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Senior Lecturer
Name: Tarminder Kaur
Location: D Ring 512A Auckland Park Kingsway Campus
Anthropology and Development Studies Staff Staff Members
Contact Details:
Tel: +27 (0)11 559 2865
Email: tkaur@uj.ac.za
About Dr Tarminder Kaur
I am a political anthropologist with a specialization in sports. My research focuses on the sporting lives of working people. I joined the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at UJ as a Senior Lecturer in June 2024. Anthropological themes that animate my research, writing, and teaching include, subalternity, development, agrarian labour, youth, gambling, violence, play, and personhood. Social history grounds her analytical thinking.
My published work is available in peer-reviewed academic journals, book chapters, and public scholarly platforms (see below for details). Of note, I am one of the three co-editors of, Sports in Africa, Past and Present, with Ohio University Press (2020), which was shortlisted for the NASSH Book Prize for the best sports history anthology published in 2020. I am presently writing her first monograph.
I also serve as an editor for two academic journals. I am a co-editor (Africa region) for The International Journal of History of Sport and a joint Editor-in-Chief for the Anthropology Southern Africa.
Research Interests: As an anthropologist of sport and development, I explore the workings of power and ideas in contexts considered mundane and apolitical. Attending to how people love, laugh, lie, and fight, I am trying to figure out how people, things, and activities take on significance or get trivialized.
Thematically, my research interests include, sports, play, gambling, youth, subalternity, power, politics, development, agrarian labour, violence, social history, and personhood.
I have conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the Cape Winelands (Western Cape), Sterkspruit (Eastern Cape), and Bloemfontein (Free State). Although my empirical work has largely been in South Africa, I am interested in the everyday practices of sports, gambling, and popular cultures in and across Africa.
Teaching interests: I teach political anthropology, anthropology of sports, anthropology of development, and research methodologies.
Supervision: I have mentored and supervised research students in development studies and social anthropology. As an editor for two academic journals, I have extensive experience in mentoring early career researchers from inception to publication of their research projects. I have organized and served as a supervisor on research workshops in Sports Studies, History, African Studies, and Anthropology.
For research supervision, I welcome projects that may focus on sports, play, gambling, development, and other forms of leisure pursuits with an anthropological and/or historical focus, from Honors, Masters, and Doctoral students. I am also open to projects that attend to everyday forms of power and politics, as expressed through popular cultural practices.
Early career scholars, who completed their doctorate in the last 3 years, may also contact me for Post-Doctoral opportunities and joint research projects, especially those with overlapping research interests.
Publications (last 5 years):
BOOKS
In preparation S[up]porting Development: an anthropology of subaltern sports.
In preparation AmaXhosa Maradona. Johannesburg: Jacana Press
2020 With Todd Cleveland and Gerard Akindes. eds. Sports in Africa, Past and Present. Athens: Ohio University Press.
JOURNAL ARTICLES/ BOOK CHAPTERS (Peer-reviewed)
In preparation Soccer and Personhood: A South African Subaltern Story. African Studies Review.
In preparation Philosophical Examinations of Sports in Africa, commissioned to write an Encyclopaedia entry for Routledge Resources Online – Sports Studies, edited by Francisco Javier López Frías [2024].
2023 Undoing Maradona: Subalterns of Sports for Development. The International Journal of History of Sport 40/4: 309-333.
2023 With Shawn Forde and Lyndsay Hayhurst. Cycling Through the Buffer Zone: Working-class Cyclists on Rudolf Greyling Street, Bloemfontein. Urban Forum (Springer Netherlands), The Past in Present African Urban Mobility Systems (Special Issue): Volume 34, pp. 441–462.
2022 As jy arm is, is jy fokol! – Farmworkers’ Experiences of “Development” in Neoliberal South Africa. Third World Thematic 7/4-6: Oral histories of economic life in Africa during neoliberalism (Special Issue): 222-239.
2021 With Norman Ontong. Steeplechase: Personal Reflections on Fit2Run’s Race of Life, in François Cleophas (ed.), Critical Reflections on Physical Culture at the Edges of Empire. Stellenbosch: African Sun Media: 85-99.
2020 Kasi Football: An Ethnography of South African Rural Working-class Football Traditions. Fussball und Gesellschaft 2/2: 220-238.
2020 The Gambling Games: Unorganized “Structure” of South African Soccer, in Todd Cleveland, Tarminder Kaur, and Gerard Akindes (eds.), Sports in Africa, Past and Present. Athens: Ohio University Press: 155-173.
2019 A Tale of Two Sports Fields: Contested Spaces, Histories and Identities at Play in Rural South Africa, In Michael Gennaro and Saheed Aderinto (eds.), Sport in African History, Politics, and Identity Formation. New York: Routledge: 167-180.
GUEST EDITED SPECIAL ISSUES
Forthcoming With Kelsey Slater. African Studies Quarterly, Special Issue on Inclusive and Exclusive Communities: Minorities, Women, and Youth in African Sport, [2024].
2018 With Gerard Akindes. Acta Academica, Special Issue on Sporting Subalternities and Social Justice: rethinking South African sports studies, 50/2.
2017 With Maxim Bolt. Anthropology Southern Africa, Special Issue on Becoming and Unbecoming Farm Workers in Southern Africa, 40/4.
PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP
2022 It Takes a Team to Raise an Athlete. Africa is a Country, June 10. [https://africasacountry.com/2022/06/it-takes-a-team-to-raise-an-athlete].
2021 How Soccer’s ‘Gambling Games’ Build the Sport in South Africa. The Conversation, June 27. [https://theconversation.com/how-soccers-gambling-games-build-the-sport-in-south-africa-162303].
2021 Sport in Africa: Book Delivers Insights into the Games, People, and Politics. The Conversation, June 17. [https://theconversation.com/sport-in-africa-book-delivers-insights-into-the-games-people-and-politics-162001].
2020 With Nina Degele. Football and Social Justice: A Conversation. Fussball und Gesellschaft 2/2: 239-244.
2020 Sadio Mane is a Senegalese (Fairtrade) brand. Africa is a Country, September 11. [https://africasacountry.com/2020/09/sadio-mane-is-a-senegalese-fairtrade-brand].