s poor seed system, published by POV International, February 8th, 2024. A very important local issue is made interesting and relevant for a North audience through concrete and detailed explanations.

Around the time of the project’s third and final round, we invited Danish media and development sector people and everybody else to a public evaluation meeting in Copenhagen. It took place January 3^rd, 2024. Because of terrible weather and illness, only two of the involved editors participated, but the rest sent valuable input. The evening itself developed into a constructive and inspiring exchange with the participants who were mostly professionals and media people involved with the development field.

Based on our experiences with the project, we hope to be able to carry them into a new version of the South Voices project during the coming year. Originally, it wasn’t meant to be more than a one-time event, but the way it has evolved would make a second version relevant, in which we build on what we have learned. We also hope to involve new media outlets as well as new and younger target groups in Denmark.

ID-Cards give Legal Identity to some Ugandans – but not all

Asger Roejle Christensen — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 06:17:05 +0000

A young Danish researcher from African Studies is observing how people in Uganda are navigating a new digitalized certification system which doesn’t recognize everybody as citizens – even when they have lived in the country for generations

In Uganda’s capital of Kampala a single ID card printer is currently struggling to fill the demand for equipping the entire population of 45 million people with new ID-cards. Out of originally six printers for that purpose, only one is currently functioning.

Since 2014 the government has tried to equip every single citizen with a new National ID Card, which is part of the aim of living up to the United Nations SDG-goal of ”legal identity for all” before 2030.

According to Toke Møldrup Wolff, an Assistant Professor at the Centre of African Studies at University of Copenhagen, the situation of underequipped administrations is a critical challenge that slows down the modernization of the national economy and the public sector in the country.

He is a key person in an ambitious research project called ”Certizens” (Certifications of Citizenship in Africa) which is designed to study registration of citizens and digitalization of the public sector in Uganda and Ghana.

”It makes a lot of sense to begin registering people – if it just worked well. As long as it doesn’t it ends up defeating its own purpose”, he says.

”SDG Goal number 16,9 (Legal Identity for All, ed.) is meant to empower citizens by offering them proof of their citizenship. Ideally, this can be used for citizens to claim their rights and gain access to a variety of state services. Again, increased monitorization and improved statistics can also help achieve the other SDG-goals. But if you don’t have enough bureaucrats and proper equipment to register people and distribute the ID cards it can end up making life more difficult for the many Ugandans who have to navigate their daily life without a National ID”, Toke Møldrup Wolff explains.

That is even more true when you observe how some ethnic groups are systematically excluded from obtaining their ID-card. When Uganda’s constitution was amended in 1995, some ethnic groups were for some reason not mentioned as Ugandan citizens in line with most other ethnic categories in the country. In practice, this wasn’t any problem until the start of the introduction of the new ID-cards in 2014. Then, the problems began.

”As soon as you are not part of the new registry, you are basically on your own and cannot access any public services including healthcare and schooling. In that case, the new system is not promoting development – but quite the opposite”.

Toke Møldrup Wolff grew up with travelling together with his parents. Later in his life, his father started travelling in Africa for his work and he came home with pictures and stories that fascinated his son. When Toke Møldrup Wolff was very young, he became interested in global structures of inequality, and after traveling as a backpacker in East Africa, it was an obvious choice to study African Studies.

”I am very interested in conflict areas”, he explains. ”I wrote a PhD in Somaliland about conflicts between town and countryside – between traditional ways of solving problems by rural clan leaders on one side and more urban and state oriented ways of doing it on the other side”.

While he was doing his fieldwork in Somaliland in 2017, a presidential election was held, and he served as election observer. He could observe first hand how the identity of voters were checked by an iris scan, a new technology which had never been used for voter registration in Africa before. He was stunned by the ”contrast between new technologies and traditional mass informalities”, and he realized the great monitoring and power-exercising potential of the new technologies in play.

Efficiency and monitoring

After finishing his PhD he joined the ”Certizens” project which was designed in collaboration with Ugandan and Ghanaian universities and based on an original idea by Amanda Hammar, professor and former Director of CAS. Her interest was to explore the role of ID-cards and citizens’ registration in the political development of African countries.

The registration of citizens in African countries was boosted in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

But the technology behind the biometric cards and certificates developed fast, and gradually it became more and more an efficient tool for the governments in other fields. If you register yourself, you can have a bank account, get a driver’s license and so on. If you don’t, you cannot have these things. Many governments realized that they could live up to the SDG goal about ”Legal Identity to All”, and at the same time gain much better control over their citizens if that was what they wished to have.

Within the ”Certizens”-project, Toke Møldrup Wolff has become the Project researcher of the subproject concerning ”Certifications of Citizenship in Uganda: The Intermediate Arena”, conducted among ethnic minorities in Uganda.

”I am very interested in exclusion, and ethnicity proved to be an interesting site for exploring ways in which people are excluded from obtaining the National ID”, he explains.

In Uganda, there are no less than 21 ethnic groups, who have lived there for generations and consider it their home country but who are not mentioned in the 1995 constitution and therefore don’t officially count as Ugandans. The Maragoli people is one of these groups.

”They did actually migrate to Uganda from Kenya several generations ago in the early twentieth century, but it is also the case with most other ethnic groups, that they have migrated in the past – and national boundaries in Africa are in any case drawn by European colonialists without much concern for dividing lines between ethnic groups”.

Decade after decade, the Maragoli people have paid their taxes, owned property and even participated in elections. But even if they now show their tax receipts or property certificates, it doesn’t make them Ugandans in the modern public registration sense. There is no ID-card for them.

”The computer says no. You are not in the system”, is the message they very often get when trying to register themselves or attempt to access public services according to Toke Møldrup Wolff.

”Only in 2014, when the ID-cards are introduced, they realize that they are not considered real Ugandans – and at the same time other groups realize that the Maragoli are not Ugandans. Some of them start to demand the fertile lands of Maragoli families. They haven’t had serious ethnic strife for a long time – but now it’s being instigated by the government’s registration drive”.

