British Social Anthropology: A Retrospective

Author(s): Jonathan Spencer

Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 29 (2000), pp. 1-24
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Annu. Rev. Anthropol.2000. 29:1-24

Copyright( 2000 by Annual Reviews. All rightsreserved

BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY:

A Retrospective
Jonathan Spencer

Departmentof Social Anthropology,Universityof Edinburgh,EdinburghEH8 9LL,

Scotland; e-mail: jonathan.spencer@ed.ac.uk

Key Words sociocultural anthropology, history, British social science, seminars,

British universities
This article reviews the history of British social anthropology, con* Abstract
centrating on the expansion of the discipline in the British university sector since the
1960s. Particularemphasis is placed on the relationship between social anthropology
and the main source of its funding, the British government, in particularthe Economic
and Social Research Council. After a particularlydifficult time in the 1980s, social anthropology in the 1990s has grown swiftly. In this period of growth, formerly crucial
boundaries-between academic anthropology and practical policy-related research,
between "social" and "cultural" anthropology-appear to have withered away. Yet
British social anthropology retains much of its distinctive identity, not least because of
the peculiar institutional structures, such as the research seminar, in which the social
anthropological habitus is reproduced in new generations of researchers.

DECLINE AND FALL?

Is British social anthropologystill distinctively "British"? Or to rephrasethe
question, is it still distinctively"social"?This is a questionaboutdisciplines and
theirboundaries,andthe answerI offerconcentratesless on the substanceof whatis
currentlybeing written,taught,anddebatedin Britainandmore on the institutions
and practicesthroughwhich a strongsense of discipline and boundednessis still,
I believe, reproduced.
When he publishedthe firstedition of his history of moder British social anthropology,the young Adam Kuper(1973) had no doubt about the coherence of
his subject matter: "'British social anthropology'is not merely a term for the
work done by British or even British-trainedsocial anthropologists. The phrase
connotes a set of names, a limitedrangeof ethnographicregionalspecialities,a list
of centralmonographs,a characteristicmode of procedure,and a particularseries
of intellectual problems. In short, it connotes an intellectual tradition"(Kuper
1973:227). By the second edition in 1983, Kuper'sconfidencehad begunto wane.
0084-6570/00/1015-0001$14.00

SPENCER
Reviewing British social anthropologyin the decade since the book's firstpublication he spoke of "institutionalstagnation,intellectualtorpor,andparochialism"
while seeking solace in the continuingvitality of "its greateststrength,which is
its fine ethnographictradition"(Kuper1983:192). By the early 1990s, in a French
referencework,he lamentedthatit was now difficultto see whatwas "specifically
British" about social anthropologyin Britain (Kuper 1991:307), and in a later
edition of his book (Kuper 1996:176), he declaredthat "as a distinctiveintellectual movement,"British social anthropologylasted only for the half-centuryfrom
the publicationof Malinowski'sArgonauts(1922) in the early 1920s to-oddly
enough-the momentin the early 1970s when he publishedhis own book (Kuper
1973). The futureof social anthropology,for Kuper,lies not in nationaltraditions,
but in an increasinglycosmopolitanEuropeanexchange (Kuper1996:193).
Any writeron moder British anthropologyworks in the long shadowcast by
previoushistorians. Apartfrom Kuper,though, most historicalwork has concentratedon the period between the turn of the century and the late 1940s or early
1950s, the periodwhen social anthropologyconsolidatedits positionwithinBritish
academiclife (Goody 1995; Kuklick 1991; Langham1981; Stocking 1984, 1992,
1995; Urry 1993). AlthoughKupertook the storyforwardto the late 1960s andhas
extendedit to the 1990s in a series of epilogues to his originalwork, his emphasis
is overwhelminglyon the intellectualhistoryof the discipline,with relativelylittle
attentionto the changing political, social, and institutionalcontext within which
that history was worked out (cf Leach 1984:2-3). In what follows then, I want
as far as possible to discuss themes and issues thathave been left relativelyunexplored in recent historiography;to work, as it were, "afterStocking"-starting at
that point in the early 1950s when Stocking's magisterialwork (Stocking 1995)
leaves off-and following a significantlydifferentline of enquiryfrom Kuper's
(1983). Since the publicationof the first edition of Kuper's(1973) book, British
social anthropologyhas been heavily dependent on the material supportof the
British state and has been forced, like all other academic disciplines in British
universities,to adaptits practicesof teachingandresearchto an ever more activist
educationalbureaucracy.So the questionthatdominatesan institutionalhistoryof
recentBritishsocial anthropologyis this: Has anthropologytriumphantlysurvived
the increasinglydirectiveattentionsof its main source of materialsupport,or has
it been irretrievablycompromisedand corruptedby this relationship?
The central section of this chapteraddresses that question througha review
of the demographyof the discipline, seen throughthe lens of changing funding
regimes. The closing section attemptsto assess the intellectualconsequences of
institutionalchange andreturnsto the sense of decline so forcefully articulatedby
Kuperin his recent versions of disciplinaryhistory. But in partialdisagreement
with Kuper,I suggest that "Britishsocial anthropology"retainsits distinctiveness
as a relatively small and coherentgroupof intellectualpractitioners,even though
the particularmarkersof distinction-the thingsthatmakeit "British,"or "social,"
or "anthropological"-have changed, and continue to change. This means that
we have-in trueBritishspirit-to replacethe culturalquestionof whatparticular

