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James Ferguson's research has been conducted in Lesotho and Zambia, and has engaged a broad range of theoretical and ethnographic issues. Dr. Ferguson's central interests are the political, and the relation between specific social and cultural processes and the abstract narratives of "development" and "modernization." In his research Dr. Ferguson addresses a range of specific topics, ranging from the crisis of the state and the emergence of new forms of government-via-NGO, to the changing social meaning of "modernity" for colonial and postcolonial urban Africans. These topics converge around using "Africa" as a way to understand broader issues such as globalization, modernity, worldwide inequality, and social justice.

Dr. Ferguson is currently working in South Africa, exploring the emergence of new problems of poverty and social policy under conditions of neoliberalism.