Then, the focus of Toke Møldrup Wolff’s fieldwork has been to talk to administrators as well as ordinary citizens to learn about how people from the Maragoli group are indeed able to navigate this system even though they have not been allowed to register themselves legally.

Some of them are registering themselves as belonging to another ethnic group than they actually belong to in order to be allowed to send their children to public school. This will often force them to borrow or buy an entirely new name from members of another ethnic group. Normally your name would easily show which ethnic group you come from.

This kind of maneuvering creates a situation of permanent mistrust between administrators and people and state bureaucrats have become increasingly cautious before registering people as citizens.

But even though some are able to maneuver the system, future problems can emerge: In all their official papers until then concerning property and other things, it is their old name that appear. Now, they can suddenly not any longer prove they own the land they are cultivating.

South-North combination is a good model

”At the start of the Certizens-project, we didn’t know the professors in Ghana and Uganda who became the main South partners in the project”, Toke Møldrup Wolff explains. ”We reached out for our strong network and asked around”. Toke Møldrup Wolff and Amanda Hammar then travelled together to Ghana and Uganda to start the collaboration with the university in each country.

Ultimately, a professor from Ghana and another one from Uganda got very involved already from the designing stage. Everyone in the project is now involved in data collection and Toke Møldrup Wolff gathers data during numerous short stays in Uganda. There are also two PhD’s in Uganda, two in Ghana, plus one in Copenhagen.

All data are continuously shared, and once a month there is an online meeting in order to exchange findings, thoughts and doubts.

”The South-North combination is a good model and will be that for many years to come”, Toke Møldrup Wolff predicts.

”If the two professors in Ghana and Uganda had got the idea themselves, of course they would cognitively and intellectually have been able to conduct the project without us – but their access to funding is much more limited. It’s a fact that there is a global distortion in the distribution of research funding. The two South professors are aware of the distortion and operate within it”.

”I honestly feel that we are learning a lot from each other through this kind of project. Most participants are PhD’s, they are in a learning process, and they are guided through that by the local professors, but also by us”.

”But we are learning a lot from them. It would be impossible for us to come from the outside and conduct this kind of research without local anchoring. That would be a hopeless and unethical endeavour. We always have a local research assistant with us during fieldwork who is familiar the local conditions”.

Toke Møldrup Wolff is aware that he as a white man obviously coming from abroad will not always get the same answer to the same question as the local researcher would get – but he does not necessarily see that as a disadvantage.

”There is a major difference in the way people are expressing their frustrations with the ID-chaos in front of us. The Ugandan researchers have been through the same ID-procedures, and they are expected to know the general picture. People do not expect that I know anything, so they will present it to me in a less esoteric way, and I am allowed to dig deeper and raise more naive questions. That gives our conversation another kind of dynamic. No doubt about that”.

”I am not saying that it’s better. A combination of local anchoring and outside wonder has shown itself to be a good recipe. But the days of colonial anthropology is definitely over. We cannot just come, sit down with a notebook and observe people – that would not be proper research”.

CERTIZENS (Certifications of Citizenship in Africa)

All of Us Need to Build Capacity – in South as well as North

Asger Roejle Christensen — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 06:15:58 +0000

Research collaboration is capacity building in itself, says Professor Jens Seeberg, Aarhus University.

Every university on the globe has a constant need of capacity building. That is certainly also the case in Denmark.

”Research collaboration is capacity building in itself”, as Professor Jens Seeberg puts it. He is a medical anthropologist from Aarhus University, and he has worked with a series of development projects through three decades since he came to India for the first time in the late 1980’s to do fieldwork about mental illness at Indian hospitals and temples.

”Interesting research develops my own competences, my own knowledge. I am developing my competences a lot when I am collaborating with colleagues in Nepal and India, and I believe they are doing the same. But this also happens when I collaborate with good colleagues from Europa or America. You get a capacity gain from international collaboration – i’s always a good thing to collaborate with people outside your home environment”.

”So in many ways, capacity building is a wrong premise in a development context. It’s not only the partners from the South in a collaborative research project who shall develop their competences. It’s up to all of us. When the work has started, it doesn’t matter if you come from the South or the North. Research collaboration is capacity building – and capacity building is research collaboration”.

But Jens Seeberg who has worked as a research officer for the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Danish foreign ministry’s support to the Indian tuberculosis control program for several years before his current position at Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University, underlines that ”it’s also a fact that it’s more difficult for some countries than others to establish that kind of collaboration. Some countries, typically in the South, are much more dependent on funding from the outside than others”.

”There is a dependency built into the unequal global system of today that we have to be conscious about. We must not ignore it. On the contrary, we should every day try to minimize its negative consequences as much as possible through mutuality in our collaboration”.

Interdisciplinary work

For the last fifteen years, Jens Seeberg has worked his way from one collaborative research project to the next, several of them funded by FFU, the Consultative Research Committee on Development Research. Recently, he embarked together with a group of researchers from South and North on a large interdisciplinary project, funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF). The focus of this project is antibiotic resistance in a context of labour migration in India and Nepal.

In recent years, Jens Seeberg’s primary field of study has increasingly focused on resistant tuberculosis and its spread in India and globally. He has conducted several projects, including one in collaboration with a local NGO. The focus has included the private health sector in the country which delivers around 80 percent of the health services. It is largely unregulated and is an important market for the large Indian pharmaceutical industry.

”Research is not interesting if it isn’t difficult. If not, there would be no reason to do research. In the field of antimicrobial resistance, ethnographic methods are very useful because they make it possible to handle complex research questions with many factors involved”.

