Daniel Jordan Smith

Broadly, Professor Smith's research focuses on understanding the intersection of social change and social reproduction, particularly as it unfolds in population processes and health-related behavior. Completed research projects have investigated the influence of migration on family organization and reproductive behavior as people live across rural-urban boundaries. Smith has also studied the effects of rural-urban migration on sexual behavior and HIV risk among adolescents and unmarried young adults. He led the Nigeria component of an NIH-supported, five-country comparative ethnographic study entitled "Love, Marriage, and HIV." The research examined the changing expectations and pragmatics of modern marriage, documenting and analyzing the organization and opportunity structures of extramarital relationships, investigating how gender is configured in contemporary sexual and romantic relationships, and evaluating the effect of these patterns on the transmission of HIV. In addition to elucidating the cultural context of HIV transmission in the five countries, the study design represented a methodological renewal of anthropology's comparative orientation, employing a shared ethnographic methodology to investigate social, demographic, and health processes across five societies. The research culminated in a recent book, The Secret: Love, Marriage, and HIV (2009), co-authored with colleagues on the project. Currently, Professor Smith is finishing a new book about inequality, morality, and social change in Nigeria, using popular responses to the AIDS epidemic as a prism to understand wider transformations.

Smith's research on political culture focuses on understanding the intersection of social imagination, politics, and contemporary issues in Nigeria, including democracy and development, vigilantism, and corruption. His first book, A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria, for which he received the 2008 Margaret Mead Award, examines ordinary Nigerians' participation in corruption, even as they are, paradoxically, its main victims and its loudest critics. He has most recently completed a research project that explored the growing popularity and wider social impact of Pentecostal Christianity in southeastern Nigeria, particularly as Pentecostal Christianity intersects with Nigeria's AIDS epidemic.