BRITISHSOCIALANTHROPOLOGY

intellectual(or "cultural")contentmakesBritishsocial anthropology"British"for

the more sociological questionof whatparticularinstitutions,practices,andrituals
continueto ensureits distinctionfrom its neighborswhile allowing it to change its
empiricalfocus and its theoreticalemphases.

STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION

In the closing chapterof his book, Stocking (1995) gives a gripping account of
Meyer Fortes' appointmentto the William Wyse Chairin Cambridgein 1949. In
so doing, he reminds us of two things: how small the discipline was in Britain
in the late 1940s, and how tenuously placed social anthropology was within
British anthropologyof the time. Fortes' main rival for the Cambridgechair was
a German-trainedethnographerof limited theChristophevon Ftirer-Haimendorf,
oreticalambitionbut with distinct"culturalist"inclinations. If Fiirer-Haimendorf,
then at the School of Orientaland African Studies (SOAS) in the University of
London, had been appointedto the Cambridgechair, social anthropologywould
havebeen reducedto two universitydepartments,at Oxfordandthe LondonSchool
of Economics (LSE), with fragments in Manchester and Edinburgh.Instead,
Fortes' appointmentsealed a period of postwarconsolidationin which the social
anthropologyof Malinowskiand Radcliffe-Brownbecame the dominantstrandof
British anthropology(Stocking 1995:427-32). Yet in all that follows, it must be
recognized that we are dealing with a remarkablysmall groupof people.
A good sense of the demographicsof the discipline at this moment can be
gleanedfrom Forde'scontributionto a compendiumof worldanthropology(Forde
1953). Altogether there were just over 30 social anthropologists in British
universities. At Oxford, Evans-Pritchardheld the chair, with an extraordinary
teamof lecturingstaff,includingJGPeristiany,PaulBohannon,GodfreyLienhardt,
Louis Dumont, and Fritz Steiner. At the LSE, RaymondFirthheld the chair,with
Isaac Schapera,EdmundLeach, MauriceFreedman,and Paul Stirlingin support,
whereasLucy Mairheld a separateposition as Readerin ColonialAdministration.
In Manchester,Max Gluckmanwas supportedby ElizabethColson, JohnBarnes,
Ian Cunnison,and AL Epstein. At Cambridge,Meyer Fortespresidedover a relatively small department;Daryll Forde,MaryDouglas, and Phyllis Kaberrywere
at UniversityCollege London (UCL); and von Furer-Haimendorfwas at SOAS.
1All the populationfiguresthatfollow requiremild qualification,as they are gleaned from
published lists of the names of people employed in universitydepartments,with a certain
amount of informed guesswork necessary to separate social from physical anthropologists, or in later lists, social anthropologistsfrom sociologists in joint departments. The
main sources are Forde (1953), the CommonwealthUniversities Yearbook(1963, 1973,
1983, 1993), and the Annals of the Association of Social Anthropologists(ASA 1999). For
useful demographicaccounts of the discipline at crucial moments in its recent history,see
Ardener& Ardener(1965) and Riviere (1985).

