“[The book] tell us a lot about the development of anthropology and of a difficult period faced by universities in UK at the time resulting mainly from government policy.” • David Parkin, University of Oxford

“This volume provides a valuable mix of autobiographical reflections on what it was to be a student of anthropology at Oxford at a particular time in the Institute’s history. Such reflections are all the more insightful, written as they are, by former students who by now have had largely successful (indeed very successful) careers in the discipline.” • Elizabeth Ewart, University of Oxford

In the early 1980s, when the contributors to this volume completed their graduate training at Oxford, the conditions of practice in anthropology were undergoing profound change. Professionally, the immediate postcolonial period was over and neoliberal reforms were marginalizing the social sciences. Analytically, the poststructuralist critique of the notion of ‘society’ challenged a discipline that dubbed itself as ‘social’. Here self-ethnography is used to portray the contributors’ anthropological trajectories, showing how analytical and academic engagements interacted creatively over time.

Series: Volume 39, Methodology & History in Anthropology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Area: Europe

LC: GN25 .A32 2020

BISAC: SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social