”But all my projects through the last twenty years have been interdisciplinary and based on bringing different competences in play in collaboration with each other. In the latest project, I work with microbiologists, pharmacists, medical doctors and anthropologists with expertise in health, migration and labour. For me, the important thing is to combine a group with supplementary competences. Some come from the South, others come from the North, and we work to overcome the challenges that lie in the fact that some participants come from countries with less possibilities and less access to academic resources than others”.

”Of course, you should not make a premise for yourself in which you ignore differential access to resources. But still, the primary task is to identify the competences that are needed for a specific interdisciplinary project. I hope that I will be able to contribute – through my experience and large network – to identify the right people and make collaboration with new people work. It’s a good sign when a young researcher from the South who was a PhD in one project gets a postdoc position in another project through open competition”.

Young and old

A typical division of labour in these international collaboration projects within development research tends to be that data collection take place in the South. But it is poor collaboration to send data to the North and transform them into meritorious academic articles there. Jens Seeberg suggests a different pattern.

”To me, the division of labour is not only a question about South and North, it is also question of young and old. In the NNF project, seven persons are doing fieldwork in workplaces and data collection in tuberculosis clinics; two are based in Aarhus, two at a university in Delhi, two at a hospital in Delhi, and one in Nepal. All of them are postdocs or young researchers, and all originate in the South”.

”In this project, it’s planned that all postdocs shall have an opportunity to write one or more articles as lead author. I believe it’s important to make capacity strengthening a built-in feature of any project, but then again, the first author has to be the one who does most of the initial writing. It’s true that researchers in the South have not had the same access to publishing in academic articles as researchers in the North, and this is exactly the reason why such measures have to be built into the project. This also involves a focus on creating a conducive environment for mutual support and learning”.

Breaking the promises

A few years ago, Jens Seeberg was in charge of one of the ”BSU”-platforms supported by the Danish Foreign Ministry. ”Building Stronger Universities” is the name of an ambitious capacity-building effort with university partners in the South, and Jens Seeberg lead the platform that covered humanities and social sciences with partner universities in Uganda, Kenya and Nepal. The BSU-program is now in its fourth stage, and many things have been adjusted since the beginning.

”We had enormous challenges”, says Jens Seeberg. ”The management structure was unclear, and it created problem which were difficult to handle og resulted in random decisions”.

”The strength in the BSU program was intended to be long-term collaborative relationships, but in reality both Kenya and Nepal were dropped from the program for political reasons so the promised long-term perspective disappeared in these cases and it was difficult to sustain the initiatives that had been launched”.

One basic problem with BSU was, according to Jens Seeberg, that the participating institutions were not allowed to combine research and capacity strengthening activities even if well-designed collaborative projects form ”the most effective way to build capacity”.

”Again, meaningful research improves the competences of the involved researchers”.

Funding Policies in the North Hurt Capacity Building in the South

Asger Roejle Christensen — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 06:15:02 +0000

Denmark has valuable experience in running an efficient research administration. It’s important to continue sharing this experience with the global South countries like Ghana in order to address risks of bureaucracy, according to an experienced Danish development researcher

In many cases, South partners in development research projects would nowadays be able to continue the projects themselves without the North, including gaining funding from international aid agencies or large private foundations.

”But in the case of long-term and consolidated collaborations like the one between my university and universities in Ghana, they would clearly lose momentum without us”, says Senior Scientist Finn Plauborg, an experienced agrohydrologist at the Department of Agroecology at University of Aarhus.

On top of conducting several research programs between his own department and partners in Ghana and other countries in the Global South, he has served as leading coordinator of the Danish-funded ”Building Stronger Universities” program (BSU) at the University of Ghana. The BSU-program covers a number of universities in selected countries in the Global South, and its specific purpose is to build up research capacity at national universities in the Global South.

It worries Finn Plauborg when, for instance, a country like Ghana – as it happened recently – is removed from the list of countries which receive future research grants from Denmark’s FFU-fund, the Independent Research Fund. Simply because statistics have shown that it has passed a milestone and become a middle-income country and therefore now is considered able to pay itself for that kind of projects.

”And that is not fair”, says Finn Plauborg. For many years, the BSU effort in Ghana has been tied togetherwith FFU-funded research projects primarily concerning malaria and climate change. In these two fields, the local universities have, according to Finn Plauborg’s observations, built their own strong research communities, ranging from professors to postdocs and upcoming PhD’s.

The purpose of the BSU-program was exactly to strengthen the South-North networks and gradually push universities in the South to further develop in the direction of becoming research-based universities. It was fast becoming a success story, but now Finn Plauborg fears this ”momentum” will be lost.

”The typical grants from FFU has only been maybe ten or twelve million Danish kroner, but that has been enough to cultivate a vitalization of local universities’ research capacity. They have been able to continuously employ new postdocs and PhDs and thereby establish a firm structure around them which is partly built on Danish experiences. This progress might get lost with no new funding for FFU-projects. I know this is creating serious frustrations in several scientific fields at universities in Ghana”.

”Indeed, we have had a very strong research collaboration with the two largest universities in Ghana for many years”, he observes. ”The continuity of this effort has been secured through the years exactly because we have had the opportunity to apply for new research grants from FFU when it was needed in order to continue the strong collaboration”.

South-driven projects

Finn Plauborg has developed a very personal commitment towards Ghana. ”When you are running through a village at five o’clock in the early morning to avoid the heat, you can observe that there is still a lot of work for us to do in Ghana. In my opinion, there is still a need for us from the North in that effort”. For Finn Plauborg, it is more than a relationship that he builds with his closest research colleagues. ”When you work there for three weeks in a row, the weekends become a very important part of the stay. You can visit your personal friends – I have three families outside the research community whom I always visit – you can have a local dinner with them.”

”Personally, I have decided to make my contribution in Ghana, maybe five years more. I don’t intend to shop around among countries. Successful development projects are, like most other projects, based on good personal relations. If you have built up a strong relationship that is able to withstand small conflicts which will always appear, then it’s a very valuable thing and you shouldn’t discard it.”