SPENCER
The story of British social anthropologyin the years that followed is heavily
shapedby the story of British universitiesand their relationshipwith the British
state. Although the number of anthropologistsworking in universities had increased to more than 50 by 1963, these were all to be found in the same few
departmentsas in the early 1950s (with the exception of a few odd figuresworking on theirown in large institutionswithoutdepartmentsof anthropologyaround
them). In the early 1960s, the British governmentlauncheda majorexpansionof
whatuntilthenhadbeen a smallandelitist universitysector:New universitieswere
opened, and a whole additionalclass of institutions-polytechnics-was created
to supplementthe more conventionaluniversities. In the next decade, anthropology was established, sometimes in joint departmentswith sociology, at the new
Universities of Sussex, Kent, and East Anglia, while new departmentsstruggled
into life at older universitieslike Belfast, Hull, and Swansea. By 1973 therewere
about 90 anthropologistsin post, and by 1983 the figure had risen to 120, with
two more new departments,at Goldsmithsand St Andrews. By 1993 there were
morethan 160 anthropologistsworkingin Britishuniversities.A check of the ASA
Annals (1999) suggests that the latest figure is around220 (this figure includes
anthropologistsworkingon short-termcontracts,for exampleas replacementsfor
staff on leave).
This is not, however,the straightforwardtale of growthand expansionit might
seem to be. After the rapidexpansionof the mid-1960s to mid-1970s, universities
werebadlyhit by governmentausteritymeasures,andwith the election of Margaret
Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1979, the social sciences were singled out for
especially harsh treatment.With cutbacks in state supportfor universities, by
the early 1980s the discipline was felt to be in real crisis as the supplyof academic
jobs almost completely dried up. The situationonly startedto change at the end
of that decade, when the governmentchanged tack and launched a furtherhuge
expansion of universityteaching. This time, however, most of the increase was
accounted for by much larger studentnumberswithin existing departmentsand
degree courses, ratherthan by creatingnew institutions,as had happenedin the
1960s. The new boom in studentrecruitmentcoincided with a momentof higher
public visibility for social anthropology,and demandfor places on anthropology
courses has soaredsince the late 1980s.
Is this, then, a straightforwardtale of expansion (apartfrom the Thatcherite
hiccup in the 1980s), as it appearsfrom the figures? Or is it a case of tightly
limited expansion (in the context of the growth of universities in general, and
social sciences in particular)since the early 1950s? A comparisonwith sociology
is instructivehere, not least because the two disciplines have been closely linked
throughoutthis period. Before the 1960s boom in universities, sociology as an
academicpresencein Britainwas arguablysmallerand moredispersedthansocial
anthropology. But by 1981 (the gloomiest year of Thatcher'srule for the social
sciences), the discipline had expanded to more than 1000 government-funded
universitypositions, growing at almost 10 times the rate of social anthropology.
Whatis most significantin the comparisonwith sociology's expansionis the places
whereanthropologywas not found. Witha handfulof exceptions,it was not taught

BRITISHSOCIALANTHROPOLOGY

in the polytechnics, or in the innovative Open University set up by the Labour

Governmentof the 1960s.2 Nor was it establishedas partof the school curriculum.
By the mid-1970s, more than 100,000 18-year-oldshad studied sociology as an
A-level examinationsubject;in 1999, the figurefor anthropologyremainedstuck
on zero (Abrams 1981).
There are three possible explanationsfor the limits to anthropologicalexpansion. One is a simple problem of demand: The new welfare bureaucraciesof
postwar Britain requiredsociologists (or thought they did) and not anthropologists, and the universitiesand the governmentaccommodatedthemselves to this
brutefact.
The second is demographic: There were only just enough anthropologiststo
build the departmentsthat were built in the 1960s, and not enough to sustain a
huge expansion. Yet a numberof leading anthropologists-Peter Worsley,Max
Marwick,and Ronald Frankenberg,among others-took up positions in the new
sociology departmentsin the 1960s, while others,most notablyVictorTurner,and
laterFG Bailey andStanleyTambiah,left Britainforthe UnitedStates. Thisreveals
an importantdifferencein the mode of expansionof the two disciplinesat the time:
Social anthropologydepartmentswere concerned with staffing themselves only
with social anthropologists;sociology departmentswere staffed with whomever
was available,and the issue of professionalor disciplinarycoherence was raised
after-rather than during-the period of expansion. This difference was explicit
in the developmentof the relevantprofessional organizationsfor the two disciplines. The Association of Social Anthropologists(ASA) was founded in 1946
with a strongmodel of professionalizationin mind: Membershiprequireda higher
degree in social anthropologyand/orevidence of publicationsand a teachingposition in anthropology.Up until the 1990s, the annualmeetings of the Association
were markedby careful (and for some distasteful)scrutinyand discussion of the
qualificationsof would-be members (cf Tapper1980). The British Sociological
Association, in contrast,remaineda far more open organization-a broadchurch
much more like the AAA in the United States-despite occasional attemptsto
create a more elite professionalstandingfor sociologists (Barnes 1981).
The third, and perhapsmost compelling, explanationfor the limits to anthropological expansion is internal to the discipline. Anthropology did not expand
into other educationalsettings because anthropologiststhemselves did not want
to expand. It was seen as, above all, a subject for graduateresearchers,not for
2RuthFinnegan
hasbeenalmosttheonlyanthropologist
employedbytheOpenUniversityapioneering
initiativesetupbytheLabourgovernment
of thelate1960sdistance-learning
whereasOxfordBrookes (formerlyOxfordPolytechnic)was, for a long time, the only one

