Dr. Peter Lockwood

Peter is an economic and political anthropologist whose research sits at the intersection of political economy, kinship studies, and moral economy. His work examines the contradictions produced by a ‘rentier’ or ‘asset’ form of capitalism characterised by possession rather than production, one that simultaneously renders people’s labour surplus to its requirements. To date he has examined this problem in Kenya, studying the effects of colonial-era land reform and urbanisation on landscapes of land sale, unemployment and youth hopelessness on the northern outskirts of Nairobi. These themes are taken up in his first book Peasants to Paupers: Land, Class, and Kinship in Central Kenya (2025, Cambridge University Press) which explores the gendered and generational conflicts over meagre plots of land, skyrocketing in price on Nairobi’s urban frontier. His publications in journals such as Current Anthropology, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and Social Analysis cover related topics in a peri-urban economy where households pursue domestic prosperity from a precarious position: ‘cash hunting’ during election campaign season; the strategies of poor families to acquire wealth from well-off patrons; and the practices of ‘impatient accumulation’ and ‘immediate consumption’ pursued by young men on low incomes who struggle to have faith that better futures await.

Peter was a Hallsworth Research Fellow at the University of Manchester (2022 - 2026), and holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge (2021) where he also studied History as an undergraduate.

Peter joins Goettingen as part of the DFG-funded project Sustainable Rurbanity, and will work on project ‘RurbanLivestockSystems: Building rurban livelihoods through livestock’. Within the project, Peter plans to direct his attention to the economic aspirations of Fulani youth seeking to build their own reputation as herders within broader economies of dependence and commodification that characterise the livestock economy of urban Accra.