Irna Hofman
Position:
Associate Faculty Member
Faculty / College Address:
China Centre,
Dickson Poon Building
Canterbury Road Oxford OX2 6LU
Email:
Research Interests:
Rural sociology, legal sociology, environmental sociology, political economy, agrarian change, Central Asia, China, gender, ethnography
Current Projects:
- “China, Law and Development: An interdisciplinary study of the nature of order underlying China’s globalism”, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Courses Taught:
- BA Political economy of East Asia (Leiden University, Netherlands, 2015, 2016)
- BA China’s economy and development (Leiden University 2011-2014)
Recent Publications:
Hofman, I. 2021. Migration, crop diversification, and adverse incorporation: Understanding the repertoire of contention in rural Tajikistan. Canadian Journal of Development Studies 42(4): 499-518. (Special issue on “Authoritarianism, populism, nationalism and resistance in the agrarian South,” Canadian Journal of Development Studies 41(3)).
Hofman, I. and O. Visser. 2021. Towards a geography of window dressing and benign neglect: The state, donors and elites in Tajikistan’s trajectories of post-Soviet agrarian change. Land Use Policy 111.
Hofman, I., Visser, O. and A. Kalinovsky. 2020. Introduction: Encounters after the Soviet collapse: The contemporary Chinese presence in the former Soviet Union border zone (Special issue introduction). Problems of Post Communism 67(3): 193-203.
Jacobs, E. and I. Hofman. 2019. Community based aid, social capital and local collective action: Attitudes towards community based health funds and village organisations in Rushan, Tajikistan. Community Development Journal https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsz005
Hofman, I. 2018. Soft budgets and elastic debt: Farm liabilities in the agrarian political economy of post-Soviet Tajikistan. The Journal of Peasant Studies 45(7): 1360-81.
Hofman, I. 2016. Politics or profits along the “Silk Road”: What drives Chinese farms in Tajikistan and helps them thrive? Eurasian Geography and Economics 57(3): 457-81. (Special issue on “The geoeconomics and geopolitics of Chinese development and investment in Asia,” Eurasian Geography and Economics 57(3)).
Hofman, I. and P. Ho. 2012. China's “developmental outsourcing”: A critical examination of Chinese global “land grabs” discourse. The Journal of Peasant Studies 39(1): 1-48.
Ph.D. dissertation
Hofman, I. 2019. Cotton, control, and continuity in disguise. The political economy of agrarian transformation in lowland Tajikistan. Ph.D. dissertation, Leiden University.
Full / Other Publications:
Book chapters
Hofman, I. 2018. Politics or profits along the “Silk Road”: What drives Chinese farms in Tajikistan and helps them thrive? In The geoeconomics and geopolitics of Chinese development and investment in Asia, ed. E.T. Yeh, 183-208. Oxford: Routledge.
Hofman, I. 2016. More foreign than other foreigners: On discourse and adoption, the contradiction of astonishment and fear for Chinese farm practices in Tajikistan. In Agricultural knowledge and knowledge systems in post-Soviet societies, eds. Hornidge, A.-K., Shtaltovna, A. and C. Schetter, 201-21. Bern: Peter Lang.
P. Ho and I. Hofman. 2014. Tracing the dragon's footsteps: A deconstruction of the discourse on China's foreign land investments. In The global land grab: beyond the hype, eds. M. Kaag and A. Zoomers, 185-200. London: ZED Books.
Book reviews
Hofman, I. 2019. Book review of: A laboratory of socialist development: Cold War politics and decolonization in Soviet Tajikistan, A.M. Kalinovsky, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018. Inner Asia 21(1): 129–132.
Hofman, I. 2012. Book review of: Foreign firms, investment, and environmental regulation in the People's Republic of China, P. Stalley, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. The China Quarterly 210: 510-12.
Other
Hofman, I. 2022. Just working for wood: life inside Tajikistan’s silk industry. Open Democracy 11 August.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/tajikistan-silk-cocoon-forced-labour-central-asia/
Hofman, I. 2022. Cotton scale. The History of Soviet Central Asia in 100 objects, University of Oxford.
https://www.cabinet.ox.ac.uk/cotton-scale-tajikistan-0
Hofman, I. 2022. Tajikistan. The people’s map of global China.
https://thepeoplesmap.net/country/tajikistan/
Hayward, D., Hofman, I, and K. Gillin. 2022. Tajikistan. Land Portal Foundation.
https://landportal.org/book/narratives/2022/tajikistan
Hofman, I. 2021. Waldemar Gretsinger: “The fields were like gold those days.” Tethys: Central Asia Everyday blog 21 December.
http://www.tethys.caoss.org/voldemar-gretsinger-the-fields-were-like-gold-those- days/?fbclid=IwAR35y0btxztJF2NDH1gpZ1qF3mHt8EhB0NEHEWbR9KGvqPbq1LuFhkB0fzs
Hofman, I. 2021. In the interstices of patriarchal order: Spaces of female agency in Chinese-Tajik labour encounters. Made in China #2 May-August 2021.
https://madeinchinajournal.com/2021/12/01/in-the-interstices-of-patriarchal-order-spaces-of-female-agency-in-chinese-tajik-labour-encounters/
Hofman, I. 2021. Chinese cotton diplomacy in Tajikistan: greasing the ties by reviving the cotton economy. CLD Research Brief No 8/2021, University of Oxford
https://cld.web.ox.ac.uk/files/hofmanrbformattedfinalpdf
Hofman, I. 2021. “Our homeland is where the money is”: pragmatic citizenship in Tajikistan. Open Democracy 7 April.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/pragmatic-citizenship-in-tajikistan/
Hofman, I. 2019. Perspectives | In Tajikistan, the EU must mind the GAP. Eurasianet 6 June.
https://eurasianet.org/perspectives-in-tajikistan-the-eu-must-mind-the-gap
Hofman, I. and G.R. van den Berg. 2018. Tadzjikistan: hofleverancier van IS? Leiden Islam Blog 24
September https://www.leiden-islamblog.nl/articles/tadzjikistan-hofleverancier-van-is-en-broeinest-van-terreur
Hofman, I. 2017. Tajikistan: Searching for food security. Eurasianet 22 December.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/86581
Hofman, I. 2017. Radicalisering en de Amerikaanse droom. One World 4 November.
https://www.oneworld.nl/mensenrechten/radicalisering-en-amerikaanse-droom/
Hofman, I. 2017. Voedselonzekerheid is ook een politieke kwestie. One World 16 October.
https://www.oneworld.nl/food/voedselonzekerheid-is-ook-politieke-kwestie/
Hofman, I. 2017. Vrouwen op de katoenvelden van Tadzjikistan. One World 12 March.
https://www.oneworld.nl/mensenrechten/vrouwen-op-de-katoenvelden-van-tadzjikistan/
Hofman, I. 2016. Expansion Chinesischer Landwirtschaftsbetriebe nach Tadschikistan. Zentralasien Analysen Nr. 102.
Hofman, I. and P. Ho. 2011. Rethinking China’s land grabs: Chinese land investments in Central Asia. IIAS The Newsletter 58, Autumn 2011.
Hofman, I. 2010. Revealing the “Hjertet er det mentale postkort” In: P. Derksen and S. Coenders (eds.). Any Questions? The Mandø dialogues. Groningen: WaddenArt Foundation.