of theformerpolytechnicsto teachanthropology
as a degreesubject.
3Britishanthropologists
wereheavilyinvolvedin establishing
a socialanthropology
comBaccalaureate
examination
forhigh-schoolstudents,butforall
ponentin theInternational
its merits, this programreaches a tiny proportionof students in the relevant age group,
comparedwith the A-level examinations,which are taken by virtually all 18-year-oldsin

the schoolsystemin EnglandandWales.

SPENCER
undergraduates,let alone school students. In 1973, for example, Leach argued
forcefully against any attemptto introduceanthropologyto school-age students:
"Itcould be very confusing to learnaboutotherpeople's moralvalues before you
have confident understandingof your own" (Leach 1973:4). In Oxford in the
1970s, social anthropologywas not taught-and not thoughtto be teachable-to
as a degreesubject. Twentyyearslater,in the conclusionto his brief
undergraduates
memoir of British social anthropology,Jack Goody reiteratedthe point that the
lack of attentionto undergraduate
teachingwas one of the greatstrengthsof British
social anthropologyin what was, for him, its golden age (Goody 1995:157-58).
Whateverthereason,the limitsto expansionhadsome obviousconsequencesfor
the discipline. The places not visited by the insights of anthropologicalsciencethe polytechnics and the Open University in particular-became the academic
home of a great deal of interdisciplinaryand pedagogic innovation,as well as a
refugeforthepost-1968intellectualLeft. Theseweretheingredientsthatcoalesced
into the heady brew now known as "BritishCulturalStudies,"but the work of
leading figures in this area (from EP Thompsonand RaymondWilliams to Paul
Gilroy, StuartHall, and Paul Willis) barely touched British social anthropology
until it was reimportedin the 1980s via the work of American anthropologists
(cfNugent & Shore 1997). Anthropology,unlikeculturalstudiesoreven sociology,
was almostentirelyconfinedto the older,research-based,elite universities,such as
OxfordandCambridge,andthe moreprestigiousLondoncolleges, suchas the LSE
andUCL. On the otherhand,andin contrastto the United Statesin the early 1990s
(cf Turner1993), in Britainculturalstudies neverlooked a threatto anthropology
because it rarelyoccupied the same niche in the academicecosystem.
In the 1950s and 1960s, anthropology'splace at the heartof the academic establishmentdid not go entirely unremarkedon. The young Perry Anderson, in
his sweeping polemic against the pervasiveempiricism and liberalism of 1960s
British academia,specifically excepted anthropologyfrom his strictures.Anthropology, however,was allowed to be theoreticaland totalizing (a "good thing"for
the 1960s Left) because it displaced its attentionsto the colonies, and he quoted
a prominentsociologist of the time on the social correlatesof British anthropology: "Britishsocial anthropologyhas drawnon the same intellectualcapital as
sociology proper,andits success, useful to colonial administrationand dangerous
to no domesticprejudice, shows at what a high rate of interestthat capitalcan be
made to pay.... The subject... unlike sociology, has prestige. It is associatedwith
colonial administration-traditionallya careerfor a gentleman,and entranceinto
the profession and acceptanceby it confers high statusin Britain"(see Anderson
1969:265, originalemphasis).
This view of the social centralityof British social anthropologyis partlycorroboratedby Leach, himself a formidableacademic politician, in the context of
a panegyric to the diplomatic skills of his mentor, Raymond Firth: "Fromthe
1940s to the 1960s he had a wide variety of personal, but quite informal, ties
with senior civil servantsin key positions. He used these contactswith outstanding skill.... Firth went behind the scenes and talked with the people who really
mattered. Consideringthe tiny scale of the whole enterprisein Britain of the

