Biography
Dr Sam Balaton-Chrimes is a Senior Lecturer in International Studies at Deakin University. Sam’s work is oriented to understanding and, ultimately, redressing injustices and inequalities between different identity groups. Sam uses anthropological and historical methods to illuminate the ways in which particular practices – often legal and bureaucratic – go to work to produce some citizens as marginal.
The heart of Sam’s research has been on how ethnic minorities are produced as such, and how they are marginalised (or not) in Kenya. Her current book project constructs a genealogy of techniques of ethnic classification introduced by the colonial state and adopted and transformed by the postcolonial state.
Sam teaches in Undergraduate, Honours and Postgraduate programs, where she aims to work with her students to hone their skills in critical thinking, and expose them to people, places, ideas and theories that better equip them to grapple with pressing political problems of inequality, injustice and power in their future professions.
Research interests
- Identity politics
- Politics of recognition
- Ethnic politics
- Census politics
- Postcolonialism and decoloniality
- Epistemological politics
- Theories of power
- Kenya
Affiliations
Member, African Studies Association of Africa
Member, British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA)
Teaching interests
African politics
Identity politics
Theories of power
Development
International Political Economy
Colonialism, postcolonialism and decoloniality
Research ethics
Research design
Units taught
AIX497 (Honours) Theory and Debates in the Discipline (Theories of power in the social sciences)
AIP211 (Second year undergraduate) Politics of Poverty and Prosperity
ADS734 (Masters of International and Community Development) Political Development Record
AIX706 (various Masters programs) Research Design
Knowledge areas
- Identity politics
- Politics of recognition
- Ethnic politics
- Census politics
- Postcolonialism and decoloniality
- Epistemological politics
- Theories of power
- Kenya
Professional activities
Fellow, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, Stellenbosch, South Africa, Second Semester 2022
Visiting Scholar, New School for Social Research, New York, USA, Fall semester 2016
Projects
Sam is a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council Discovery Indigenous Project with Dr Victoria Stead and Prof Yin Paradies on the politics of recognition in postcolonial contexts. The overall project aims to compare settler and non-settler postcolonies to inform the development of a new theory of relationality across postcolonial difference. As part of this project, Sam produced (with Alice Bellette) the award-winning podcast series Welcome?.
Sam’s research on this project is currently being written up into a book on how the Kenyan state categorises its citizens by ethnicity. Practically, this project seeks to expose a series of bureaucratic instruments used by the Kenyan state to govern and differentiate between citizens. Theoretically, it seeks to interrogate the epistemological implications of using colonial bureaucratic tools, such as the census, in postcolonial ways.
Sam is in the development phase of two future projects:
The first aims to understand how notions of minoritisation and marginalisation play out in different East African contexts. It entails a comparison of practices of categorisation, both legal and bureaucratic. Using methods from comparative political sociology and political anthropology it will seek to understand how the formalisation (or informalisation) of minority and marginal status affects access to resources, political subjectivities and broader national political cultures.
The second compares identity categories across the former British Empire in order to specify and theorise the nature of their colonial origins and legacies, and identify possible sites of transformation of identity politics in census practices.
Publications
The Rightful Share: Land and Effective Claim Making in Odisha, India
S Balaton-Chrimes, S Pattnaik
(2023), Vol. 53, pp. 623-646, Development and Change, London, Eng., C1
Who are Kenya's 42(+) tribes? The census and the political utility of magical uncertainty
S Balaton-Chrimes
(2021), Vol. 15, pp. 43-62, Journal of Eastern African studies, Abingdon, Eng., C1
Samantha Balaton-Chrimes, Laurence Cooley
(2021), pp. 1-21, Ethnicities, London, Eng., C1
Desiring the other and decolonizing global solidarity: time and space in the anti-Vedanta campaign
Samantha Balaton-Chrimes
(2019), Vol. 10, pp. 239-262, Humanity: an international journal of human rights, humanitarianism, and development, Hanover, Pa., C1
Redress and corporate human rights harms: an analysis of new governance and the POSCO Odisha project
S Balaton-Chrimes, F Haines
(2017), Vol. 14, pp. 596-610, Globalizations, Abingdon, Eng., C1
S Balaton-Chrimes
(2017), Vol. 20, pp. 51-67, Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne, Vic., C1
Recognition, power and coloniality
S Balaton-Chrimes, V Stead
(2017), Vol. 20, pp. 1-17, Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne, Vic., C1
The Nubians of Kenya: citizenship in the gaps and margins
S Balaton-Chrimes
(2016), pp. 149-178, Citizenship, belonging, and political community in Africa: dialogues between past and present, Athens, Oh., B1
S Balaton-Chrimes, K Macdonald, S Marshall
(2016), pp. 43-68, Demanding justice in the global South : claiming rights, Cham, Switzerland, B1
Ethnicity, democracy and citizenship in Africa: Political marginalisation of Kenya's Nubians
S Balaton-Chrimes
(2015), London, England, A1
Export credit agencies and human rights abuses: flux and friction in regulation
F Haines, S Balaton-Chrimes
(2015), pp. 81-103, Regulatory transformations : rethinking economy-society interactions, Oxford, Eng., B1
The depoliticisation of accountability processes for land-based grievances, and the IFC CAO
S Balaton-Chrimes, F Haines
(2015), Vol. 6, pp. 446-454, Global policy, London, Eng., C1
Statelessness, identity cards and citizenship as status in the case of the Nubians of Kenya
S Balaton-Chrimes
(2014), Vol. 18, pp. 15-28, Citizenship studies, Abingdon, UK, C1-1
Indigeneity and Kenya's Nubians: seeking equality in difference or sameness?
S Balaton-Chrimes
(2013), Vol. 51, pp. 331-354, Journal of modern African studies, Cambridge, England, C1-1
Contextualizing the business responsibility to respect: How much is lost in translation?
F Haines, K Macdonald, S Balaton-Chrimes
(2011), pp. 107-128, The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Foundations and implementation, Leiden, Netherlands, B1-1
Counting as citizens: Recognition of the Nubians in the 2009 Kenyan census
S Balaton-Chrimes
(2011), Vol. 10, pp. 205-218, Ethnopolitics, Melbourne, Vic., C1-1
The Nubians of Kenya and the emancipatory potential of collective recognition
S Balaton-Chrimes
(2011), Vol. 32, pp. 12-31, Australasian review of African studies, Melbourne, Vic., C1-1
Challenging the state in Africa
S Balaton-Chrimes
(2008), Vol. 29, pp. 35-50, Australasian Review of African Studies, Perth, W.A., C1-1
Challenging the State in Africa
Samantha Balaton-Chrimes
(2008), Vol. 29, pp. 35-50, AUSTRALASIAN REVIEW OF AFRICAN STUDIES, C1-1
Funded Projects at Deakin
Australian Competitive Grants
Beyond Recognition: Postcolonial Relationality Across Difference
Prof Yin Paradies, A/Prof Victoria Stead, Dr Sam Balaton-Chrimes
ARC Discovery Indigenous
- 2021: $126,517
- 2020: $140,565
- 2019: $136,064
- 2018: $124,013
Industry and Other Funding
Nubian land title in Kibra: What now?
Dr Sam Balaton-Chrimes
Open Society Foundations
- 2017: $4,635
Supervisions
Kennedy Okello
Thesis entitled: Christian-Muslim Relations: Managing Religious Tensions and Conflicts in Mombasa, Kenya
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Raman Kumar Apsingikar
Thesis entitled: The Politics of Special Economic Zones: The Case of Polepally in Andhra Pradesh, India
Doctor of Philosophy, School of Humanities and Social Sciences