”Look at the successes we have had. During the BSU-program from 2010 until 2015, we had four PhD’s from University of Ghana. All of them are now employees of the university, doing excellent research. We are still working together with them, and we know each other well. They have been to Denmark for longer stays during their PhD-training, and they understand and appreciate our contribution. This is the way to go”.

“During the BSU-programs, we have tried to make the South partners capable of running the projects themselves. It works much better than it did in the beginning.

Finn Plauborg has tried to make his own analysis as to why it is generally so difficult to make this kind of transfer of expertise work. Why do they so often not respond to their emails? The answer is bureaucracy.

“We are, for instance, running into bureaucracy when we are buying research equipment. I have just bought equipment for one million Danish kroner for two projects. It’s the Ghanian university’s money but it’s much easier to circumvent bureaucracy and corruption if I do the actual buying. They avoid so much trouble and extra expenses. We know that when the goods arrive we have to rush to the airport to pick them up. The longer we wait, the larger the expense grows”.

Confidence for the future

One of the main purposes of the BSU program was to transform universities, built on education, into universities, which are also built on their own research.

”Who knows about that? We do, in Denmark. We have a very long and valuable experience in doing exactly that. It’s not something that you can read about in a book. My observation is that when we make an honest effort to share this experience, our colleagues in the South evaluate it very highly. They really get something out of the investment”.

”All the BSU-projects have had an administrative column aimed at introducing a more efficient administrative structure, which the universities in the South didn’t have to begin with. This is totally necessary if they want to become globally recognized research universities. We have observed that in relation to malaria research projects at our partner universities in Ghana”.

As a consequence of both the BSU program and FFU funding being stopped in Ghana, Finn Plauborg has now engaged himself in a large research project proposal into how to improve the water resources of the country at a time when the population has doubled within a few decades. This proposal is formulated in close cooperation with a large Danish private company, Grundfos, and local partners, and, outside the Danida frame, it is still possible to apply for public funding.

”So, even though the malaria and climate change projects will have to stop, I hope to be able to continue working in Ghana. Inspiration from Danish experiences will still .

For a veteran in the field like Finn Plauborg, the reward is mainly felt when he observes ”bright young people who want to become researchers and are developing all the necessary skills. Through the years, we have seen ten or twelve of them in Ghana. It’s such a joy when you feel that they are confident in expressing their opinions and These young people will be very important for Ghana in the future”.

Exploring the Junction between Colonialism and Climate Crisis in Caribbean Literature

Asger Roejle Christensen — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 14:08:14 +0000

A young Danish literature researcher is reading novels and poems from the Caribbean archipelago in order to understand the relationship between colonial history and environmental degradation.

Literature is always mirroring the society around it. Sometimes this mirror even influences the course of the society in which it’s written and read.

”As an academic, I believe that cultural objects play a crucial role in the way we conceive the world. I am interested in how literature can change perceptions and how an academic devotion to a literary tradition such as the Caribbean, can contribute to a new outlook on our connection with the physical world”, says Anne-Sophie Bogetoft Mortensen, a Danish PhD-researcher from RUC, Roskilde University.

From her busy reading desk at Roskilde University or at home in Copenhagen, over the last couple of years she has been exploring the junction between colonialism and climate crisis in three centuries of Caribbean literature, primarily poetry. But before she could dive into the literature, she had to first familiarize herself with the language and poetic models of the region.

”Language and colonial history is profoundly intertwined in the Caribbean”, Anne-Sophie explains. ”British English, which is the official language of the islands’ literature I work with, expresses a British reality. The pace, the symbolism, the rhythm, mirrors a typical British landscape with green hills, heavy rain and grazing sheep. Some of the most significant Caribbean literature theorists argue that these British rhythms and poetic models are unable to reflect fully the very different experience of living in the Caribbean with its history of earthquakes, recurring hurricanes etc. It simply does not have the capacity to captivate and express those experiences.”

”Rhythm is very important in the Caribbean poetry. Now, when I say rhythm, I am referring to rhythm in a given text, but also to as rhythm which is conditioned of the physical materiality around the writer”.

”Tides have a specific rhythm, waves have a specific rhythm, and the hurricanes which hit the Caribbean archipelago every other year have yet another rhythm. These natural phenomenona and their rhythms are reflected in the poerty, and so one could say, that there is a rhythm imbedded the landscape, and that this rhythm is reflected in the poetic landscape of the texts that I read”.

The starting point for Anne-Sophie’s keen interest in Caribbean literature was her worries about the current threats towards the colonized countries, societies and landscapes from global warming.

”I am interested in how literature can change people’s mindset and how a serious study of a literary tradition, as in my case the Caribbean, possibly can inspire a new perception or attentiveness to the connection between human beings and the physical world around us. The literary texts are my primary empirical material, but I am approaching it in a very interdisciplinary way, connecting it with theories from critical geography, history and non-western philosophy from around the world”.

”To many people, the climate crisis might seem like a new thing, something that is just flaring up now, but many climate historicist will argue, that our current climate crisis began back in 1492 with the start of colonization, with the transportation and exploitation of humans, plants and land.

This recognition might create a higher degree of global cohesion. If many of us have become a little bit immune towards all the news stories about global warming, economic growth, racism and other controversial issues, art and culture might possibly create some sort of new and much needed resonance”.

An outsider’s viewpoint

Early in her research process, Anne-Sophie made a deliberate choice not to try to contact the writers whose works she is studying. It’s the texts that are the objects of her interest, not the intentions of the artists behind.

Of course, she planned from the beginning to go to Barbados, Jamaica and other islands on to get a sense of the literary environment, and to participate in literary events and engage with local scholars, but because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting closed borders, that hasn’t been possible – so in spite of many years’ interest in the literature from the place, Anne-Sophie has actually never been to the Caribbean in her life. The object of study is squarely the texts in front of her.

