(Bonno) Thoden Van Velzen

I N MEMORIAM H. U. E. (Bonno) Th oden van Velzen (1933–2020) Erik Bähre H. U. E. (Bonno) Th oden van Velzen (1933– Upon completion of his PhD, Th oden van 2020) passed away at his home in Huijbergen, Velzen worked at the African Studies Cen- the Netherlands, on 26 May this year. Bonno tre in Leiden (1966–1971). He and his family Th oden van Velzen is internationally recog- lived in Tanzania for three years where Th oden nized for his historical and ethnographic study van Velzen studied how Ujamaa reforms that of Surinamese society and religious movements. formed the ideological backbone of socialist Th oden van Velzen studied Cultural Anthro- development projects intensifi ed social inequal- pology at the University of Amsterdam and did ities instead of diminishing them. He became his PhD at Utrecht University under the super- a professor at the Department of Cultural An- vision of André Köbben. In 1961, together with thropology at Utrecht University (1971–1991) his wife and anthropologist Ineke van Wetering, and at the Amsterdam School for Social Sci- he went to Suriname to do fi eldwork among the ence Research at the University of Amsterdam Ndyuka. He studied the Gaan Gadu (Great Fa- (1991 until retirement in 1999). In 1990, he was ther) oracle and other religious movements and awarded membership in the Royal Netherlands explored how people struggled to gain control Academy of Arts and Sciences. Aft er retirement, over others, but also to control their own lives. he was a visiting researcher at the Institute of He found that changing material conditions led Cultural Anthropology and Development So- to new interpersonal tensions that these reli- ciology at Leiden University (2014–2018). gious movements addressed. He argued that He wrote an impressive oeuvre, including a historical and material analysis could only publications with his wife Ineke van Wetering, partly explain the aggression and violence that who died in 2011. In 2013, Brill published their he encountered during fi eldwork. Th e move- fi nal work together Een Zwarte Vrijstaat in Su- ments were charged with people’s emotions and riname where they used oral traditions to gain fantasies that could not be reduced to material insight into nineteenth- and twentieth-century conditions and political strategies alone. Tak- Ndyuka history. Th oden van Velzen’s passion ing inspiration from Freud, Th oden van Velzen for anthropology and commitment to Suriname developed an approach that examined these de- meant that he continued writing until the end of sires and fears in great detail and showed how his life, working on the book Prophets of Doom; they became part of everyday power struggles of A History of the Aukan Maroons, which will be which religious movements were a part. published by Brill. Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 88 (2020): 125–126 © Th e Author doi:10.3167/fcl.2020.880109 126 | Erik Bähre Th roughout his career, Th oden van Velzen ciology, Leiden University. He specializes in eco- supervised a great number of PhD researchers nomic anthropology with research on money and and played a stimulating role as teacher and fi nance in everyday life in South Africa and Bra- mentor. He was also an early collaborator of zil. He focuses on how economic change aff ects Focaal. He kindly shared his ideas about how inequality and violence and how fi nance raises fi eldwork was infl uenced by emotional dynam- moral issues regarding solidarity and responsi- ics and personal dependencies that we could bility. Erik Bähre is the Principal Investigator only partly uncover. Generous, compassionate, of the ERC Consolidator Project “Moralising and an anthropologist at the core, Th oden van Misfortune: A Comparative Anthropology of Velzen continued fi eldwork in Suriname into Commercial Insurance” (Grant 682467). He his twilight years, with his latest fi eldwork visit is the author of Money and Violence: Financial in January 2019. Self-Help Groups in a South African Township (Brill, 2007) and Ironies of Solidarity: Insurance and Financialization of Kinship in South Africa Erik Bähre is Associate Professor at the Institute (Zed Books, 2020). of Cultural Anthropology and Development So- Email: [email protected].

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