Professional Interests & Background

Professor Galvan's work centers on comparative analysis of development, the politics of cultural identity, political legitimation, and the search for locally meaningful and sustainable models of social change in the "third world." He conducts field research in West Africa (especially Senegal) and Indonesia (especially Central Java), with increasing interest in comparative projects involving Latin America (especially Argentina). His work examines how ordinary people adapt markets, law, local government, and natural resource management systems when "traditional" cultures are incorporated into "modern" political and economic systems.

Recent publications include The State Must Be Our Master of Fire: How Peasants Craft Culturally Sustainable Development in Senegal, University of California Press, 2004, winner of the 2005 Best Book Award from the African Politics Conference Group. He has also published articles and chapters on peasant transformation of free market property relations, social capital and democratization, and sustainable development.

Galvan's 2007 co-edited volume, Reconfiguring Institutions Across Time and Space: Syncretic Responses to Challenges of Political and Economic Transformation offers a new analysis of the syncretism concept developed in The State Must Be Our Master of Fire, extended to a range of cases across the developing world.

His current research explores the role of neo-traditional and syncretic informal rules, habits and values in building non-liberal forms of social capital and establishing cooperative relations between ethnic and cultural groups.

Professor Galvan joined the University of Oregon International Studies Program and Political Science Department in July 2001. He taught for four years at the University of Florida, received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996 and his B.A. from Stanford University in 1987.

Current Projects

Neo-traditional Institutions and Ethnic Cooperation in West Africa and Indonesia -- Conducting field research in Senegal and in Central Java, Indonesia for a book project which explores the role of neo-traditional organizations and practices in explaining unusually high levels of tolerance, cooperation, trust and shared identification among ethnic and religious communities in Senegal north of the Gambia and in Central Java, Indonesia.

Institutional Syncretism in Comparative Perspective -- Two-part research agenda that extends work begun in The State Must Be Our Master of Fire by: 1) establishing an alternative to historical and rational-choice institutionalism which emphasizes the decomposability of structures and the creativity of action, drawing especially on pragmatist (neo and original) social theory and constructivist understandings of culture, and 2) undertaking a cross-national exploration of illustrative cases of institutional syncretism and the circumstances under which such syncretic alternatives become promulgated and sustained as new institutional orders.

Non-Liberal Forms of Social Capital and Non-Western Forms of Democracy -- Explores the nature and political significance of forms of association and patterns of voluntary material sacrifice embedded in affectively laden forms of collective identity or group solidarity (sometimes misleadingly referred to as part of "moral economies," better understood as rooted in "economies of affection").  Uses comparative historical analytic induction, especially from cases in Africa and other ex-colonial settings, to suggest that: a) the scale of such patterns of association and social capital accumulation may not be inherently limited; b) functional equivalents that approximate Weberian impersonalism may be found even when social formations are not individualistic and social capital is not built through individual rational utility maximization; and c) the conceptualization, norms and institutional structures of democracy rooted in non-liberal forms of social capital will differ markedly from Western style polyarchy.

Sustainability Livelihoods, Social Capital and the Politics of Local Development  -- Developing interdisciplinary team at the University of Oregon to extend inquiries first begun at the United Nations Development Program on the theoretical and practical viability of reconciling ecological sustainability with initiatives to improve the ways of making a living of the global poor (the late 1990s “sustainable livelihoods” initiative).  This interdisciplinary research team has its roots in a similar group I helped coordinate at the University of Florida.  The new research effort considers empirical cases in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, exploring three interlinked lines of inquiry: 1) which types of local-scale political institutions, both historically-rooted and progressive-new forms of leadership, can most effectively balance investments in physical capital against the maintenance of environmental capital; 2) is it possible to generalize from empirical cases in which social capital offsets deficits in financial, physical and environmental capital; 3) to what extent is neo-traditionalism a key instrument in the mobilization of social capital for development?  Working with University of Oregon seed grant funding, I am coordinating an interdisciplinary team which brings field experience from three continents to the establishment of a shared research agenda and the pursuit of external grant funding.

Publications & Recent Papers

"The Social Reproduction of Community-based Development: Syncretism and Sustainability in a Senegalese Farmer’s Association," Journal of Modern African Studies, 45:1, March 2007, 61-88.

Reconfiguring Institutions across Time and Space:  Syncretic Responses to Challenges of Political and Economic Transformation (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2007), co-edited with Rudra Sil, includes:

Galvan and Sil introductory chapter, "The Dilemma of Institutional Adaptation and the Role of Syncretism"
Galvan empirical chapter, "Syncretism and Local Level Democracy in Rural Senegal"

"Neo-traditionalism" in Mark Bevir, ed., Encyclopedia of Governance (Sage: 2006).

