Public Interest Anthropology at Penn

Sandra Barnes' research and publications to date have focused largely on urbanism, religion, politics, and history with an emphasis on West Africa. Although also working in Nigeria, most of her research has been in Lagos, the largest city in tropical Africa.

During the summer of 1994, Barnes began research in southern Africa focusing on "Women, Property, and Power." The project grew out of previous publications on gender in West Africa which examined the structure of opportunities for women in political arenas and which found that opportunities were partly regulated by women's abilities to acquire economic assets, especially land and housing. South Africa presents a far more complex challenge because black South African women were severely constrained under the laws of the apartheid state from accumulating economic assets, especially housing. With the end of apartheid, however, black South African women have begun to acquire urban property and to use the prestige and economic advantages gained as an entry point into community affairs. Her goals for the project were to learn

a) how Black South African women are helping shape the urban locales in which they live,

b) how their influence is expanding into the wider community, and

c) what new roles they are playing in grassroots political activities.
The study has implications for understanding the avenues via which change in South Africa is being instituted and implemented from bottom up.