How did the British Empire guide the development of anthropology and sociology at the LSE?
Participant Observers: Anthropology, Colonial Development and the Reinvention of Society in Britain (California, 2023) offers some new answers to this important question. By drawing on extensive archival research in the UK and USA the book dives into the imperial history of anthropology and assesses its impact on the sociological study of postwar Britain. This roundtable will explore these histories and raise the question of what historians can offer to current practitioners in the social sciences. Join the author of Participant Observers Freddy Foks (University of Manchester), Deborah James (Anthropology) and Adam Kuper (LSE) for a discussion and book launch.
Meet the speakers:
Freddy Foks is a Simon Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. His first book was about the history of social anthropology in Britain. He is now researching for a new book on the history of emigration from the UK and its impact on the British state.
Deborah James is Professor of Anthropology at LSE. She is author of Money from Nothing: Indebtedness and Aspiration in South Africa, and co-editor (with Chris Hann) of the forthcoming volume One Hundred Years of Argonauts: Malinowski, Ethnography, and Economic Anthropology, which features a chapter by Freddy Foks.
Adam Kuper (FBA) is an anthropologist and public intellectual. Most recently a Centennial Professor in this department and a Visiting Professor at Boston University, and a recipient of the Huxley Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, he has authored or edited 19 books and published over 100 journal articles focusing on anthropological theory, the history of anthropology in the US and Britain, and southern African societies and cultures.
This event is co-hosted by the Department of Sociology and the Department of Anthropology.