ROBERT K. HITCHCOCK: BIOGRAPHICAL DATA
Robert K. Hitchcock is
Professor of Geography and an adjunct faculty member of the Department of
Anthropology at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, USA where
he has been since August, 2006.
Formerly he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at
Michigan State University (2006-2009) and before that was Professor of Vice
Chair of Anthropology and Geography at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
where he spent 23 years. At
Michigan State University, Hitchcock is a core faculty member in the Center for
Global Change and Earth Observations, African Studies, the Center for Gender in
Global Context, the American Indian Studies Program, Peace and Justice Studies,
and is currently involved a program focusing on the well-being indigenous and
minority children in collaboration with the Departments of Social Work and
Family and Child Ecology.
Hitchcock received his B.A. in
Anthropology and History from the University of California, Santa Barbara
(UCSB) in 1971, an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1977, and his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the
University of New Mexico in 1982.
Over the past several
decades, Hitchcock has served as a cultural anthropologist, archaeologist, and in
international development consultant on issues ranging from indigenous peoples’
rights and land use planning to social impact analysis and community-based
natural resource management, particularly in Africa and North America, with
brief work in Central and South America.
His focal areas of concern are human ecology, international
socioeconomic development, resettlement, human rights of indigenous peoples,
women, refugees, and minorities, and conflict resolution. Some of his work focuses on hunters and
gatherers and deals with socioeconomic change among societies that engage in
foraging for part of their livelihoods.
Much of his professional
career has been spent working on issues relating to the San (Bushmen) of
Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
He serves currently as the Co-President and member of the Board of
Directors of the Kalahari Peoples Fund, a non-profit 501c3 organization that
assists poor people in southern Africa.
Another focus of his research, development, and consulting work has
dealt with issues involving resettlement and involuntary relocation relating to
large-scale development projects (dams, agricultural programs, conservation
areas), inter-group conflict, and natural disasters such as drought and
livestock disease.
Hitchcock was a founding
member and co-organizer of the Task Force on Human Rights and later the
Commission for Human Rights of the American Anthropological Association (AAA),
which eventually evolved into the Committee for Human Rights (CfHR), of which
he was the co-chair of in 1999 and is now an emeritus member.
Hitchcock lived and worked in
Africa (16 years) and the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, 15 years). A significant portion of Hitchcock’s
time in Africa has been spent in remote rural areas. He has worked in 12 African countries, including many of
those in southern Africa, as well as central Africa (Uganda), the Horn of
Africa (Somalia), and tropical Africa (Gabon). He has also
carried out research and done applied anthropological and archaeological
work in Hawaii, Guatemala, Peru, the San Juan Islands of Canada, and various
parts of the United States including California, Pennsylvania, the southwest
(New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah), the northern Great Plains (Nebraska,
Colorado, South Dakota, Wyoming), and the upper Great Lakes region (Michigan).
For the past several years he
has worked with refugees from Nigeria (Ogoni), southern Sudan (Nuer, Dinka,
Shilluk, Maban, and Nuba), Somalis, and Iraqis who have been resettled in the
United States by the Office of Refugee Resettlement of the United States
Department of Health and Human Services.
He was a member of the Sudanese Refugee Working Group in Lincoln and took
part in refugee related research in the Great Plains, with particular emphasis
on refugees from conflict areas in west, east, and southern Africa. Since 2006, Hitchcock has worked on
issues relating to refugees (for example, Meskhetian Turks from Georgia,
Uzbekistan, and southern Russia), and on factors affecting immigrant,
indigenous, and minority children in the Great Lakes region.
Hitchcock has had relatively
extensive long-term and short-term consulting and development work experience
in Africa. In 1977-79 he served as
a remote area development consultant to the government of Botswana and later,
in 1980-82 he was the Senior Rural Sociologist in the Division of Planning and
Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture there. In 1983‑84 he worked as the Planning Advisor and
Research Manager in the National Refugee Commission of the Government of
Somalia, and from 1985-87 he was the Traditional Sector Specialist in the
Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MOAC) of the Government of Swaziland
where he worked on projects involving women and traditional leaders.
