Robin Oakley

Research interests

Robin Oakley is an Anthropologist interested in the relationship between economic constraints and cultural values with a focus on health and policy. A current interest focuses on the epistemological and ontological parameters of 'eggs' as tangible cultural artifacts with generationally variable meanings. She analyzed caregiving strategies for the elderly in Namaqualand, South Africa, among a community who reaped the many benefits of communal land tenure until the late 1990s. She is comparing the Namaqaland reserves that pre-dated the Canadian reserve system to Mi'kmaq reserves recognized by Joseph Howe in St Margaret’s Bay, Nova Scotia in the 1800s.  Her long-standing interest lies in exploring demographic folk taxonomies of the nation state and the impact on people’s sense of “wellness” that all too often go unresolved. A linked interest lies in comparing the consolidation of geopolitical trade blocks/finance capital commencing in 1870 and the associated wars of the 20th century to the contemporary period with a focus on various forms of trade and health.

Dr. Oakley has developed and/or taught: Health, Illness and Capitalism; Health and Culture; Food and Culture; Aging Cross Culturally; Belief Systems: Ritual, Myth and Magic; Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism; Qualitative and Field Methods; Issues in Critical Health Studies; Culture and Society; SOSA Honors Seminar; South African Society; People and Culture; Special Topics: Tropical Health and Imperial Medicine.

Selected publications

• Fournier, Cathy and Robin Oakley. 2018. "Conversions and Erasures: Colonial Ontologies in Canadian and International Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine Integration Policies". In Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Knowledge Production and Social Transformation Eds. Brosnan, C. Vuolanto, P. and A. Brodin-Dannell. Palgrave MacMillian.217-246.
• 2010. "Empowering Knowledge and Practices of Namaqualand Elders". In P. Stephenson and J. Graham (Eds.) Anthropology and Aging: Contesting the Paradigm of Loss. Toronto, University of Toronto Press.
• 2006. “Collective rural identity in Steinkopf, a communal coloured reserve, ca. 1926-1996”. Journal of Southern African Studies, 32, No. 3: 489-503.
• 2001. “Generational and Life Course Patterns of Occupational Retrenchment and Retirement among South African Migrant Labourers". Restructuring Work and the Life Course, eds. V. Marshall, W. Heinz, H. Kruger, A. Verma. Toronto: University of Toronto Press:319-331.
• 1998. "Local Effects of New Social Welfare Policy on Ageing in South Africa." Southern African Journal of Gerontology, 7(1):15-20. [PDF - 677 kB]