by Freek Colombijn and Marjo de Theije –
Renowned anthropologist James (Jim) Ferguson passed away on 14 February 2025 at 65. He obtained his PhD in Social Anthropology at Harvard University, worked for the University of California, Irvine and, since 2003, at Stanford University. Between 2009 and 2011 Ferguson was also a visiting fellow at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of Vrije Universiteit. His visits were always inspiring and productive events for staff and students. Ferguson was one of those scholars whose work seems to align well with his personality: critical, sensitive, and friendly.
Ferguson’s best-known book is The Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (1994), with a –for anthropologists– dazzling number of 12,055 citations in Google Scholar (21 February 2025). The Anti-politics Machine critiques World Bank experts who claimed to make an unbiased assessment of Lesotho’s development needs. They deemed the country isolated from global markets and blamed pastoralists for maintaining excessive cattle herds due to “irrational” economics. The Bank pushed for herd reduction to boost exports to South Africa, masking its preference for export-driven growth. Ferguson, however, reveals Lesotho’s deep integration into international markets through labor migration. He reframes development as a political act, pioneering a Post-Development perspective that exposes how institutions impose their own economic models under the guise of neutral expertise
Ferguson’s talent for discovering unexplored terrain became again apparent in Expectations of modernity: Myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt (1999). The Copperbelt of Zambia used to have a booming economy, which as a side-product, resulted in a series of classical anthropological studies of the modernization of the lifestyle of rural-urban migrants working in the mining towns in the 1940s and 1950s. Ferguson, in contrast, did fieldwork in Zambia in the 1990s when due to global forces, the copper industry was in severe decline, and expectations of ‘progress’ and ‘modernity’ had evaporated in thin air. Ferguson gives an at times moving account of the experiences of the workers, who had to deal with the past illusions and current economic reality.
Another example of his empathetic anthropology can be found in the essay ‘Of mimicry and membership’ from the collection of articles Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (2006). It opens with a polite letter addressed to ‘Your Excellencies, members, and officials of Europe’ and found on the frozen, dead bodies of Yaguine Koita and Fodé Tounkara, who were encountered in the landing gear of a plane landing in Brussels. Ferguson analyses in detail what message the boys of fourteen and fifteen years old wanted to convey when they wrote ‘“help us to become like you”’. He concludes the letter was a moral appeal to the West to recognize global citizenship, a ‘haunting claim for equal rights of membership in a spectacularly unequal global society. […] In so doing, they appeal poignantly, desperately, for a “graciousness and solidarity” that are, in the West as presently constituted, chillingly absent’ (Ferguson 2006: 174-175). In 2025, this appeal has only become more urgent.
As we wrote at the beginning, Ferguson, Jim, was a Visiting Fellow in our department for two years, from 2009 to 2011. On four occasions he spent about a week or more with us, participating in workshops, giving lectures, supervising PhD students, and reflecting with staff on current and future research projects. At the time he was developing his ideas for the book Give a Man a Fish: Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution (2015). We were the lucky anthropologists to hear his analysis of the creation and/or expansion of pro-poor social welfare programs that used direct cash transfers to large numbers of low-income people. He looked at these programs within a larger politics of distribution, showing how they are linked to the contexts where large numbers of people are supported by means other than wage labor, creating political opportunities and dangers. This work continues to inspire several members of the VU anthropology department.
During one of his visits, Marjo had organized a dinner with some colleagues at her home, and Freek picked Jim up and drove him to Marjo’s house. The drive took quite a while because of roadworks and traffic jams, but Jim let Freek concentrate on the road. We had an enjoyable dinner, during which Jim, who was intellectually out of our league, chatted warmly and seriously discussed our research. On the agenda was the university’s requirement for our department to formulate a new research profile. Jim helped us think about how he imagined our department but also remarked that the neoliberal demand to develop a specific profile did not make sense to him. Why not allow the kind of thematic and theoretical diversity at Stanford University that could only enrich an anthropology department?
We recognize Jim in the words of a close colleague of his, Thomas Hansen, who, on his death, aptly described Jim in the Stanford Daily: ‘He wore his erudition and brilliance lightly and would never try to “win” an argument or dominate […] You would be more likely to hear a wry and ironic comment from him that would make everyone chuckle.’
Freek Colombijn is associate professor in Social Anthropology. Marjo de Theije is Head of the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology.