Dr. Michael Stasik

Michael Stasik is an anthropologist working at the intersection of urban cultures, economies and mobilities in West Africa. He received his PhD in anthropology (2017) from the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies and an MPhil in African studies (2010) from the African Studies Centre Leiden. His PhD dissertation analyses the socio-cultural and economic significance of a major bus station in Ghana’s capital Accra. His MA thesis explores the practices and meanings that youth in Freetown, Sierra Leone, invest in popular music, especially in relation to love, fantasy and the sexual economy. From 2011 to 2017 he has worked as a researcher and lecturer at the Chair of Anthropology, University of Bayreuth.

Michael’s project at the MPI-MMG examines the lifeworlds of francophone West African migrants in urban Ghana. Its key question is how francophone migrants master, or fail to master, the exigencies of immigrant life in the diverse and largely non-French speaking social environments of Ghanaian cities. Attending in particular to the relationship between urbanism, diversity and solitude, this research aims at building new theoretical approaches with the capacity to understand how changing forms of mobility and association shape sociality as well as West African urban life more generally.

Publikationen

Bücher

Stasik, M. (2012). DISCOnnections: Popular Music Audiences in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Bamenda, Leiden: Langaa Research, ASC Leiden. Link

Sammelwerke

Valerie Hänsch, Michael Stasik and Serawit Bekele Debele (Eds.) (2020). Temporalities of Waiting in Africa (Special Issue). Critical African Studies 12(1). Link

Stasik, M., & Cissokho, S. (Eds.). (2018). Bus Stations in Africa (Special Issue). Africa Today. Link

Beck, K., Gabriel, K., & Stasik, M. (Eds.). (2017). The Making of the African Road. Leiden, Boston: Brill. Link

Beiträge in Sammelwerk

Stasik, M., & Klaeger, G. (2018). Reordering Ghana’s roadside spaces: Hawking in times of infrastructural renewal. In U. Engel, M. Boeckler, & D. Müller-Mahn (Eds.), Spatial practices: Territory, border and infrastructure in Africa (pp. 153-172). Leiden: Brill. Link

Stasik, M. (2017). Alltagsspektakel am Straßenrand: Körpertechniken von Busausrufern in Accra, Ghana. In M. Verne, P. Ivanov, & M. Treiber (Eds.), Körper Technik Wissen: Kreativität und Aneignungsprozesse in Afrika - in den Spuren Kurt Becks (pp. 405-417). Berlin: LIT.

Beck, K., Klaeger, G., & Stasik, M. (2017). An Introduction to the African Road. In K. Beck, G. Klaeger, & M. Stasik (Eds.), The Making of the African Road (pp. 1-23). Link

Stasik, M. (2017). Roadside Involution, Or How Many People Do You Need to Run a Lorry Park? In K. Beck, G. Klaeger, & M. Stasik (Eds.), The Making of the African Road (pp. 24-57). Leiden, Boston: Brill. Link

Zeitschriftenartikel

Michael Stasik, Valerie Hänsch and Daniel Mains (2020). Temporalities of waiting in Africa: Introduction to special issue. Critical African Studies 12(1), 1-9. Link

Stasik, M., & Cissokho, S. (2018). Introduction to Special Issue: Bus Stations in Africa. Africa Today, 65(2), vii-xxiv. Link

Stasik, M. (2018). The popular niche economy of a Ghanaian bus station: Departure from informality. Africa Spectrum, 53(1), 37-59.

Stasik, M., & Klaeger, G. (2018). Station Waka-Waka: The Temporalities and Temptations of (Not) Working in Ghanaian Bus Stations. Africa Today, 65(2), 93-110. Link

Stasik, M. (2017). How to dance to Beethoven in Freetown: the social, sonic and sensory organisation of sounds into music and noise. Anthropology Matters, 17(2). Link

Stasik, M. (2017). Rhythm, Resonance and Kinaesthetic Enskilment in a Ghanaian Bus Station. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 82(3), 545-568. Link

Stasik, M. (2016). Contingent constellations: African urban complexity seen through the workings of a Ghanaian bus station. Social Dynamics, 42(1), 122-142.

Thiel, A., & Stasik, M. (2016). Market men and station women: changing significations of gendered space in Accra, Ghana. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 34(4), 459-478. Link

Stasik, M. (2016). Real love versus real life: youth, music and utopia in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 86(2), 215-236. Link

Stasik, M. (2015). Vernacular Neoliberalism: How Private Entrepreneurship Runs Public Transport in Ghana. Sociologus: Journal for Social Anthropology, 65(2), 177-200. Link

Sonstige

Stasik, M. (2019). Les bus ghanéens, entre attente, ruses et petits arrangements. Le Monde Afrique (May 2019). Link

Stasik, M. (2019). Review: Ghana on the Go: African Mobility in the Age of Motor Transportation, by Jennifer Hart. 2016. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Journal of African History 60(2), 321-323. Link

Stasik, M. (2018). Diversity, anthropologically studied. Link

Stasik, M. (2018). Review: Hexenjagd und Aufklärung in Ghana, by Felix Riedel. 2016. Köln. Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society, 5(2), 160-164. Link

Stasik, M. (2017). Masse, Musik und der Kao-Kult: eine Konzertnacht in Freetown. Muße. Ein Magazin. Link