Jan Ovesen

Associate professor of cultural anthropology, retired

Educated at University of Copenhagen (M.Sc. 1973). Temporary lecturer, research fellow, University of Copenhagen 1973-80. Research fellow, lecturer, associate professor, Uppsala University 1981-2012.

Earlier Research

Field research among Pashai, Afghanistan 1977 and 1978, 11 months; focus on social organization, local history and ethnicity.

Field research among Lobi, Burkina Faso 1984, 10 months; focus on ritual and cosmology.

Field research in Laos 1993–2004, mainly through short-term consultancies, totalling 8 months; focus on socio-cultural impacts of infrastructural development projects.

Current Research

I have been engaged in research in and on Cambodia since 1995 and have spent a total of about 15 months of field research in the country. Together with Ing-Britt Trankell I have carried out the project “The Indigenization of Modern Medicine in Indochina”, financed by the Swedish Research Council. The project focused on local receptions of globalized Western biomedical technologies and pharmaceuticals and the interaction between Western and indigenous healing and curing ideologies. It spanned the period from the establishment of the French colonial medical service around the turn of the 20th century to the present. A book entitled Cambodians and Their Doctors. A Medical Anthropology of Colonial and Post-Colonial Cambodia was published by NIAS Press in 2010.

A current project on “Poverty, Sorcery and Social Capital in Cambodia”, also with Ing-Britt Trankell and financed by the Swedish Research Council, was initiated in November 2008. The project focuses on what poverty, as a consequence of structural violence, does to the social life-worlds of people in Cambodia, rather than on how ‘culture’ underwrites and perpetuates poverty. The second aim is to explore the relation between poverty and certain forms of sorcery currently practiced in Cambodian society. By employing the concepts of social and cultural capital, sorcery will be described and analysed as metaphorical expressions of the social aspects of material poverty.

Recent Publications

––2012. (with Ing-Britt Trankell, Heng Kimvan and Chen Sochoeun), Rice Farming and Microcredit in Takeo Province, Cambodia.

––2010. (with Ing-Britt Trankell), Cambodians and Their Doctors. A Medical Anthropology of Colonial and Post-Colonial Cambodia. Copenhagen: NIAS Press.

––2009. The Loneliness of the Short-Term Consultant. Anthropology and Hydropower Development in Laos. S. Hagberg and C. Widmark (eds), Ethnographic Practice and Public Aid. Uppsala: Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology, 45, pp. 263–285.

––2008. Review of Penny Edwards, "Cambodge. The Cultivation of a Nation, 1860-1945". Nations and Nationalism, vol. 14, 1, 2008, pp. 208-209.

––2008. Review of J. Michaud, “Incidental Ethnographers. French Catholic Missionaries on the Tonkin–Yunnan Frontier, 1880–1930” and J.P. Daughton, “An Empire Divided. Religion, Republicanism and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880–1914”. ASEASUK Newsletter 44. http://aseasuk.org.uk/v2/bookreviews/AN44/incidental%20ethnographers%3Bempire%20divided

—2007. (with Ing-Britt Trankell), Pharmacists and Other Drug-providers in Cambodia: Identities and Experiences. K. Maynard (ed.), Medical Identities. Health, Well-Being and Personhood. Oxford 2007: Berghahn Books, pp. 36-60.

—2005. Political Violence in Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge ‘Genocide’. P. Richards (ed.), No Peace, No War. An Anthropology of Contemporary Armed Conflicts. Oxford 2005: James Currey & Athens: Ohio University Press, pp. 22-39.

—2004. (with Ing-Britt Trankell), French Colonial Medicine in Cambodia. Reflections of Governmentality. Anthropology and Medicine, vol. 11, 1, 2004, pp. 91-105.

—2004. The Hmong and Development in the Lao People's Democratic Republic. N. Tapp et al. (eds), Hmong/Miao in Asia. Chiang Mai 2004: Silkworm Books.

—2004. All Lao? Minorities in the Lao People's Democratic Republic. C. Duncan (ed.), Civilizing the Margins: Southeast Asian Government Policies for the Development of Minorities. Ithaca, NY 2004: Cornell University Press, pp. 214-240.

—2004. (with Ing-Britt Trankell), Foreigners and Honorary Khmers. Ethnic Minorities in Cambodia. C. Duncan (ed.), Civilizing the Margins: Southeast Asian Government Policies for the Development of Minorities. Ithaca, NY 2004: Cornell University Press, pp. 241-269.

—2003. Indigenous Peoples and Development in Laos: Ideologies and Ironies. Moussons, No.6, 2003, pp. 69-97.

—2000. Review article: ‘Development or Domestication? Indigenous Peoples in Southeast Asia' (D. McCaskill & K. Kampe, eds). Asian Ethnicity, vol.1,1, 2000, pp. 73-79.

—1996. (with I-B Trankell & J. Öjendal), When Every Household is an Island: Social Organization and Power Structures in Rural Cambodia. Uppsala 1996: Uppsala Research Reports in Cultural Anthropology, No. 15.

—1995. A Minority Enters the Nation State. A Case Study of a Hmong Community in Vientiane Province, Laos. Uppsala 1995: Uppsala Research Reports in Cultural Anthropology, No. 14.

—1993. Anthropological Reconnaissance in Central Laos. A Survey of Local Communities in a Hydropower Project Area. Uppsala 1993: Uppsala Research Reports in Cultural Anthropology, No. 13. (Reprinted 1999, Bangkok: White Lotus Press).

Show my publications (link to DiVA)