Abdoulaye Kane
Assistant Professor
Grinter Hall, Room 439
PO 117305
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-7305
Phone Number : 352-392-6788
akane@ufl.edu
Interests
My research interest lies in cultural anthropology of social networks and
transnational social spaces in the historical context of globalization. With
a focus on Senegal and the Senegalese diaspora in the US, Europe and elsewhere
in Africa I am interested in how individuals, households, and communities react
to structural economic and political constraints at the local, national and
global level. My research covers three main areas of inquiry regarding social
change in Senegalese communities abroad and at home: Informal finance and economic
life, Transnational Social Spaces and the Culture of Migration; Pilgrimage,
Muslim Religious Practice and Village Based Social Networks.
Programs
Cultural Anthropology
Syllabi
- ANT 4930 Migration and Development (PDF)
- AFS 6905/ANG 6930 Migration and Development (PDF)
- AFS4935/ANG 4354 Anthropology of Modern Africa (PDF)
Departmental Profile
Abdoulaye Kane did part of his university studies in Senegal. He received his Maîtrise (M.A.) at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and his DEUG (B.A.) at the Department of Political Science (University of St-Louis) in 1995. In the spring of 1996, he received a grant from NOVIB and HIVOS (Dutch international NGOs) to do doctoral studies at the Amsterdam’s School for Social Science Research on transnational and informal financial arrangements in Senegal and among the Senegalese Diaspora in France. He did extensive research on Rotating Saving and Credit Associations and Village Mutual Funds in various settings in Senegal, France and the United States. He was a part of mutual club research group in the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research interested in informal financial practices in several countries including Indonesia, India, South Africa, Surinam, Senegal and Gambia. The research group has published an edited volume comparing the 19th century European mutual clubs and the actual informal financial arrangement in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
He received his Ph. D. in sociology from the Amsterdam’s School for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, in January 2001. He taught previously at the University Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, Senegal. Since fall 2003, he is an Assistant Professor of African Studies and Anthropology at the University of Florida. His main research areas are Transnational Migration, New African Diasporas in Europe and in the United States. He has done extensive ethnographic research on the Haalpulaar Migrants coming from the Senegal River valley and settling in Central Africa, France, Italy, and in the United States. The focus of his research is on the transnational processes in which Haalpulaar migrants are involved in and the impact of these processes on both sending and receiving areas. The circulation of people, money, goods, images, ideas between several places and the corresponding social, economic and cultural changes in both local and global communities is at the center of his theoretical, methodological and epistemological questioning.
