The Expansive Moment
The rise of Social Anthropology in Britain and Africa 1918–1970

Jack Goody's analysis of the history and ideology of social anthropology in Britain and Africa.

Jack Goody (Author)

9780521450485, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 August 1995

244 pages
23.6 x 15.6 x 1.8 cm, 0.473 kg

"...a valuable contribution to the history of British social anthropology and thus to the general cultural history of Britain in this century....they offer a wonderfully illuminating and provocative account of a central intellectual enterprise in twentieth century Britain." Thomas William Heyck, American Historical Review

Jack Goody's book explores the development of the discipline of social anthropology through its key practitioners and how far its concerns interacted with the political and ideological debate of the interwar years. It is a study of the different ideological and intellectual approaches adopted by the emerging subject of social anthropology and how far these views were incorporated into and defined by the structures and institutions in which they developed. However it is also an analysis of how far the subject was created by its own response to key issues of the time: colonialism - specifically Africa, anti-Semitism and communism. Goody's approach is characteristically personal: Malinowski dominates the discussion, as well as Fortes, Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard, and his own experience, gathered over a wide-ranging life of fieldwork informs the conclusion of the book.

Introduction
1. The economic and organisational basis of British social anthropology in its formative period, 1930–1939: social reform in the colonies
2. Training for the field: the sorcerer's apprentices
3. Making it to the field as a Jew and a Red
4. Personal and intellectual friendships: Fortes and Evans-Pritchard
5. Personal and intellectual animosities: Evans-Pritchard, Malinowski and others
6. The Oxford Group
7. Some achievements of anthropology in Africa
8. Personal contributions
9. Concluding remarks
Appendices
Notes
List of references
Index.

Subject Areas: Anthropology [JHM]