Description
Book Synopsis Informative as well as entertaining, this volume offers many interesting facets of the first hundred years of anthropology at Oxford University.
Trade Review “Oxford has arguably contributed more to our understanding of tribal societies than any other department of anthropology in the world… Through creating a virtual community, by uniting their work and their lives, by their assurance, generations of Oxford scholars have been able to make the leaps which take us into new and previously unsuspected worlds. They had the privileges, the shared zeal and the shock of similarity-with-difference which engenders true creativity and they made good use of it.” • [from the Preface]
“[The volume’s] virtues include giving outsiders a sense of Oxford anthropology’s oral tradition.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
“ There is no doubt that Oxford has been a leading player in the discipline of anthropology. It is precisely the fact that this resounding success can be taken for granted that makes possible this deliciously indiscreet retrospective.” • Books & Culture
Table of Contents List of Figures
List of Contributors
Preface
Introduction
Peter Rivière
Chapter 1. Origins and Survivals: Tylor, Balfour and the Pitt Rivers Museum and their Role within Anthropology in Oxford 1883–1905
Christopher Gosden, Frances Larson and Alison Petch
Chapter 2. The Formative Years: the Committee for Anthropology 1905–38
Peter Rivière
Chapter 3. How All Souls got its Anthropologist
John Davis
Chapter 4. A Major Disaster to Anthropology? Oxford and Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown
David Mills
Chapter 5. ‘A feeling for form and pattern, and a touch of genius’: E–P’s Vision and the Institute, 1946–70
Wendy James
Chapter 6. Oxford and Biological Anthropology
Geoffrey Harrison
Chapter 7. Oxford Anthropology as an Extra-curricular Activity: OUAS and JASO
Robert Parkin
Chapter 8. Oxford Anthropology since 1970: through Schismogenesis to a new Testament
Jonathan Benthall
Appendix: Reflections on Oxford’s Global Links
Compiled by Wendy James
Bibliography
Index
