After Society: Anthropological Trajectories out of Oxford

233 Pages·2020·1.43 MB·English

by  João Pina-Cabral and Glenn Bowman

AFTER SOCIETY
Methodology and History in Anthropology
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David Gellner, Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford
Nayanika Mathur, Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Oxford
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Volume 39 Volume 34
After Society: Anthropological Who Are ‘We’? Reimagining Alterity
Trajectories out of Oxford and Affinity in Anthropology
Edited by João Pina-Cabral and Edited by Liana Chua and Nayanika
Glenn Bowman Mathur
Volume 38 Volume 33
Total Atheism: Secular Activism and Expeditionary Anthropology:
Politics of Difference in South India Teamwork, Travel and the ‘Science of
Stefan Binder Man’
Edited by Martin Thomas and
Volume 37 Amanda Harris
Crossing Histories and Ethnographies:
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Timor-Leste Returning Life: Language, Life Force
Edited by Ricardo Roque and and History in Kilimanjaro
Elizabeth G. Traube Knut Christian Myhre
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Engaging Evil: A Moral Anthropology The Ethics of Knowledge Creation:
Edited by William C. Olsen and Transactions, Relations, and Persons
Thomas J. Csordas Edited by Lisette Josephides and
Anne Sigfrid Grønseth
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Medicinal Rule: A Historical Volume 30
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Finnegan and Hilary Callan
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AFTER SOCIETY
Anthropological Trajectories out of Oxford
Edited by
João Pina-Cabral and Glenn Bowman
berghahn
N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
First published in 2020 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2020 João Pina-Cabral and Glenn Bowman
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pina-Cabral, João, editor. | Bowman, Glenn, editor.
Title: After Society : Anthropological Trajectories out of Oxford / Edited
by João Pina-Cabral and Glenn Bowman.
Other titles: Anthropological Trajectories out of Oxford
Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2020. | Series: Methodology
and history in anthropology ; Volume 39 | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020015864 (print) | LCCN 2020015865 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781789207682 (hardback) | ISBN 9781789207699 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Anthropology. | Anthropology--Study and teaching
(Graduate)--England--Oxford. | University of Oxford.
Classification: LCC GN25 .A32 2020 (print) | LCC GN25 (ebook) | DDC
301--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015864
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015865
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78920-768-2 hardback
ISBN 978-1-78920-769-9 ebook
The contributors to this book wish to dedicate it to Marion Berghahn
as a small gesture in recognition of her tireless efforts to foster
anthropology globally.

CONTENTS
Introduction. After Society 1
João Pina-Cabral and Glenn Bowman
Part I. The Oxford Experience and Beyond
Chapter 1. Plodding towards Prosopography: Oxford
Anthropology from 1976 on 21
Jeremy MacClancy
Chapter 2. Amor Fati and the Institute of Social Anthropology 49
Glenn Bowman
Chapter 3. The Lucky Anthropologist? Becoming an
Anthropologist of Japan at Oxford 65
Dolores P. Martinez
Chapter 4. Lost and Found at Oxford 80
Roger Just
Chapter 5. Is Necessity the Mother of Invention? 88
A. David Napier
Part II. Ethnography as a Vocation
Chapter 6. Changing Questions? Reflections on Social
Anthropology in and out of Oxford since the 1980s 105
David N. Gellner
Chapter 7. The Fieldwork Tradition and the Quest for
Essential Perplexities 127
Signe Howell
Chapter 8. Journeys of an Ethnographer: From Oxford to the
Field and on to the Archives 142
Sandra Ott
viii Contents
Part III. Why Anthropology? Concluding Remarks
Chapter 9. Why Anthropology? Structuralism and Since 161
Timothy Jenkins
Chapter 10. From Oxford to Cambridge: Chasing the ‘Aka’ 177
Maryon McDonald
Chapter 11. Mediterranean Equivoques at Oxford 196
João Pina-Cabral
Index 219
INTRODUCTION
AFTER SOCIETY
João Pina-Cabral and Glenn Bowman
Introductory Remarks
This book brings together a group of scholars who were shaped by
Oxford anthropology in the late 1970s and early 1980s, each reflect-
ing on their academic trajectories. This was a period of major political
and academic change in Great Britain and, more generally, around
the globe. A decade earlier, the student revolts had had a profound
effect on the way the social sciences saw their role in society. Yet, it
is only with the impact of the neoliberal reaction, at the time of Mrs
Thatcher’s first government, that the full implications of the earlier
crisis made themselves felt in anthropology. These implications were
both internal, in theoretical terms, leading to a deep questioning of
the central tenets that had shaped the social sciences throughout the
twentieth century; and external, in academic terms, when scholarly
discourse was suddenly treated by those in power as being largely
irrelevant to the economy and to society – a kind of perverse luxury.
Those of us who started our anthropological careers at the time
faced the need to respond to a further set of aspects of intellectual
decentring: (a) a second wave of psychoanalytic feminism was mak-
ing important theoretical inroads; (b) poststructuralist critique was
upturning the dominant individualist consensus that had dominated
since the Second World War; (c) postmodernist dispositions were
challenging traditional modes of ethnographic writing; and (d) a
new Marxist-inspired postcolonial historiography was affecting the
assumed perspectival roles of anthropological research, proposing
radically new approaches to the very meaning of power. Our period
as postgraduate students, then, was a moment when something new
was about to emerge but had not quite yet arisen.