Jane I. Guyer

Professor Jane I. Guyer is the George Armstrong Kelly Professor in the Department of Anthropology at The Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on organizational forms through which social and material life are being constantly recreated and reconstructed. She has shaped understanding of the growth of economic institutions in the popular economy of West and Equatorial Africa, particularly money. Jane I. Guyer came to Johns Hopkins from Northwestern University in 2002, having served previously on the faculties of Harvard and Boston University. Her research career has been devoted to economic transformations in West Africa, particularly the productive economy, the division of labor and the management of money. Theoretically she focuses on the interface between formal and informal economies, and particularly the instabilities that interface gives rise to. Her co-edited book is the result of collaborative work with a Nigeria-based network of social scientists, on currency devaluation in the popular economy under structural adjustment and military rule in the 1990s (Money Struggles and City Life, 2002). The work of the group continues, on the topic of accountability. Her last book, Marginal Gains (2004), re-examines the anthropological and historical record on monetary transactions in Atlantic Africa. Since that publication she has developed two research themes: African land use, as a continuation of An African Niche Economy (1997) into a comparative study published with colleagues in a special issue of Human Ecology (2007); and a series of papers on Cultures of Monetarism, which draws on West African, Western and other non-Western sources. Papers and abstracts on that topic are attached, in the interests of communication about these crucial issues.