Derman, William
(Ph.D. University of Michigan, 1969)
Professor
derman@msu.edu

BILL DERMAN, Professor of Anthropology, has been carrying out research in Zimbabwe since 1987 after a long period of research in West Africa. 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.

Dr. Derman’s research has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and USAID. In 2000, he received a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Program grant for a study entitled "Redividing the Waters: The Water Reform Process and Catchment Councils in Zimbabwe."

A few 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.
• 2004 Re-negotiating Water and Land Rights in Zimbabwe: Some Reflections on Legal Pluralism, Identity and Power. (Co-authored by Anne Hellum) In J. Murison, A. Griffiths, K. King, (Eds) Remaking Law in Africa. Centre for African Studies, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, pp. 233-260.
• 2004 Land Reform and Human Rights in Contemporary Zimbabwe: Balancing Individual and Social Justice through an Integrated Human Rights Framework (co-authored by Anne Hellum) in World Development 32 (10) pp. 1785-1805.