Jeremy MacClancy 
Anthropology in the Public Arena [PDF ebook] 
Historical and Contemporary Contexts

ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE PUBLIC ARENA

‘A critical insider, Jeremy Mac Clancy celebrates maverick anthropologists who transgressed academic frontiers, and urges his colleagues to engage the public. This is an entertaining, original, and provocative book.’

Adam Kuper, Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge

‘Jeremy Mac Clancy insightfully expands the history of anthropology beyond the confines of the academy, showing us how a collection of poets, popularizers, critics, surrealists, neo-Freudians, and iconoclast savants shaped anthropology’s imagination.’
David Price, St Martin’s University, Washington

ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE PUBLIC ARENA

This detailed survey of the evolution of anthropology in Britain is also a spirited defence of the public as well as professional role of the discipline. The author argues for a broader vision of the value of anthropological knowledge that allows for the creative contributions of popular scientists and literary figures who often capture the public imagination and add much to our knowledge of human social relations. Informed by original archival research and engaging narratives of the larger-than-life personalities of public intellectuals, the author reveals the contributions of neglected but crucial figures such as John Layard, Geoffrey Gorer, Robert Graves, and the originators of Mass Observation, today’s online repository of anthropological data.

Mac Clancy is guided by the notion that anthropology’s continued dynamism requires an alliance of interests, popular and academic, that will recover marginalized studies and recognize the value of contributions from outside the university research community. Its synthesis of diverse topics illuminates an anthropology that enriches the popular cultural discourse and serves as a versatile tool for exploring pressing issues of social organization and development. The reframed narrative of British anthropological history that emerges is as integral to the future of the subject as it is informative about its past.

Table of Content

Acknowledgments x

1 Beating the Bounds of Discipline? Innovation at the Margins and Beyond 1

2 John Layard, ‘Study of a Failure’: An Innovative Integrated Approach from the Psychoanalyst 58

3 Geoffrey Gorer, ‘Britain’s Margaret Mead’: Blending Anthropology and Travelogue 81

4 Robert Graves: Empowering Anthropological Modes of Explanation in Myth and Ritual 110

5 Mass Observation: A Radical, Popular Ethnography of the People, by the People, and for the People 135

6 The Literary Image of the Anthropologist 158

7 Parting Comments: Public Interest, Multiple Anthropologies 184

Bibliography 193

Index 228

About the author

Jeremy Mac Clancy is Professor in Social Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University, UK, and Director of the University’s Anthropology Centre for Conservation, Environment and Development (ACCEn D). His research has included major studies of the cultural dimensions of nationalism in the Pacific islands of Vanuatu, and a prize-winning analysis of the politicized development of a Basque ‘cuisine’ in northern Spain. Mac Clancy is author and editor of books including Consuming Culture (1992), Popularizing Anthropology (1996), Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines (2002), and Expressing Identities in the Basque Arena (2007).