Mail : francesco.staro@gmail.com
I’m lecturer in anthropology of development at Paris Descartes University (2020-2021) and member of the LAVUE (UMR 7218). In my PhD in Anthropology (University Paris 8, France, and Milano-Bicocca University, Italy) I carried out an ethnography of local arrangements and social institutions regulating water management and access among pastoral and nomadic groups in southern Ethiopia. I’m interested in the study of socio-economic change among mobile pastoralists, dynamics of pastoral development and resilience. My research works are framed in the wider debate of political anthropology of development and the anthropology of the environment.
After my longest research in Ethiopia, I was initiated to fieldwork in Sudan in 2015, when I had the opportunity to participate to the “French-Sudanese Autumn School. Approaches and methods of social sciences inquiry on inequalities” organized by CEDEJ (Centre d’Etudes et de Documentation Economique, Juridique et Sociale), University Paris 8 and University of Khartoum. In 2018, I joined the AUF-PCSI project “Being Arab, Muslim, Sudanese. Reshaping belongings, local practices and state policies in Sudan after the separation of the South Sudan” (CEDEJ Khartoum, University of Karthoum, University Paris 8 – scientific coordinator B. Casciarri). In this framework, I carried out a field survey on the organization of access to natural resources and the reconfiguration of social belongings among the Hassaniyya pastoral groups in the White Nile region.
Other research assignments led me to study policies and practices of development cooperation and humanitarian assistance in pastoral environments. I’ve been working as pastoralism expert with Tufts University (Feinstein International Center) in the framework of the BRACED project (Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters) in Eastern Chad (Dar Sila). I also work as freelance consultant for development organizations (fieldwork in Congo RDC, Ethiopia, Chad and Uganda).
As a member of the teaching staff of the CliMigraForm programme, I will contribute to training sessions through the perspectives of natural resources access and knowledge production about nature.
Publications
Staro Francesco & Santagostini Paolo. 2017. « Ecole d’automne franco-soudanaise (Master/Doctorat). Approches et méthodes de l’enquête de terrain en sciences sociales autour des inégalités (Khartoum, 24-31 Octobre 2015) », Journal des anthropologues, 148-149, pp. 303-309. [ https://journals.openedition.org/jda/6719 ]
Staro Francesco 2019, « Le sang, le lait et l’eau. La gestion des ressources hydriques au cœur de l’anthropologie des sociétés tribales et pastorales », in B. Casciarri and D. Blanchon (eds), L’accès à l’eau en Afrique: vers de nouveaux paradigmes? Vulnérabilités, exclusions, résiliences et nouvelles solidarités, Presses de l’Université de Nanterre, collection « Espace et Justice », pp. 65-78. [https://presses.parisnanterre.fr/?p=4520]
Casciarri Barbara & Staro Francesco (eds). 2019. « Water and Pastoralists. Social Contexts, Development in Practice and Resource Grabbing », special issue Nomadic Peoples, 23, 2.
Staro Francesco & Schlee Günther. 2020, « Identity Politics in Contemporary Ethiopia and Sudan », Cahiers d’études africaines, 240, pp. 1005-13. [https://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/32812?lang=en ]
Staro Francesco. (forthcoming 2021). Anthropologie politique et gestion de l’eau en contexte pastoral. Reconfigurations socioéconomiques et identitaires chez les Garri du sud éthiopien entre Etat et ONG, Paris, Éditions L’Harmattan, collection “Connaissance des hommes”.