Allan Hoben

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Allan Hoben
ALLAN-HOBEN.jpg ALLAN-HOBEN.jpg
Born	October 27, 1934 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
🏳️ Nationality	USA
💼 Occupation	Anthropologist
Known for	Ethiopian Studies and expertise in the field of Development Anthropology.

Allan Hoben is an American anthropologist. He is best known in Ethiopian Studies and in the field of Development Anthropology. Hoben's greatest contribution has been to help scholars understand the relationship between and highland Ethiopian Land Tenure and the structure of Ethiopian rural society. The has been key to understanding the functioning of Ethiopian Empire.

Family background

Hoben was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on October 27, 1934. His father became editor of the Milwaukee Journal. His mother studied with John Dewey and Carl Jung and worked in education. His grandfather, Allan Hoben, was president of Kalamazoo College.

Academic career

Hoben graduated from Columbia College with honors and distinction in Anthropology in 1956 and studied with Marvin Harris, Marshal Sahlins and Andrew (Pete) Vayda. After graduating he spent a year hitch-hiking around Sub-Saharan Africa and assisting Marvin Harris with studies of labor migration from Mozambique to South Africa. He received his PhD in 1962 at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied with Lloyd Fallers, Clifford Geertz and Robert Murphy. His PhD research concerned the relationship between an ideology of ambilineal descent and access to land, power and honor. From 1963 to 1965 Hoben was a fellow of the Committee for the Comparative Study of New Nations at the University of Chicago. From 1965 until 1970 Hoben was at the University of Rochester. From 1972 until his retirement he was a member of the Department of Anthropology and the African Studies Center at Boston University.

1990-1991 Senior Associate Member, St. Antony’s College, Oxford University

2001-2002 Visiting Scholar, the University of California, Berkeley.

His research topics included land tenure, social stratification and the cultural construction of government and donor development policies.

Government positions

Hoben’s non-academic career focused on ways of using anthropology to understand local systems of access to natural resources and helping government and donor policies and programs more realistically address their needs and capabilities. From 1976 to 1979 he was Senior Anthropologist for Policy with The United States Agency for International Development. From 1976 to 1979 Hoben was Chief of the Studies Division on the Office of Evaluation with USAID.

Research positions

Fellow of the Committee for the Comparative Study of New Nations, University of Chicago.

Visiting Development Fellow, Overseas Development Council, Washington D.C.

Senior Associate Member,  St. Antony's College, Oxford University.

Member, Policy Consultative Group on Africa.  World Resource Institute. Washington D.C.

Senior Research Associate,  Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University.

Core consultant, visiting scholar and member of advisory board, University of Wisconsin Land Tenure Center.

Senior Researcher, World Bank.

Member, USAID Rangeland Advisory Board.

Scholarships, fellowships and grants

National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, The American Council of Learned Societies, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation through the Tufts University. Elected Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Consulting

Hoben served as a consultant to the Peace Corps, USAID, the World Bank, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the University of Wisconsin Land Tenure Center, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, The Department of State, and the World Resources Institute.

Advisory boards

Board Member - FARM AFRICA, Consultative Group of Policy in Africa World Resources Institute, Advisory Board University of Wisconsin Land Tenure Center, USAID Rangeland Advisory Board.

Publications

Books and theses

• Land Tenure among the Amhara of Ethiopia. Chicago: University Chicago Press. 1973 ISBN-13: 978-0226345482
• The Role of Ambilineal Descent Groups in Gojjam Amhara Social Organization. Ph.D. Thesis, University of California at Berkeley. University Microfilms. 1963

Monographs and major reports

• Rural Land Policy in Tanzania: Issues Paper. Prepared for the World Bank with John Bruce and Lars Johansson. 1992
• An Assessment of AID Activities to Promote Agricultural and Rural Development in Sub-Saharan Africa. AID Evaluation Special Study No. 54. AID with Bruce Johnston, Dirk Dijkerman, and William K. Jaeger. 1988
• An Assessment of A.I.D. Activities to Promote Agricultural and Rural Development in Sub-Saharan Africa (with Bruce Johnston et al), The World Bank in press. Also to be published in chapter length in Uma Lele (ed.), 1987
• The Role of donors in African Agricultural Development: Review of Experience 1960-1985. Resource Tenure Issues in Somalia. Mogadishu: USAID.
• Somalia, a Social and Institutional Profile, with John Harris, Dan Aronson, Theodore Ahlers, and Susan Hoben. Boston:  The Boston University African Studies Center. 1983
• Lessons from a Critical Examination of Livestock Projects in Africa, Working Paper # 26, USAID Office of Evaluation. 1979
• The Maasai Livestock and Range Management Project. Washington, D.C.: USAID. 1976
• Social Soundness of the West Benoue Integrated Rural Development Proposal. Washington, D.C.: USAID. 1976

Articles and chapters

• "Ethiopian Land Tenure Revisited: Continuity, Change, and Contradictions." Working paper. Boston University African Studies Center. 2001
• "Stories People Tell: The Cultural Construction of Environmental Policy in Africa." In Jonathan Harris (ed) Rethinking Sustainability: Power, Knowledge, and Institutions. Ann Arbor. University of Michigan Press. 2000
• "The Role of Development Discourse in the Construction of Environmental Policy in Africa." In Concepts and Metaphors: Ideologies, Narratives and Myths in Development Discourse; Occasional Paper 19, International Development Studies. Roskilde University. 1998
• "The Cultural Construction of Environmental Policy in Ethiopia: Paradigms and Politics in Ethiopia." The Ecologist Vol 27, No 2, March /April. 1997
• "Participation, Civil Society, and Foreign Assistance to Africa" (with Peters and Rocheleau). Africa Natural Resources Policy Consultative Group, World Resources Institute. Discussion Paper, November 1996.
• "Paradigms and Politics: The Cultural Construction of Environmental Policy in Ethiopia." World Development Vol 23 No 6. 1995
• "Paradigms and Politics: the Cultural Construction of Environmental Policy in Ethiopia." BU AFC Working Paper 193. 1995
• "Dessalegn Rahmato After the Derg: An Assessment of Rural Land Tenure Issues in Ethiopia." with Bruce, John W. University of Wisconsin Land Tenure Center. 1994
• "Trapped in a Treadmill: bureaucratic constraints on Aid Programs." Harvard International Review. Vol XV No 1, Fall 1992.
• "Rapid Rural Appraisals for Land Policy Formulation" in Tanzania: Forests, Trees, and People, No 15/16. with Lars Johansson. 1992
• "The Integrative Revolution Revisited," World Development Vol.19, No 1 pp 17-30. with Robert Hefner. 1991
• "United States Activities to Promote Agricultural and Rural Development in Sub-Saharan Africa" In Uma Lele (ed.), Aid to African Agriculture: Lessons from Two Decades of Donors Experience. with Bruce Johnson and William Jaeger. 1991
• "USAID: Organizational and Institutional Issues and Effectiveness." In R. Berg and D. Gordon, (eds.), Cooperation for International Development: the United States and the Third World in the 1990 Lynne Reinner. 1989
• "The Political Economy of Land Tenure in Somalia." In S. Reyna and R. Downs, (eds.), Land Concentration in Africa. University Press of New England. 1988
• "Assessing the Social Feasibility of a Settlement Project in North Cameroon." In Michael Horowitz (ed.), The Anthropology of Rural Development in West Africa. Westview. 1985
• "The Origins of Famine." The New Republic, January 21, 1985.
• "The Role of the Anthropologist in Development." William Partridge (ed.), Training Manual for Development Anthropology.  American Anthropological Association, for the Society for Applied Anthropology. 1984
• "Anthropologists and Development." In Bernard Siegel (ed.), Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 11.1982
• "Agricultural Decision Making in Foreign Assistance: an anthropological analysis." In Peggy Barlett (ed.), Agricultural Decision Making. Academic Press. 1980 ISBN-13: 978-0120788828
• "Revolution in Rural Ethiopia." Rural Africana 28:55-60. 1975
• "Family, Land and Class in Northwest Europe and Northern Highland Ethiopia." In Proceedings of the First United States Conference on Ethiopian Studies. Michigan State University, African Studies Center. 1975
• "Social Anthropology and Development Planning: a case study in Ethiopian land reform policy." The Journal of Modern African Studies 10:4. 1972
• "Land Tenure and Social Mobility Among the Damot Amhara." Journal of Ethiopian Studies: Proceedings of the Third International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, vol.2. 1970
• "Social Stratification in Traditional Amhara Society" In A. Tuden and L. Plotnicov (eds.), Social Stratification in Africa. The Free Press. 1970

References

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