Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr Mark Lamont

Mark Lamont's current work builds upon more than a decade of ethnographic research in central Kenya among the Meru. His PhD focused on the auto-poesis of generation through age-set formation, an exploration of why older generations are often projected as 'more' moral than younger ones. He has since published on street performances and the use of indigenous allegories of 'the End' in gospel music (African inspired Pentecostal-Charismatics) and is working on further outputs from this research.

Teaching

Dr Mark Lamont teaches on the following courses:

• Anthropological Methods
• Anthropology of Religion
• Ideology and the Secular

Research interests

East Africa and the Western Indian Ocean; theological debates between Muslims and Christians; age-set formation and the auto-poesis of generation; death, dying, and bereavement; the ‘accidental’ and road safety; infrastructural disruption / eschatology; politics of ‘repair’

Mark Lamont’s current work builds upon more than a decade of ethnographic research in central Kenya among the Meru. His PhD focused on the auto-poesis of generation through age-set formation, an exploration of why older generations are often projected as ‘more’ moral than younger ones. He has since published on street performances and the use of indigenous allegories of ‘the End’ in gospel music (African inspired Pentecostal-Charismatics) and is working on further outputs from this research.

Mark was a collaborator in ‘Death in Africa: A History c.1800 to Present Day’, an AHRC funded project based at Goldsmiths and Cambridge. He has published on forced burial in colonial Kenya and its impact on contemporary funerary and mortuary rituals, as well as several articles on road death/safety.

Most recently, Mark has contributed to rethinking the ‘accidental’ within everyday mobility through a focus on infrastructural disruption. Engaged in a longer-term research project on the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety (2011-2020) in Britain and the UK, Mark is currently researching a book on road safety as infrastructural governance with a specific focus on the politics of ‘repair’.

Death in Africa Project

 

Selected publications

2011 ‘An epidemic on wheels? Road safety, public health and injury politics in Africa’, Anthropology Today, 26 (5).

2011 ‘Decomposing Pollution? Corpses, Burial, and Affliction among the Meru of Central Kenya’, in Funerals in Africa: Explorations of a Social Phenomenon, Jindra, M. and J. Noret (eds.). Berghahn Books.

2010 ‘Lip-Synch Gospel: Christian Music and the Ethnopoetics of Identity in Kenya’, Africa, 80 (3).

2009 ‘Interroger les morts pour critiquer les vivants, Ou éxoticisme morbide? Encounters with African funerary practices in Francophone anthropology, a review’, Africa, 97 (3).

(Forthcoming, 2012) ‘Accidents have no cure: road safety and injury politics in eastern Africa’, African Studies, 71:2.

(Forthcoming, 2013) ‘Speed Governors: Road Safety and Infrastructural Overload in Postcolonial Kenya, c. 1963-2011’, Africa.

(Forthcoming, 2013) ‘Arrive Alive: The Accidental in Africa’, Technology & Culture.