Publications
Monographs
Published 2016
Who Knows Tomorrow? Uncertainty in North-eastern Sudan. Oxford: Berghahn.
(2018 new in paperback)
In preparation. The Undergrowth. Bananas, health and postcolonial science in Uganda.
Peer-reviewed journal articles
2024 “Vegetal intimacies in science.” Social and Cultural Geography (Early View),
https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2024.2420604
2024 “Growth” (with T. Zoanni). Environmental Humanities 16 (1): 265–69.
https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-10943201
2023 “On bundling: the aesthetics of exchange and growth in central Uganda.” (with T Zoanni). Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute 93(3): 371-392.
https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/903126
2023 “Between the lab and the field. Plants and the affective atmospheres of southern science.” Science, Technology, and Human Values 48(2): 243–271.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01622439211055118
2021 “Toxic remains: infrastructure at a Ugandan molecular biology lab.” Social Studies of Science 51(5): 707-728.
https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127211011531
2021 “Food as medicine: Making ‘better bananas’ in Uganda.” The Sociological Review 69 (3): 560-579.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00380261211009059#_i1
2020 “Writing planetary futures. Plants, loss and intersections of STS and anthropology in Germany.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie/ Journal for Social and Cultural Anthropology 145: 91-108.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/27124117
2020 “Lab hands and knowing toxic substances in Uganda.” Anthropology Today 36(6): 29-32.
https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8322.12622
2019 “Health as growth: Bananas, humanitarian biotech and human-plant histories in Uganda.” Medicine Anthropology Theory 6(3): 29-53.
https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.6.3.658
2018 “Divining, testing, and the problem of accountability.“ (with U. Beisel & R. Rottenburg). HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 8 (1): 97–108.
https://doi.org/10.1086/698360
2016 “How ‘clean gold’ came to matter: metal detectors, infrastructure, and valuation.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6 (2): 173-95.
https://doi.org/10.14318/hau6.2.013
2015 “Rethinking Institutional Orders in Sudan Studies: The Case of Land Access in Kordofan, Blue Nile and Darfur” (with E. Ille, S. Lamoureaux & R. Rottenburg). Canadian Journal of African Studies 49 (1): 175-95.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2014.963135
2014 “Getting Credit for what you write? Conventions and Techniques of Citation in German Anthropology” (with R. Rottenburg). Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 139: 99-130.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24364944
2011 “Umkämpfte Weiden: Landzugang und Überleben im Sudan“ (with G.K. Komey). Geographische Rundschau 63 (7/8): 28-35.
Edited collections
2023 Tousignant, N., Ehrenstein, V., Calkins, S., Cousins, T., Polykett, B. & M. Waltz. “Introduction. Metabolic thinking and the predicaments of growth in Africa.” Somatosphere, https://somatosphere.net/introduction-metabolic-thinking-and-the-predicaments-of-growth-in-africa/
2022 Churcher, M., Calkins, S., Böttger, J. and J. Slaby (eds), Affect, Power and Institutions. London: Routledge.
2015 Calkins, S., Ille, E. and R. Rottenburg (eds), Emerging Orders in the Sudans. Bamenda: Langaa.
2014 Gertel, J., Rottenburg, R., and S. Calkins (eds), Disrupting Territories. Land, Commodification and Conflict in Sudan. Woodbridge: James Currey.
2011 Gertel, J. and S. Calkins (eds), Nomaden in unserer Welt. Bielefeld: Transkript. (public interest book)
Chapters & edited content
Forthcoming 2025. “Pflanzenethnographie” (with C. Ertl and S.Schmitt). Handbuch Umweltethnologie, ed. by Katrin Eitel und Carsten Wergin. Springer VS.
2023 “The works of plants.” Somatosphere,
https://somatosphere.net/the-work-of-plants/
2023 “Pflanzen berühren” (with C. Ertl). In Affekte - Diagnosen der Gegenwart, edited by Doris Kolesch, pp. 19-28. Berlin: Neofelis.
2022 “The Many Lives of Institutions: A Framework for Studying Institutional Affect” (with M. Churcher, J. Böttger & J. Slaby). In Affect, Power and Institutions, ed. by M. Churcher, S. Calkins, J. Böttger & J. Slaby. London: Routledge.
2022 “Botanical discipline. The senses and more-than-human affect” (with C. Ertl). In Affect, Power and Institutions, ed. by M. Churcher, S. Calkins, J. Böttger & J. Slaby, pp. 125-143. London: Routledge.