”I would not call it a handicap – but it has definitely been a challenge for me”, she says.

At the same time, the corona restrictions have in a paradoxical way been a help for Anne-Sophie in her studies. She has been able to participate in a lot of online international conferences, PhD-courses, reading groups etc., which would normally not have been possible, as everything took place online. Therefore, her primary collaborators have been researchers around the world, rather than other researchers from Danish universities:

”If I could start over again, that is one of the things I would have done differently. I would have reached out more to relevant people at RUC and other Danish universities, rather than being so focused on international networks. It just happened that I very quickly got into online contact with some highly recognized international literature professors and an international group of critical geographers who helped me a lot”.

”So in many ways, corona has been a blessing in disguise for me. There is a broad international community of researchers in my field, and because everything has taken place online, I have been able to participate in much more than I would otherwise have been”.

Language is in itself a challenge in the region. Many of the local authors in islands such as Barbados, have written about the difficulties of writing about the Caribbean environment, history, culture etc., in a language that is originally the colonizers. Many of the authors are searching to install their own national language, to achieve something which is a language in itself and not just a dialect of somebody else’s language.

”Most of the authors and literature-theorists in the islands grew up speaking English with their parents, but is a local variant of English. Jamaican English is not the same as Barbados English, or Bajan as the locals would call it, and both are very different from British English, which is what the locals were taught in school. The literature of the various islands mirrors these variants of written English, and because of that they are indeed quite challenging for someone like me to read, let alone analyze. But this also means, that I am much more aware of small language details, and that I am constantly attuning myself to the Caribbean reality, via the language”.

Anne-Sophie recognize that the curriculum at literature studies at most Danish universities have become less ”white” during the last ten to fifteen years. The students are expected to read more and more non-western literature, both fiction and theory.

”However, the whole literary community both in and outside of the university is still very dominated by the West here in Denmark. I wanted to write a PhD about something else in order to challenge myself”.

Coasts and plantations

In the beginning of her research, Anne-Sophie focused on the shore as the main theme of her dissertation. She observed the Caribbean coast as a literary landscape.

”The islands’ continuous shorelines and seemingly isolated geography made them an obvious destination during the maritime colonization, but also meant that the shore often became the site for the first, and often traumatic, encounter between colonizer and native islander. Trauma has remained the Caribbean shore’s main characteristic”, she explains.

”The shore were at the same time symbols of the beginning of the nightmare – and the only possible escape. They became the site where busy sea ports where established. At the same time, the sea became the only possible escape road for the island’s natives and the enslaved… Today the shore remains the primary attraction on many of the islands. Tourists from all over the world flies thousands of miles to experience the Caribbean beaches, all the while forcing the locals away from them”.

”The place where sea and land meets are also where some of the threatening consequences of climate change affect the islanders most significantly. Throughout the last couple of decades, the Caribbean has experienced an intensification of the disastrous weather phenomenona, such as tropical storms and floods, threatening to erode the coastal societies financial fundament and qualification as a home for the native Caribbeans”.

But gradually through the research process, this original focus on the shore was supplemented by a broader view, as the inland plantations began playing a major role.

”The Caribbeans have often been presented as a kind of rest area on the enslaved peoples’ tortuous travel from the African continent to the American continent, but actually there were a lot of sugarcane and cotton plantations on the islands themselves. Much of the suffering took place there, and much of the literature has its roots there, in that tumultuous and tormented soil”, Anne-Sophie explains.

“The plantations were a result of an extractivist way of thinking: in the plantations both soil, plants and humans where being treated as nothing other than resources fit for making profit off on.”

”Something happens to those who are enslaved under such conditions. A kind of alienation. They are put there as a work force, and the only relation they have to the soil they are cultivating and the only relation they have to the land they live on is that they are working it, draining it, in order to give all the crop to their masters. That certainly does not create ground for taking good care of the land.”

”Neither the cotton nor the sugarcane became part of the enslavedes identity in a positive way. In the literature, both of those crops are often closely connected with pain.”

”In contrast, on some of the islands, the plantation owners gave the enslaved and their families small private plots, often with bad soil, that they were allowed to cultivate themselves. Not out of pity of course, but because it was expensive to feed a work force of 30 families. Better they took care of that themselves”.

”They were able to sell small amounts of these private crops and exchange them with other families. It gave a limited feeling of independence, but the purpose was to keep the enslaved families in check. The plantation owners were very much afraid of any form of rebellion”.

”On these private plots, many families were growing yam, a root vegetable which they had originally brought with them from their African homeland. While cotton and sugar became symbols of repression, yam became a small symbol of reclaiming one’s freedom, trying to create something for oneself”, explains Anne-Sophie Bogetoft Mortensen.

How Economic Development is Embedded in National Institutional Systems

Asger Roejle Christensen — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 14:07:47 +0000

Development outcomes, including the ability to capture gains from globalization, depend, to a large degree, on national embeddedness of economic activities. A Danish professor has observed this interaction over many years in Indonesia’s development.

While firms are the primary economic agents in modern economic activities, their development and impact on the wider economy are contingent on their connections to the wider institutional system, not least in countries in the Global South. Professor Peter Gammeltoft from Copenhagen Business School has observed this interaction for many years, especially in Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries.

”For many years, I have worked with issues around economic and technological change, innovation and internationalization”, he says. “I have been particularly interested in how development outcomes, including the ability to capture gains from globalization, depend on the national embeddedness of economic activities”.

This ”embeddedness”-perspective was already an important part of Gammeltoft’s PhD-thesis in the late nineties on the development of the Indonesian electronics industry.

”I analyzed how and with which effects the companies and their activities were ’embedded’ in the wider economic and institutional system. Even though Indonesia has transitioned, successfully, from an authoritarian to a democratic system, many of these basic economic processes remain the same, only even more complex.”