BRITISHSOCIALANTHROPOLOGY

1950s, the centralfundingof social anthropologicalresearchwas quite disproportionatelygenerous. It was a phase which only enduredwhile Firthwas at the helm
at the LSE" (Leach 1984:13-14).
All this, it could be argued,changed when a new breed of professional academic-survivors from the 1960s expansionof the universitiesand, with theirallusions to "wealthcreation"and "marketforces,"fluentin the new lingua francaof
the times-took control of the centralinstitutionsof British social science in the
1980s. Nevertheless,in the 1990s (the decade of the performanceindicator),the
institutionaldistributionof academic anthropologistshad its advantages. In official assessments and peer-basedquantificationsof teaching quality and research
performance-which now dominateBritish academiclife-anthropology departments have consistently performedbetter than other social science disciplines.
Although outsidersmight grumbleabout the clannishnessof a discipline that so
overtly protectsits own, anthropologistsmerely point to the kinds of institutions
they are found in and suggest that their high ratings are no more nor less than
would be found elsewhere in those institutions.4

PRODUCTION AND REPRODUCTION

The impressionof a tightlyboundeddisciplineconfinedto a small numberof highstatusinstitutionsis heightenedif we shift our attentionto the social productionof
social anthropologists.There are two ways to assess this: Eitherexamine where
the PhDs in social anthropologyarebeing awarded,or look to see wheresuccessive
cohorts of universityteacherswere trained. Whicheverway we look, the picture
is the same, but a new element is also introduced:the increasedvulnerabilityof
the discipline (like its sistersin the social sciences) to governmentinterventionvia
state funding organizations.
Let's startwith the firstquestion: Wheredo the successful PhDs come from?5
In the quartercentury from 1970 to 1994, just under 1000 PhDs were awarded
in social anthropologyin Britain, of which just under half came from just three
departments: Oxford, Cambridge,and the LSE (Table 1). Between them they
accountedfor 460 of 964 PhDs grantedin thatperiod.
If we break these figures down into 5-year periods (Table 2), a slightly more
nuancedaccount of the distributionemerges. In particular,we get a better sense
4Again, a comparison with sociology is instructive.Even now, sociology is a marginal
discipline in Oxfordand Cambridgewhereas some of the strongestdepartmentsare found
in relativelyunfashionableuniversitiessuch as Lancasterand Essex (Heath& Edmondson
1981). For a valuable guide to anthropology'spassage throughthe stormy bureaucratic
waters of the 1990s, see Gledhill (in press).
5Data on anthropologyPhDs in Britain since the early 1970s are available through the
Indexto Theses acceptedfor higherdegreesby the Universitiesof GreatBritainandIreland
(searchableonline at www.theses.com);some of this materialis also summarizedin Webber
(1983), which contains a thoroughdiscussion of the limitationsof the classificationsused
in organizingthe information.

SPENCER
TABLE 1 PhDs in social anthropologyby
department,1970-1994
No. PhDs

Department
Oxford

187

Cambridge
London School of Economics

137
136

School of Orientaland African Studies

82

Manchester

59

Sussex

51

UniversityCollege London

46

Edinburgh
Belfast

37
31

All otherdepartments

198

Total

964

of the lag between changes in funding and the completion, years later, of PhDs
affected by those changes. So in the early 1970s, although the new departments
from the 1960s were beginning to build up their own pools of researchers, few
of these had yet completed degrees: Much as might be expected, the three key
departments-Oxford, Cambridge and the LSE-provided 60% of the PhDs. By
the second half of the decade, however, although the total number rose from 132
(about 26 a year) to 214 (45 a year), the Oxford-Cambridge-LSE share dropped
to less than 40%, as students in newer departments-notably Sussex-started to
complete their doctoral studies. The total numbers for all departments briefly rose
in the first half of the 1980s, before settling at, or just below, 40 a year. And as the
TABLE 2 PhDs in social anthropologyby department,1970-1994 (5-year
intervals)
Oxford

Cambridge

LSEa

Total
(all UK)

Oxford, Cambridge,
LSE (%of all PhDs)

1970-1974

33

20

40

27

26
17

132
214

60

1975-1979
1980-1984
1985-1989

42

40

232

41

23

19
41

39
44

204

51

1990-1994

31

27

33

182

50

187

137

136

964

48

Years

Total

aLSE,London School of Economics.

