Forschung / Research Activities

As researcher in the subproject "Social Anthropology" of UrbanFoodPlus Barbara focused her research on the social, political and economic dimensions of animal husbandry in West African urban and peri-urban settlements between 2013 and 2018. She acquired an in-depth understanding of how livestock keeping is organized in the urban and peri-urban setting of Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou. She identified existing cattle production systems performed by a diverse set of actors and investigated how social arrangements influence aspects of these market-oriented urban cattle economies, such as accessing crucial production inputs (e.g. feedstuff, knowledge, innovation). In several intensive fieldwork periods (total 16 months) Barbara examined more closely the embeddedness of social and economic systems in which urban cattle farmers maintain and develop their enterprises by zooming-in on socio-political, labour and gender relations in the production process. Using network- and actor-oriented approaches she analyses processes and conflicts embedded in the system of urban agriculture and thereby shows how social relations affect the efficiency of the production systems. In-depth case studies provide insight into transformation processes that the mutually dependant economic and social systems are currently undergoing.