”It’s a perspective that has taken inspiration from the various perspectives on national institutional systems, such as the innovation system, business system, and national technology system approaches, as well as from Albert Hirschman’s emphasis on linkages”, he explains.

Miracle and crisis

Peter Gammeltoft is now a professor with special responsibilities (MSO) at the Department of International Economics, Government and Business at Copenhagen Business School, where he has been employed since 2003.

Over the years, Peter Gammeltoft’s teaching and research interests have encompassed international development studies, economic geography, international business, business economics and innovation and entrepreneurship.

After university and a stint in international consulting, he started his academic career writing a Danida-funded PhD project in the second half of the 1990s on industrialization in Asia, with the case of the Indonesian electronics industry.

The PhD project took longer than planned due to the Asian financial crisis, which broke out a year into the project.

“When I started the project, Indonesia was considered a miracle economy but, a year later, the economy was devastated. I remember walking around in Jakarta in May 1998 with huge demonstrations, riots, burning buildings and vehicles, combat forces, tanks and helicopters and it was not easy to schedule my interviews with company managers”.

During the project, Gammeltoft spent more than a year in Indonesia and learned the language well enough to conduct interviews with managers, workers, and entrepreneurs in their own language.

After the PhD project, even though there were certainly many worthwhile issues for research, he had to realize that, at the time, the interest in Indonesia from the Danish side was limited. Instead, he participated in developing and launching an international researcher network, “Globelics”, focused on innovation in emerging and developing economies.

International networks

For several years, Gammeltoft’s main research interest moved to China. He studied first foreign investment in China and then Chinese foreign investment abroad, especially related to research and development (R&D) and knowledge-intensive activities.

He also did research and teaching on emerging markets more broadly and started running a biennial international conference series at CBS about them in 2008, which is still ongoing. As an outgrowth, he is currently running a Ministry of Higher Education and Science “International Network Programme” focused on emerging markets with scholars at three North American universities.

Yet, he has maintained his research interest in Indonesia and has, over the years, spent a total of around three years in the country, conducting the first comprehensive study of Chinese investments in Indonesia in cooperation with Indonesian partners, and a follow-up study some years later.

In terms of current research interests, Gammeltoft is looking back towards where they began.

“The Danish government and industry are increasingly becoming interested in other emerging economies besides China, such as Indonesia, Vietnam and India, and I’m considering how I might bring my research interests and competencies to work on contemporary Indonesian development challenges”.

One particularly relevant research challenge that Peter Gammeltoft is currently focusing on is green transition in the Indonesian energy sector.

“Indonesia is one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gasses and also one of the countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Yet, even though Indonesia has huge potential in renewable sources of energy, the uptake of these technologies is very limited, and while progressive plans and policies have been elaborated, very little concrete progress is achieved. Even in a contemporary world full of uncertainties, it’s difficult to think of a more important research challenge.”

Research Collaboration With China Has Become More Difficult in the Age of Corona

Asger Roejle Christensen — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 09:28:47 +0000

In today’s world, it is extremely important for academics to keep having contacts in China, but it has to happen in a way in which you are not ruining your best sources. However, this is not easy, according to an experienced Danish researcher in the field.

In many parts of the world, the traditional division of labor between the South and North partners within research projects has been undergoing great changes in recent years.

Changes are happening in China too, not least because of the pandemic, which has meant that Western researchers have been unable to enter China for almost three years. This has left Chinese partners with the sole responsibility for outgoing fieldwork and data gathering.

At the same time, deteriorating Sino-Western relations have led to a growing wariness towards Western research institutions, and a consequent need to protect Chinese research partners from potential negative consequences of collaborative projects, explains Ane Bislev, associate professor in Chinese Area Studies at Aalborg University.

”We have to be cautious not to pressure them into going out and asking questions about issues that might get them into trouble”. ”Of course, we talk to them and have to rely on their own intuition regarding their own position, what they can do, and what they cannot do. But also, we have to set a limit for ourselves. It’s not easy to collaborate with China. It’s extremely important to keep having contacts, but it has to happen in a way in which you are not ruining your best sources”.

This is of course not fundamentally different from working as a researcher in other autocratic states around the globe – but modern China is an extreme case.

”On the one hand, there are so many excellent Chinese researchers in the social sciences. But on the other hand, there are certain limits as to what you can publish in China, as well as a strong tradition for policy-oriented research which defines how you can address social problems. If the Chinese researchers have a stable base in the West, it is of course different, but as soon as a Chinese university is involved, there are much narrower limits for what they can say and write. Maneuvering in this kind of situation has become a natural part of collaborating with China. Of course, it’s possible, and it is very important to continue doing it, but you have to collaborate in a different way”.

According to Ane Bislev, collaboration has become increasingly difficult during the pandemic, where Western researchers have had to rely exclusively on their Chinese partners for fieldwork data.

Back in the 1990’s, when Ane Bislev came to China to study the language, the atmosphere was much more free, at least for a young, Western student. Originally, she planned to study development studies along with the Chinese language, but instead she chose anthropology as her minor. When she came to the Southwestern province of Yunnan in 2001 and 2002 in order to do fieldwork for her PhD about microcredits in China among peasants in the countryside, she experienced ”basically no restrictions”.

”But it was a politically harmless issue to study. I have always been interested in what creates development in The Global South, and microcredits were, at that time, generally considered a useful development tool by everybody”.

During her stay in Yunnan, Ane Bislev collaborated with several young researchers from Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences. They helped her in establishing contacts and interpreting from local dialects.

”There was a clear division of labor, yes. But still, we had a lot of discussions when walking to the fieldwork site. They simply couldn’t understand that I kept asking the same naive questions again and again even though I had received an explanation the day before”.