Hitchcock has worked for the
World Bank, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the
United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Ford
Foundation, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), various
Scandinavian governments (e.g. Norway, Denmark, Sweden), and various
non-government organizations (e.g. the International Work Group for Indigenous
Affairs) in Africa and the Americas.
As part of his work,
Hitchcock examines social movements among indigenous peoples, including the San
of southern Africa and groups in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the
Pacific. In the past several
years, Hitchcock evaluated two major San organizations in Botswana: Kuru
Development Trust (KDT) and First People of the Kalahari (FPK). Currently he is working on development
and human rights issues among San peoples and others in the Kalahari Desert
region.
Since 1990 Hitchcock has been
a member of the Panel of Environmental Experts (POE) that is monitoring the
implementation of the Lesotho Highlands Development Project, the largest
hydroelectric dam and tunnel project in Africa. He has also worked on other
large-scale water-related development projects, including those affecting the
Nile, the Nkomati, the Okavango, and the Limpopo in Africa and the Missouri and
Niobrara Rivers in the Great Plains of the United States. In the late 1990s, Hitchcock helped
design the compensation and resettlement program for the Maguga Dam Project on
the Nkomati River in Swaziland. In
addition, he helped design and run a course on transboundary water management
issues in southern Africa for the Southern African Development Community that
was held in Zimbabwe in July, 1999.
Much of his research in the 1980s and 1990s was on community-based
natural resource management in eastern and southern Africa and in the Great
Plains.
In 2001 he examined the
impacts of refugee resettlement in Namibia for the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Since 2002 Hitchcock has worked as part of the advisory board of the
Trust for African Rock Art (TARA), a rock art and cultural preservation
organization based in Nairobi, Kenya.
Some of his work is on issues of cultural property, including
landscapes, and intellectual property rights of indigenous peoples.
Hitchcock has published over
250 journal articles, book chapters, and reports. He is the author of Kalahari
Cattle Posts (Government of Botswana, 1978) and Kalahari
Communities: Bushmen and the
Politics of the Environment in Southern Africa (International Work Group
for Indigenous Affairs, 1996). He
is the co-editor (with Neil Parsons and John Taylor) of Research for
Development in Botswana (Botswana Society, 1987), Hunter-Gatherers and
the Modern State: Conflict, Resistance, and Self-Determination (with Megan
Biesele and Peter P. Schweitzer, Berghahn Books, 2000), Endangered Peoples
of Africa and the Middle East: Struggles to Survive and Thrive (with Alan
J. Osborn, Greenwood Publishing, 2002), Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in
Southern Africa (with Diana Vinding, International Work Group for
Indigenous Affairs, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2004), Updating the San: Image and
Reality of an African People in the Twenty First Century (with Kazunobu
Ikeya, Megan Biesele, and Richard B. Lee, National Museum of Ethnology, Senri
Ethnological Studies, Osaka, Japan, 2006), and The Ju/’hoan San of Nyae Nyae
and Independence: Development,
Democracy, and Indigenous Voices in Southern Africa (with Megan Biesele,
Berghan Books, 2010).
Currently, Hitchcock is
working on a book entitled Organizing to Survive: Indigenous Peoples’ Political and Human Rights Struggles
(Routledge Press, New York) and is co-editing 3 other books, Genocide and
Ethnocide of Indigenous Peoples (with Sam Totten, Transaction Publishers), Undefended
Childhood in a Global Context (with DeBrenna Agbenyiga and Deborah Johnson,
Michigan State University Press, East Lansing), Hunter-Gatherer Band
Information Systems (with Robert Whallon and William L. Lovis, Cotsen
Institute of Archaeology Press, University of California, Los Angeles). He
continues to do work on social and environmental impacts of development
projects and human rights of indigenous peoples, women, refugees, minorities,
and the rural poor, especially those from Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas.
Dr. Robert K. Hitchcock
Center for Global Change and Earth Observations
207A Manly Miles Building
140 S. Harrison Road
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48823-5243
(517) 884-1239
hitchc16@msu.edu