"Joking Kinship as a Syncretic Institution," Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, 2006, XLVI (3-4), No. 184.

The State Must be Our Master of Fire: How Peasants Craft Culturally Sustainable Development in Senegal, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004 (winner of the 2005 Best Book Award from the African Politics Conference Group).

"Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Resource Management through Institutional Syncretism in Madagascar and Senegal," with Richard Marcus, in Hans Bressers and Walter Rosenbaum, eds., Achieving Sustainable Development: The Challenge of Governance across Social Scales (Praeger, October 2003).

"Political Turnover and Social Change in Senegal," Journal of Democracy, July 2001.

"Institutional Syncretism and the Articulation of Modes of Production in Rural Senegalese Land Tenure Relations,” African Rural and Urban Studies, 4:2-3, 1997, pp.59-98.

“The Market Meets Sacred Fire: Land Pawning as Institutional Syncretism in Inter-War Senegal,” African Economic History, 25, 1997, pp. 9-41.

“Freehold Becomes Pawning: Adapting Colonial Property Relations in the Siin Region of Senegal,” in Afrique Occidentale Française: réalités et héritages: Sociétés ouest-africaines et ordre colonial, 1895-1960 (Dakar, Senegal, Direction des Archives du Sénégal, 1997), pp. 907-942..

Co-author with Larry Diamond, “Sub-Saharan Africa (A Review of Progress Toward Democracy)” in Robert Wesson, ed., Democracy: A Worldwide Survey (Praeger, 1988).

"Senegalese Joking Kinship, Structuring National Cooperation, and Rethinking Constructivism," paper presented at Colloque: Alliances à plaisanteries et politique(s) en Afrique de l'Ouest, Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI), Paris, France, 27-28 October 2005.

“A Field Guide to Creative Syncretism, or, How People Make and Remake Institutions,” with Gerald Berk, paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, September 2004.

“The Fragility of Liberalization and the Legacy of the Welfare State in West Africa and Indonesia,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, September 2004.

“Joking Kinship, Constructivism and Ethnic Cooperation in Senegal,” paper presented at the African Studies Association annual meeting, Boston, MA, October 2003.

"Syncretic Sustainability: The Case of the Farmer's Association of Tukar, Senegal," paper presented at the African Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, December 2002.

"Choice in Cultural Context: Embedded Rationales for Social Capital Investment in Africa," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, MA, August 2002.

"Democracy without Ethnic Conflict: Embedded Parties, Transcendent Social Capital & Non-violent Pluralism in Senegal and Indonesia," paper presented at the American Political Science Association annual meeting, San Francisco, CA, September, 2001.

"Market Liberalization as a Catalyst for Ethnic Conflict in Senegal and Central Java, Indonesia," paper presented at the American Political Science Association annual meeting, San Francisco, CA, September, 2001.

Sopi, Social Capital and the Democratic Regime in Senegal," paper presented at the African Studies Association Annual Meeeting, Nashville, TN, November 2000.

"The Institutional Bases of Ethnic Cooperation in Senegal and Central Java, Indonesia," American Political Science Association Annual Meeting,Washington, D.C., September 2000.

Educational Background

Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley, Political Science, 1996

M.A., University of California at Berkeley, Political Science, 1990

B.A., Stanford University, International Relations, 1987

Professional Experience

Director, International Studies Program, University of Oregon, Sept 2004 - present.

Director, Ethnic Studies Program, University of Oregon, July 2003 - Sept 2004.

Associate Professor, International Studies Program and Department of Political Science, University of Oregon, June 2001 - present

Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and Center for African Studies, University of Florida, August 1997 - May 2001.

Visiting Lecturer, Department of Political Science, University of California at Berkeley, January 1996 - May 1997

Winter 2008 Courses

PS 607: Community and Domination Research Seminar

HC 424H: Comparative "Tribalisms": US Cultural Politics in African Perspective

CAS 130: Society of College Honors Social Science Colloquium

Other Courses Regularly Offered

INTL 240: Perspectives on International Development

INTL 420/520: International Community Development

PS399 - Globalization and Ethnic Conflict (Summer 2006)

INTL447/547: Comparative "Tribalisms": US Cultural Politics in Third World Perspective

INTL 610: International Studies Core Seminar

PS607: Exclusion and Social Change

PS 607: Institutions and Social Change

PS 607: Politics of Sustainable Development

African Politics in Comparative Perspective

Contact Information

office location: 305 PLC
office: (541) 346-2851
fax: (541) 346-5041
email: dgalvan@uoregon.edu

postal address:

International Studies Program
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-5206

Office Hours, Winter 2008

Tuesdays 2-3:30 pm and Wednesdays, 2-3:30pm (in 305 PLC)
or by appointment -- please email to set up a meeting

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