Bill Derman (Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan)

Submitted: Thu, 26 June 2008


Bill Derman
Professor of Anthropology and African Studies
354 Baker Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan  48824-1118  USA

phone:  515-355-0208
fax:    517-432-2363
e-mail: derman@pilot.msu.edu


Web page: http://anthropology.msu.edu/faculty/derman.shtml


His interests are in environment and change, planned rural development, 
analyses of development projects, and, more recently, decentralization of 
natural resource management institutions. For five years, beginning in 
1989, he conducted a study of the Mid-Zambezi Rural Development Project, 
one of the only resettlement projects carried out in communal lands in 
Zimbabwe. He then turned to an examination of Zambezi Valley land-use 
planning in general. He critiqued the government for employing a 
technocratic, ecologically insensitive, and top-down approach to this 
area. With the Centre for Applied Social Sciences, he began a long-term 
study of the processes of water reform, water management institutions, and 
decentralization. This study was expanded to include Malawi under the 
leadership of Anne Ferguson and became part of the BASIS Collaborative 
Research Support Program on Land and Water in Southern Africa with Pauline 
Peters, Harvard University, as Team Leader. This study has now been 
expanded as part of BASIS II, which emphasizes land-water interfaces. The 
project will be carried out in Malawi and Zimbabwe with most of the field 
research being carried out by African researchers from the University of 
Zimbabwe and the University of Malawi.


Recent Publications include:

2007   Citizenship and Identity: Conflicts over Land and Water in 
Contemporary Africa edited with Rie Odgaard and Espen Sjaastad. London, 
Durban and East Lansing: James Currey, University of Kwa-Zulu Press and 
Michigan State University Press.

2007   Introduction to Citizenship and Identity in Conflicts over Land and 
Water in Contemporary Africa co-authored by Rie Odgaard and Espen 
Sjaastad. London, Durban and East Lansing: James Currey, University of 
Kwazulu Press and Michigan State University Press, pp. 1-30.

2007   Land, Identity and Violence in Zimbabwe co-authored by Anne Hellum 
in Citizenship, Identity and Conflicts over Land and Water in Contemporary 
Africa edited with Rie Odgaard and Espen Sjaastad. London, Durban and East 
Lansing: James Currey, University of Kwazulu Press and Michigan State 
University Press, pp. 161-186.

2007   Livelihood rights perspective on water reform: Reflections on rural 
Zimbabwe (co-authored by Anne Hellum) Land Use Policy 24(4), in a special 
issue in Exploring New Understandings of Resource Tenure and Reform in the 
Context of Globalisation edited by T.A. Benjaminsen, B. Derman and E. 
Sjaastad, pp. 664-673.

2007   Exploring new understandings of resource tenure and reform in the 
context of globalisation co-authored by Tor. A. Benjaminsen and Espen 
Sjaastad. Land Use Policy 24(4), in Exploring New Understandings of 
Resource Tenure and Reform in the Context of Globalisation edited by T.A. 
Benjaminsen, B. Derman and E. Sjaastad, pp. 611-612.

2007   Intersections of Law, Human Rights and Water Management in 
Zimbabwe: Implications for Rural Livelihood co-authored by Anne Hellum, 
Emmanuel Manzungu, Pinimidzai Sithole and Rose Machiridza in 
Community-Based Water Law and Water Resource Management Reform in 
Developing Countries Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in 
Agriculture Series, Vol 5 Edited by B van Koppen, M Giordano, J 
Butterworth. Wallingford, U.K.: CABI Publications, Chapter 15.

2005   The Incredible Heaviness of Water: Water Policy and Water Reform 
in the new Millennium in Southern Africa in Globalization, Water and Health: 
Resource Management in Times of Scarcity edited by Linda and Scott 
Whiteford. Sante Fe: School of American Research, pp. 209-230.

2005   Negotiating Water Rights in the Context of a New Political and 
Legal Landscape in Zimbabwe (co-authored by Anne Hellum) in Mobile People, 
Mobile Law: Expanding Legal Relations in a Contracting World edited by 
Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Anne Griffiths. 
Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, pp.177-198.

2005   Whose Water? The Political Ecology of Water Reform in Zimbabwe 
(co-authored by Anne Ferguson) in Political Ecology Across Spaces, Scales 
and Social Groups edited by Lisa Gezon and Susan Paulson, Rutgers 
University Press, Fall, pp. 61-75.