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Dennis Rodgers

Dennis Rodgers  
Dennis Rodgers
Research Associate
   
Contact: Email:  dennis.rodgers (at) manchester.ac.uk
Email:  dennis.rodgers (at) graduateinstitute.ch
   
Biography:

Dennis Rodgers is a social anthropologist by training, with a BA and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, as well as a postgraduate degree from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. He is currently Senior Research Fellow in the Brooks World Poverty Institute (BWPI), at the University of Manchester, UK.

Prior to joining BWPI, he was lecturer at the London School of Economics, in development studies (2000-05), and urban development (2005-07). He has also worked as a consultant for various international and national organisations, and was a member of a Nicaraguan youth gang for a year, as well as manager of a market stall selling rice and beans in one of Managua’s markets for six months. Dennis was born in Thailand, and holds French, British and Swiss citizenship. In addition to being affiliated with the CCDP, he is also a Visiting Senior Fellow in the Crisis States Research Centre at the London School of Economics, an Associate Fellow of the University of London Institute for the Study of the Americas, and Associate Editor of the European Journal of Development Research.
   
Field(s)of Interest:
  • Violence (including in particular gangs)
  • Illegal Economic Activity
  • Urban Development
  • Planning
  • Spatial Inequality
  • Local Politics
  • Social Movements
  • Governance
  • Qualitative Research Methods
  • The Social Construction Of Development Knowledge
  • The Anthropology Of Development
  • Latin America (Nicaragua, Argentina).
   
Current Research: I am in the process of completing a book manuscript on the dynamics of gang violence in urban Nicaragua entitled Gang Rule: Violence and the Politics of Exclusion in Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua, based on a 10-year longitudinal ethnographic study of a Managua gang. I plan to follow this up with a comparative edited volume entitled Global Gangs, that will bring together contributions from a forthcoming international workshop on gangs in Brazil, China, El Salvador, France, India, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, the Russian Federation, Sierra Leone, South Africa, the UK, and the USA. I am also involved (with Jo Beall and others) in the LSE Crisis States Research Centre’s research on “Cities and Conflict”, which involves comparative work on 16 cities in Afghanistan, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. I am leading research comparing the impact of war and crime on cities, and carrying out an individual programme of work on urban planning and spatial inequality in Managua, Nicaragua.
   
Selected Publications:
  • (edited with Gareth Jones), Youth Violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 (in press).
  • (with O. Jütersonke and R. Muggah), “The Political Economy of Urban Violence in Central America”, Security Dialogue, 40:4-5 (2009 - in press).
  • “Slum wars of the 21st century: Gangs, Mano Dura, and the new urban geography of conflict in Central America”, Development and Change, 40(2), 2009 (in press).
  • “Au pays des ‘maras’ et des ‘pandillas’”, Courrier International, no. 918, pp. 38-42, 5-11 June 2008. (available online)
  • (with David Lewis and Michael Woolcock), “The fiction of development: Literary representation as a source of authoritative knowledge”, Journal of Development Studies, 44(2): 187-205, 2008. (available online)
  • “A symptom called Managua”, New Left Review, 49 (January-February): 103-120, 2008. (available online)
  • “Joining the gang and becoming a broder: The violence of ethnography in contemporary Nicaragua”, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 27(4): 444-61, 2007. (available online)
  • “Managua”, in K. Koonings and D. Kruijt (eds.), Fractured Cities: Social Exclusion, Urban Violence and Contested Spaces in Latin America, London: Zed, 2007.
  • “Subverting the spaces of invitation? Local politics and participatory budgeting in post-crisis Buenos Aires”, in A. Cornwall and V. Coelho (eds.), Spaces for Change: The Politics of Participation in New Democratic Arenas, London: Zed, 2007.
  • “The state as a gang: Conceptualising the governmentality of violence in contemporary Nicaragua”, Critique of Anthropology, 26(3): 315-30, 2006.
  • “Living in the shadow of death: Gangs, violence, and social order in urban Nicaragua, 1996-2002”, Journal of Latin American Studies, 38(2): 267-92, 2006.