2020 “Vegetal collaborators and chemical dissidents.” Society and Space
https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/chemical-dissidents-and-vegetal- collaborators
2020 “Taking measures as endpoints?” Boasblogs. The end of negotiations,
https://boasblogs.org/endofnegotiations/taking-measures-as-end-points/#comments
2017 “Evidence, infrastructure and worth” (with R. Rottenburg). In Infrastructures and Social Complexity. A Companion, edited by P. Harvey, C. B. Jensen & A. Morita, 253-65. London: Routledge.
2016 “Technology, infrastructure and the making of value in gold prospection” (with R. Rottenburg). In Networks of knowledge production in Sudan: identities, mobilities, and technologies, edited by S. Hale & G. Kadoda, 265–283. Lanham: Lexington Books.
2015 “Emergence and contestation of orders in the Sudans” (with E. Ille & R. Rottenburg) and “Negotiating distributive orders in rural Sudan: justification and critique of charitable gifts.” In Emerging orders in the Sudans, edited by S. Calkins, E. Ille & R. Rottenburg, 1-22, 197-217. Bamenda: Langaa.
2015 “Starvation.” In: The SAGE encyclopedia of world poverty, edited by M. Odekon, 1469–1472. Los Angeles: SAGE.
2014 “Disrupting territories: commodification and its consequences” (with Rottenburg, R. & J. Gertel), “Territories of Gold Mining: International Investments and Artisanal Extraction in Sudan” (w. E. Ille) and “Gaining an Access to Land: Everyday Negotiations and Ethnic Politics of Rashaida in Northeastern Sudan”, In Disrupting territories: land, commodification and conflict in Sudan, edited by J. Gertel, R. Rottenburg & S. Calkins, 1-30, 52-76, 180-205. Woodbridge: James Currey.
2014 “Gold mining concessions in Northern Sudan’s written laws and practices of gold extraction in the Nuba Mountains” (with E. Ille). In Identity, economy, power relations and external interests: old and new challenges for Sudan and South Sudan, edited by E. Grawert, 112-126. Addis Abeba: OSSREA.
2013 „Gemeinschaft neu gedacht: Nomaden als Vorreiter der Globalisierung?“ Revue – Magazine for the Next Society 13(12): 122–127
2012 „Einleitung,“ „Dürrejahre im Sudan: neue Formen nomadischer Mobilität,“ „Bauern, Tierhalter und Migranten: Existenzsicherung im marokkanischen Hohen Atlas.“ In Nomaden in unserer Welt: die Vorreiter der Globalisierung; von Mobilität und Handel, Herrschaft und Widerstand, edited by J. Gertel & S. Calkins, 8–18, 52–59, 148–157.Bielefeld: transcript- Verlag.
2012 “Agricultural encroachment in Wadi Mukabrab area: policies of recompense, differentiation and ‘tribal’ belonging.” Meroitica 24 Zeitschrift der Sudanarchäologischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin: Schriften zur altsudanesischen Geschichte und Archäologie, 229–251. Wiesbaden: Harassowitz.
2011 „Transhumanz,“ and with Büssow,J., Nippa, A. & Scharrer, U. „Wirtschaftlicher Austausch.“ In: Kleines abc des Nomadismus, edited by A. Nippa, 216, 242-245. Hamburg: Museum für Völkerkunde.
Review essays and book reviews
2022 Book review. Masco, Joseph. 2021. The Future of Fallout and other episodes of radioactive worldmaking. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Political and Legal Anthropology Review. https://polarjournal.org/2022/02/21/the-future-of-fallout-and-other-episodes-in-radioactive-world-making-joseph-masco-durham-nc-duke-university-press-2019/
2020 Book review. P. Wenzel Geissler, René Gerrets, Ann H. Kelly, Peter Mangesho (Hg.). Amani – auf den Spuren einer kolonialen Forschungsstation in Tansania. Postcolonial Studies Reihe. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2019. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 145(1): 163-65.
2019 Review Essay. “Population (what is it good for?)” (with T. Zoanni). Anthropological Quarterly 92(3): 919- 29.
https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2019.0041
2019 Review Essay. “Infrastructures of citizenship.” South Asia. The Journal of South Asian Studies 42 (4): 816- 21. https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2019.1633496
2019 Book review. Casciarri, Barbara, Assal, Munzoul A.M. & Ireton, François. Multidimensional change in Sudan (1989-2011): reshaping livelihoods, conflicts and identities. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 2015. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 25: 629- 630.
2018 Book review. Jennifer Tappan 2017: The Riddle of Malnutrition: The Long Arc of Biomedical and Public Health Interventions in Uganda. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. 218 pp. African Studies Quarterly 18 (1): 132-134.