”So it often developed into discussions about how you do good research. The Chinese counterparts had grown up in a tradition for empirical research where you are focused on gathering concrete information to be used as documentation. How many members in a typical microcredit group? Do you normally manage to pay the money back? But as an anthropologist, I was more interested in who said it? How do they talk about it? Why do they participate when they are actually not doing the activities they receive the money for? And finally, in the end, do the women involved actually have the money at their disposal? Even though I knew the concrete answers to many of the questions, it was interesting to hear how they would answer it”.

“Back then, some of the Chinese research assistants understood my approach while others just found me a bit slow on the uptake”.

Since then, Ane Bislev has engaged in research into more and more politically complicated issues, i.e. other kinds of credits, nationalism, international student exchange, and tourism seen as a meeting between different cultures, which complicates fieldwork access.

”The Olympics in 2008 was to me a turning point. Around that time, a political vigilance towards almost everything foreign began to show its face. Since then, it was suddenly very complicated to send, for instance, a package of books from China to Denmark, and I don’t expect those restrictions to be removed again”.

At the moment, Ane Bislev is involved in a research project about the financial aspects of China’s much-debated ”social credit system” in cooperation with colleagues from Aalborg University and the IT University in Copenhagen. The project is financed by public Danish research funds, and as such, they need to include Chinese research partners in the project.

A couple of young, Western-educated Chinese postdoctoral students – Chinese citizens based in China – are also involved, and even though the Danish researchers currently cannot enter China, the project is going ahead and the participants inside and outside of China are having online coordination meetings every two weeks. The two postdocs are of course publishing their own projects, but in this case, the two sides will also publish together.

Ane Bislev underlines that even though they may have different approaches to what constitutes good research, she has always learned a lot from her Chinese research partners and research assistants. ”I wouldn’t have come very far without them. They know the society, they know the system, they have a much better understanding of their own context, and they are very often able to explain to me what is happening behind the scenes. The research would have ended up much weaker without their collaboration”.

”There has not always been equal partnerships because our conditions are very different when it comes to academic freedom and research agendas. Of course, I have had many open discussions with Chinese colleagues who want very much to discuss sensitive issues with me, but I have to be cautious when I quote what they told me. What is being written and published is controlled more and more, and when they teach, they have to be increasingly careful, obviously avoiding more sensitive political issues like the situation in Xinjiang entirely”.

“When I started doing fieldwork-based research in China, the projects were normally considered my projects, and the research assistants were helping me. But they were not just interpreters either. They were very active contributors – and they have been indispensable”.

“In our current project it is very different, since my Danish colleagues and I are, in effect, unable to enter China, and the fieldwork the postdocs are doing becomes the absolute heart of the project”.

As an example of the current limits on access to China, Ane Bislev mentions an upcoming article which will be published as part of the ”social credit” project. She wrote it together with a Danish and a Chinese colleague, about a new app that is used by many families to hire domestic help like nannies, servants, and drivers.

”It’s based entirely on information that we have been able to gather on the internet. We totally missed going there and talking to the nannies themselves, as well as the families who hired them and the companies that developed the app. We have never tried to stand there, looking people over the shoulder in order to watch how they are using the app”.

”At the moment, we are understanding each other less and less because there has been so little exchange during the pandemic. Zoom meetings are simply not enough. We have continued having Chinese students in Aalborg as part of our double-degree program, but the Danish students haven’t been able to go to China. One problem is of course the teaching they don’t get, but another problem is that they don’t experience Chinese everyday life. They haven’t had to take the subway in Beijing”.

”At the time when we were able to send our students to China, typically for a year, some of them came home with a lot of fascination with China, and others came home just as critical as they left. But all of them had had their perspective changed a little bit – like the Chinese students here who are having their perspective on the West changed a little bit”, concludes Ane Bislev.

How an Empirical Case Becomes a Valuable Research Partner

Asger Roejle Christensen — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 09:26:46 +0000

A Canadian networking grant has funded an international research network about migration studies, making it possible for a number of researchers from the Global South to join. “I am not a development researcher in the traditional sense”, says Professor Martin Bak Jørgensen, Aalborg University, who is a member of the network.

All migrants are coming from somewhere, very often from a country in the Global South. If migration researchers want to understand the whole process behind the migration that takes place, they need to look to the South.

”Earlier we might have looked at Ghana as an empirical field, a case to study, in order to get a global angle on the development of migration patterns”, Martin Bak Jørgensen says. He is a professor at Aalborg University and a very experienced Danish migration expert.

”Now, Ghanaian colleagues have become partners in our research, and the same is the case with several Latin American researchers. It has created a much more equal structure in which the South researchers are regarded as what they are. They are academics like we are”, he explains.

After a stay at Toronto University four years ago, Martin Bak Jørgensen has become a leading member of a very active Canadian-funded international network of migration researchers.

”I have always had a network of European and North American partners, but it has now been expanded with a number of South partners which is a tremendous advantage. Especially because the networking project runs for seven or eight years. Having been given so much time gives us a fantastic opportunity to achieve results from being in a network with each other”.

Martin Bak Jørgensen’s own research is not even remotely about Ghana. He is Professor of Migration Studies at Aalborg University. As a young student he studied development studies as a minor. In recent years, he has been working with migration in a broad sense, but mostly in a European context.

”Having Ghanaian partners in the network gives another input, some other ways of thinking, some new ideas for my research. I am studying migrants who primarily come from the Global South, but so far that hasn’t been the focus of me and my colleagues’ research. The network enables us to send master’s students to Ghana so they can come home with data for comparative studies. It helps us identify nuances we didn’t notice earlier. It doesn’t always have to be yourself who makes the research that gives you new perceptions of a research field you otherwise know very well”.

Most of the available money in the Canadian project, named “Urban Sanctuary, Migrant Solidarity and Hospitality in Global Perspective”, is network funding and can mainly be used for networking.

