Dr. Schneider’s research focuses on the politics of development with a geographical focus on sub-Saharan Africa. His book, Government of Development: Peasants and Politicians in Postcolonial Tanzania (Indiana University Press, 2014), asks what drives state officials to force development projects on resisting “beneficiary” populations. His analysis of the Tanzanian state’s 1960s and 1970s campaign to settle the country’s rural population in socialist villages traces the discourses and practices that authorized state officials to direct the lives of peasants – by coercive means if necessary. The book shows that the practices constituting this project’s mode of government far exceeded political elites’ pursuit of their own narrow interests, the go-to explanation for many accounts of similar instances of authoritarian rule and developmental failures in Africa and beyond.
Along with Drs. Manning (Concordia, Political Science) and Ivaska (Concordia, History), Dr. Schneider is currently developing a research project on Chinese-African relations. In addition to this academic work, he has also consulted for Oxfam America and the UNDP.
Research interests
Comparative Politics and African Politics.
Books
What Shaw Really Wrote About the War. Co-Editor with J .L. Wisenthal. University of Florida Press 2006, 310 pp.
Articles
“Censored and Embedded Shaw: Print Culture and Shavian Analysis of Wartime Media” in Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, no. 28. Pennsylvania State University Press (2008).
“Irish-Canadian Identity, Imperial Nationalism: Irish Book History and Print Culture in Victorian Quebec” in Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, vol. 33:1 (2008).
Book chapters
“Publishing for Distinct Readerships: Publishing for Young Christians” in The History of the Book in Canada, 1918-1980 (vol. 3). Toronto: UTP 2007, 288-292.
“Controlling and Advising Readers: Religious Censorship in English Canada” in The History of the Book in Canada, 1918-1980 (vol.3). Toronto: UTP 2007, 473-475.
“Authors and Learned Cultures: Writing in the Humanities and Social Sciences” in The History of the Book in Canada, 1840-1918 (vol. 2). Toronto: UTP 2005, 161-171.
“Religious Print: Books and Periodicals for an Expanding Community” in The History of the Book in Canada, 1840-1918 (vol. 2). Toronto: UTP 2005, 355-360.
“Environmentalism and Imperialism in Agnes Deans Cameron’s The New North” in This Elusive Land: Canadian Women and the Environment. University of British Columbia Press, 2004.
Other contributions
“Chronology of Irish Fiction,” in Cambridge Handbook to Irish Fiction, ed. J. W. Foster. Cambridge University Press 2006.
“School Histories,” in Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada, ed. W. H. New. UTP 2002.
In progress
Britons in the New Dominion Race and nationalism in Victorian Canada.
The History of the Irish-Canadian Book: Irish Print in Early Canada.
The Home Circle: Facsimile Edition with Critical Introduction and Notes.
