Difficult Folk? - A Political History of Social Anthropology

Zusatztext " David Mills's political  history of social anthropology in the UK from the 1930s to the 1960s is increasingly valuable to British anthropologists and looks set to become a set textbook in the history of the discipline. ?threr is much in this book that might prompt us to consider both what might have been! and what might yet be ."   ·  JRAI " That [Mills] has voided a parochial indulgence of an Oxford-centric agenda to the reading of the history of British social anthropology through its evolving identity politics while fully acknowledging the historical importance of Oxford anthropology is a tribute to his theoretical sensibility and wide-ranging scholarship. "   ·  The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology "...fills a sizeable gap in the history of anthropology's coverage of the development of 20th-century British schools of social anthropology. His care to documentary detail and narrative clarity has created a readable and interesting political history of British social anthropology."   ·  Journal of Anthropological Research "Unlike previous historical accounts![Mills]gives greater attention to structural factors than to intellectual emphases or individual personalities in his analysis of the emergence of different academic cultures in anthropology programs [in the UK and the US]. An illuminating account."   ·  Choice "... a fascinating analysis of the political and institutional history of social history in Britain between the 1930s and the 1960s... Wonderfully written! with many insights and new information! the book also succeeds in setting up an analytical framework for understanding the development of our discipline in its British context."   ·  Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale Informationen zum Autor David Mills is Associate Professor (Pedagogy and the Social Sciences) at the University of Oxford's Department of Education and Fellow of Kellogg College. He directs the Grand Union ESRC-funded doctoral training partnership, an Oxford-led collaboration with Open University and Brunel University London. Trained in anthropology, he has published work on disciplinarity, higher education policy, doctoral education, and African universities. His current interests include the politics of higher education capacity building and the challenges of collaborative research. His books include Ethnography and Education (SAGE, 2013), Difficult Folk: A Political History of Social Anthropology (Berghahn, 2008), and the coedited African Anthropologies: History, Practice, Critique (Zed, 2006). Klappentext How should we tell the histories of academic disciplines? All too often, the political and institutional dimensions of knowledge production are lost beneath the intellectual debates. This book redresses the balance. Written in a narrative style and drawing on archival sources and oral histories, it depicts the complex pattern of personal and administrative relationships that shape scholarly worlds. Focusing on the field of social anthropology in twentieth-century Britain, this book describes individual, departmental and institutional rivalries over funding and influence. It examines the efforts of scholars such as Bronislaw Malinowski, Edward Evans-Pritchard and Max Gluckman to further their own visions for social anthropology. Did the future lie with the humanities or the social sciences, with addressing social problems or developing scholarly autonomy? This new history situates the discipline's rise within the post-war expansion of British universities and the challenges created by the end of Empire. Zusammenfassung How should we tell the histories of academic disciplines? All too often! the political and institutional dimensions of knowledge production are lost beneath the intellectual debates. This book redresses the bal...

Product details

• Authors: David Mills
• Publisher: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.05.2008
• EAN: 9781845454500
• ISBN: 978-1-84545-450-0
• No. of pages: 232
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 235 mm x 19 mm
• Series: Methodology & History in Anthropology
• Subject: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories