Difficult Folk?: A Political History of Social Anthropology (Methodology & History in Anthropology Book 19)

Difficult Folk?: A Political History of Social Anthropology (Methodology & History in Anthropology Book 19)

by Mills, David

4.0 (5)
221 pages~3.7 hr readPublished by Berghahn Books

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Perfect for you if...

  • You're curious about how academic disciplines actually develop beyond the textbook version of great thinkers and their ideas.
  • You want to understand the institutional politics and personal rivalries that shaped twentieth-century scholarship.
  • You're interested in how the end of Empire forced British universities and their scholars to reinvent themselves.

Maybe not for you if...

  • You're looking for a straightforward intellectual biography of famous anthropologists without the administrative messiness.
  • You prefer sweeping grand narratives over the granular details of departmental funding battles and institutional power plays.
  • You want an introduction to anthropology itself rather than its internal history and disciplinary disputes.

About this book

This book examines how to write histories of academic disciplines by restoring attention to the political and institutional factors that shape knowledge production, often overlooked in accounts focused solely on intellectual debates. Using archival sources and oral histories, it presents a narrative account of the personal and administrative relationships that structure scholarly communities. The study focuses on social anthropology in twentieth-century Britain, documenting individual, departmental, and institutional rivalries over funding and influence. It traces the efforts of scholars including Bronislaw Malinowski, Edward Evans-Pritchard, and Max Gluckman to advance their competing visions for the discipline. Key questions addressed include whether social anthropology should align with the humanities or social sciences, and whether it should prioritize addressing social problems or developing scholarly independence. The book situates the discipline's development within the post-war expansion of British universities and the institutional changes following the end of Empire.

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Currently around #33K in the Kindle store — a steady mid-list seller.

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Mills, David

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