Ilahiane, Hsain

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Ilahiane, Hsain

PERSONAL:

Education: Catholic University of America, B.A., 1987; George Washington University, M.A., 1989; University of Arizona, Ph.D., 1998.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Anthropology, Iowa State University, 324 Curtiss Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1050. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, educator. School of American Research, Santa Fe, NM, Weatherhead Resident Scholar, 1997-98; University of Arizona, Tucson, instructor in anthropology, 1998, research associate, 1999; Iowa State University, Ames, assistant professor, 1999-2005, associate professor of anthropology, 2005—. Consultant, CARE/USA, 1998; visiting senior researcher, Intel Corporation, 2006-07.

MEMBER:

American Anthropological Association, American Institute of Maghreb Studies, Middle East Studies Association, Society for Applied Anthropology (fellow), Association Amelkis de Développement et de Culture (honorary member).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Wenner-Gren Foundation grant, 1994; Iowa State University Science, Technology, and Society research grant, 1999; Iowa State University Vice Provost for Research publication subvention grant, 2003; Intel Corporation grant, 2001-04 and 2007-08.

WRITINGS:

Ethnicities, Community Making, and Agrarian Change: The Political Ecology of a Moroccan Oasis, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 2004.

The Historical Dictionary of the Berbers, Scarecrow Press (Lanham, MD), 2006.

Contributor to books, including Canals and Communities: Small-Scale Irrigation Systems, University of Arizona Press, 1996; Charting Memory: Recalling Medieval Spain, Garland Press, 1999; Natural Communities? Ethnicity, Gender, and the State in Community-Based Conservation, Rutgers University Press, 2001; Islanders and Mainlanders: Prehistoric Context for the Southern California Bight, SRI Press, 2002; and Connected for Development: Information Kiosks and Sustainability, United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force, 2003. Contributor to journals, including Journal of Political Ecology, Journal of North African Studies, Maghreb Review, Journal of Ecological Anthropology, and Land Use and Water Resources Research Journal.

SIDELIGHTS:

Hsain Ilahiane is an associate professor of anthropology at Iowa State University. He has written articles on such topics as small-scale farming and community-based resource management for the Journal of Political Ecology and Land Use and Water Resources Research Journal. He has also contributed articles to such books as Canals and Communities: Small-Scale Irrigation Systems and Natural Communities? Ethnicity, Gender, and the State in Community-Based Conservation.

Ilahiane is the author of Ethnicities, Community Making, and Agrarian Change: The Political Ecology of a Moroccan Oasis. In this work, he argues that a community's ethnic makeup has a strong impact on its agricultural production. He bases his assertion on research he conducted in Morocco during the mid-1990s. At that time, Ilahiane studied three Moroccan ethnic groups—Arabs, Berbers, and Haratines—who lived in an oasis in the southeast province of Errachidia. Although all of them lived in the same region, there were major differences in the agricultural production rates of the three groups. The higher production rates did not correlate with a group having better land or using more modern agricultural techniques. Ilahiane, Erin E. Stiles wrote in Africa Today, "argues that ethnicity should therefore be considered a primary variable."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Africa Today, fall, 2006, Erin E. Stiles, review of Ethnicities, Community Making, and Agrarian Change: The Political Ecology of a Moroccan Oasis, p. 144.

Reference & Research Book News, November, 2006, review of The Historical Dictionary of the Berbers.