”I cannot buy free research time for myself, for instance. We will have to co-fund the effort with research time allotted as part of our own employment at Aalborg University”. The fund does, however, allow for employing student assistants in the form of master’s thesis students who write their theses within the framework of the project, or to include research assistants for shorter specific research tasks.

Cities are more inclusive than nation states

In recent years, the focus of the research done by Martin Bak Jørgensen and his colleagues at MIX, Center for Displacement, Migration and Integration, has been on more or less progressive municipalities and cities in Europe trying to find new ways of handling the inflow of migrants, especially in Greece, Spain, Germany, and Denmark.

With a general consensus among most national governments in Europe to conduct a restrictive migration policy, there is another trend among many cities, establishing ”solidarity cities”, ”sanctuary cities”, ”intercultural cities”, and similar local projects. It is all part of an effort to find more spaces for migrants and more flexible ways of receiving incoming people.

”The city authorities tend to be more pragmatic than national governments. Migrants don’t just arrive through the borders to another national state, they are always located at a place, most often a city, and at this location you have to find everyday solutions to everyday problems. These solutions tend to be more inclusive and less restrictive than national governments’ policies”.

That observation is the starting point for the research conducted by Martin Bak Jørgensen and his colleagues – and it is also part of “Urban Sanctuary, Migrant Solidarity and Hospitality in Global Perspective”, the Canadian-funded research network.

A considerable number of researchers in many countries around the world are already studying these efforts. Martin Bak Jørgensen is one of the leading figures in the European section of the larger network, which also includes researchers from the Global South.

”We don’t just do isolated case studies in Denmark while others do the same in Accra. We are trying to make untraditional comparisons, for instance about civil society groups’ influence on welcome policies for migrants in Copenhagen compared with Accra. The master’s student who just returned from Accra gathered data for this project”.

”We are trying to look at similarities and differences, we are trying to look at positive and negative experiences, and identify whether good ideas can be transferred from place to place”.

”I don’t expect to change my view in any radical way or work with a new terminology just because we are now having African partners in the project. Migration studies are in their core international studies. If you only look at nation states it will end up as poor research. This new, expanded network contributes to give my own research a more global angle, even if I am not working on the far-away cases on a daily basis”.

Mobility stays

So far, most of the work within the network has taken place at online conferences and seminars because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but now several members of the network have begun visiting each other on so-called ”mobility stays”. Not to do in-depth research in each others’ countries, but in order to strengthen the network and learn from each other. Martin Bak Jørgensen expects to be visiting Argentina, Chile, and Ecuador over the following years.

”I am not a development researcher in the traditional sense, but in this way I am engaging in concrete cooperation with researchers from different countries in the Global South”.

”In my experience, there is nothing special about cooperating with colleagues from the South. It’s very much business as usual, but only thanks to the large funding from the Canadian research council. If we didn’t have equal access to financial resources for travel and stay, we would of course have had very unequal conditions. The colleagues from Ghana, South Africa, Argentina and other South countries don’t have the same resources themselves as we have, and generally they have even larger teaching duties”.

Within the networking project, one of the stated goals is capacity building in the South, ”but not necessarily in relation to the senior researchers”, underlines Martin Bak Jørgensen.

”Generally, I don’t feel any big difference in relation to the senior researchers from the South. They have typically taken most of their education in the North, and they have the same merits in terms of peer-reviewed articles and the like as we have”.

”The project certainly has an educational element in relation to younger researchers from the South as well as from the North. We have common online training courses for junior staff and research assistants, and we are promoting exchanges between the South and the North on that level. Here, the conditions in the South and North cannot be compared. Obviously, the starting point is much better in the North than in the South, it makes no sense to assert anything else”.

Study your own country

The basic idea of the Canadian-funded networking project is that everybody is doing research within their own country or their own region. This is cheaper in terms of travel costs, and you will know the societal context much better.

”Even after two weeks in Accra, I would never observe the same things in Ghana as someone who lived there all of his or her life. When you visit each other, either as senior or junior staff, the purpose is to create a space for discussions about methodology and theories. How do you approach data, and how do you work with certain types of stakeholders in the South as well as the North?”

Furthermore, in relation to the issue of national policies versus city policies towards migrants, there are different observations in the South compared to the North. ”We have stronger states, no doubt about that. In countries like Ghana and Kenya, many more things are functioning on an informal level. The government resources are much fewer but it is also a question about weaker governance and a weaker government structure. Observing these differences show us the nuances of the real world”.

In Ghana, Martin Bak Jørgensen doesn’t see the same antagonism between the state and cities that we can observe in Europe. ”The state is not at all interested in these problems and it prefers to turn a blind eye to it. Often certain groups of migrants are performing some very necessary functions in local communities, and that has made it necessary to create better living conditions for these groups in the outskirts of society. In Ghana, they have been dependent on NGO funding from the North if they wished to help different groups of migrants.”

”The migration patterns are not so different that we cannot learn from each others’ experiences. It’s not two different worlds. The difference is mainly that the resources are vastly different. The approach and setup in handling the challenges posed by migration are not necessarily very different.”

This contrast might actually be larger if you compare it with Latin America. ”Here, the cities have been much more active than they have been in both Europe and Africa, and that has definitely changed the ways of including migrants in new societies. Even in cities with no history of receiving many migrants, there is a consensus about being an intercultural place that should be prepared for new people arriving”.

Mixed communities

Martin Bak Jørgensen sees a center like MIX at Aalborg University as a potential model for how intersectional research cooperation will be organized in the future. He himself is in the steering committee of the center.

”I believe that we will increasingly observe the research and study communities as mixed communities with people from different fields coming together. Not only development researchers, not only migration researchers, but mixed communities”.

”To me, it’s very useful that each of us come with our own expertise and create a mix. In the perfect world, it would be great with strong professional research communities around development research, migration research, and everything else, but we don’t have resources for that. I understand very well that development researchers are feeling that they are on the defensive. Their research field has certainly not had the highest political priority in recent years”.