BRITISHSOCIALANTHROPOLOGY

TABLE 3 Postgraduatetrainingof academicanthropologistsemployed in

British departments,1999a
Department

Pre-1989 staff

Post-1989 staff

Total

%age of total

Cambridge
LSE

23

24

47

24

16

23

39

17

Oxford

16

22

38

16

SOAS

11

19

UCL

10

16

Manchester

11

Sussex

Edinburgh
Durham

Kent

Belfast

Hull

<1

Other(UK)
Other(non-UK)

10

12

19

27

12

105

129

234

100

Total

aLSE,London School of Economics; SOAS, School of Orientaland African Studies; UCL, University
College London.

figures settled, so the share held by the "big three"departmentsstabilized at about 50%.
These figures tell another story, of the rise and decline of state supportfor
graduateresearchin social anthropology,which I returnto shortly. What,though,
of academicjobs? Table 3 shows collated informationon the graduatetraining
of anthropologistscurrentlyworking in British departments. They are divided
into two cohorts: those first employed before the crisis years of the 1980s, and
those who took up theirfirstpermanentappointmentafterward.Forlocal historical
reasons, 1989 is taken as the watershedyear.6
The division by cohorts is instructive. Over half the staff (55%) working in
British departmentsin 1999 had been first appointedin the preceding 10 years
whereas just under half (45%) were survivorsfrom the pre-Thatcherexpansion
of the discipline. But the dominance of the big three departmentsis remarkably stable across the generations: 55 of the pre-1989 generationwere trainedat
6In some years in the 1980s, there were virtuallyno permanentacademicjobs offered in
Britishanthropologydepartments.In 1989, an unprecedentednumberof new posts became
availableat LSE, UCL, Brunel, SOAS, and Manchester.

10

SPENCER
Oxford, Cambridge,or the LSE, as were 68 of the post-1989 generation(52%
and 53% of their respective cohorts). Within the three departments,Cambridge
is disproportionatelyimportant:Although it awardedonly 14%of the doctorates
in social anthropologybetween 1970 and 1994, in 1999 its graduatesheld 24%
of the jobs in British universities(Oxfordhad 19%of the doctoratesand 16%of
the jobs, and the LSE had 14% of the doctoratesand 17%of the jobs). In other
words, althoughthreedepartmentscontinueto dominatethe discipline, the department at Cambridgehas been especially successful in providingnew generations
of academicanthropologists.
There are other patternsthat are not clear from the aggregatedfigures alone.
Some departmentsdisplay high levels of endogeny,recruitingheavily from their
own graduates.This has been especially true of Oxford and Cambridgeover the
years, but also of SOAS and UCL until recently.Oxford studentshave been underrepresentedin recruitmentat the LSE and vice versa. And there are signs of
more diverse recruitmentin recent years, especially from North America: only
five of the pre-1989 generationhold North American PhDs compared with 15
of the post-1989 cohort (including four from Chicago and two from Princeton).
Unfortunately,data are not easily available on other aspects of anthropologists'
educationalbackground,such as their class or ethnic origins. We can, however,
see significantshifts in the gender balance. In the mid-1980s, Riviere (1985) reportedto the ASA on the demographicshape of the discipline, using a sample of
nine departments.His analysis showed thatthe ratio of men to women had barely
changedsince the early 1970s: In 1973 therewere 12 women to 67 men; in 1983,
there were 15 to 69, a tiny rise from 15% to 18% (Riviere 1985:11). In 1999,
in the discipline as a whole, there were 97 women in teaching positions, or 41%
of the total, and a breakdownby cohort shows how much has changed: In the
pre-1989 generationthere are 23 women (22%) to 82 men (78%), a figurein line
with Riviere's reportfrom the 1980s; in the post-1989 cohort, the figures are 55
men (43%) and 74 women (57%).
If we step back from the details and try to look at the largerpicture, a number of patternsare clear. Although British social anthropologyhas remained a
relatively small and tightly knit community, taught in a few universities only,
graduateresearch-and the productionof new generationsof anthropologistshas been extraordinarilyconcentratedin the same three departments: Oxford,
Cambridge,and the LSE. Viewed in the long run, diversityhas tended to be peripheraland short-lived. The distinctive strandof work pioneeredby Gluckman
and his followers in Manchesterdid not long surviveGluckman'sown retirement
in the early 1970s: The rebirthof that departmentin the 1980s owed everything
to the imaginative appointmentof Marilyn Strather to the chair in 1984 and
signaled the beginning of the second wave of diversificationin British anthropology. In the 1970s, Sussex emerged as the main producerof new graduate
researchers(otherthanthe big three)-often workingin new fields such as Europe
and Latin America-but with the cutbacks of the 1980s, it, like the other new

BRITISHSOCIALANTHROPOLOGY

11

departmentsof the 1960s, lost access to the funds that would keep its graduate
programalive.
As this might suggest, a great deal of what happened can be explained by
the distributionof supportfrom one centralagency. Until the mid-1960s, British
social anthropologyhadreliedon a combinationof sourcesfor its relativelymodest
researchneeds: the Colonial Social Science ResearchCouncil and other British
governmentsources, certainAmericanfoundations(such as the FordFoundation
and the National Science Foundation), and a few British foundations [a more
detailedaccountof pre-1968fundingcan be foundin a reportto the Social Science
ResearchCouncil (1968:92-99)]. In 1965, the British governmentestablishedits
own Social Science Research Council (SSRC), which provided grants for new
researchprojectsand supportedgraduatestudentsat mastersand doctorallevels.
In its first decade, the new SSRC presided over a boom in graduateresearch
in the social sciences. Such was its impact that by 1971, the chair of its social
anthropologycommittee, EdmundLeach, could reportthat it provided"virtually
the only source of financial supportfor field research in social anthropology"
(Leach 1971:11). At the peak of its munificence, in 1973, the SSRC was able
to offer 84 new awards to graduateresearchersin social anthropology,spread
around11 departments,but with just over half directedto the triangleof Oxford,
Cambridge,and the LSE.7
The SSRC was a 1960s initiative, initially ill-suited to the straitenedcircumstances of the 1980s. When MargaretThatcherwas elected Prime Minister in
1979, one of her government'sfirst actions was to slash its budget. An enquiry
into the activitiesof the SSRC failed to producethe recommendationfor abolition
favored by some Conservativepoliticians, but it was the catalyst for a number
of changes. The organizationwas renamedthe Economic and Social Research
Council (ESRC)-the Minister responsible apparentlyhad a deep suspicion of
any claim to social science-and its internalstructurewas changed so that social
anthropology(along with other disciplines) lost its own cozy subjectcommittee.
Fromthe peak supportof the mid-1970s, studentshipsfell to between 20 and 30 a
year,where they have remainedever since. Afterthese reforms,the ESRC aggressively reinventeditself as the vanguardorganizationfor the Tories' new cultural
commandeconomy.New ESRCprioritiesin researchfundingat firstexplicitlyemphasized "wealthcreation"and implicitly focused almost entirelyon UK-focused
work, apparentlydiscouragingthe kind of classic anthropologicalfield projects
that had been supportedin the past. Tough controls on PhD submission rates
meant that by the late 1980s, most British departments(including at one point
Cambridge,UCL, and SOAS) had been blacklistedfor ESRC students. They also
meant that theses had to be writtenmore quickly, fieldworkand writing-uptime
7Thefiguresfor graduatestudentsupportfromthe late 1960sto the early1980scanbe
trackedthroughthe issuesof the SSRCNewsletter,whichalso containsannualreportsof
the SocialAnthropology
Committee.

12

SPENCER
were squeezed, and compulsorygeneric social science researchtrainingate into
prefieldworkpreparation.8

REPRESENTATIONS,INITIATIVES, AND BOUNDARIES

In a broadoverview, the difficult trick is to move back from this kind of institutional history to see what intellectualresonance it has. One way to do this is to
look at the discipline's own self-representations.These might include everything
from the contentof undergraduatereadinglists, to textbooksand introductionsto
the subject,throughthe presence (and nonpresence)of anthropologistsas public
intellectuals in the mass media. In the interests of space, I concentrateon four
defining occasions, the Decennial conferences of the Association of Social Anthropologists,alternatingbetween Cambridgeand Oxford, in 1963, 1973, 1983,
and 1993, the occasions when British social anthropologyput on its best party
dress and displayeditself to the world.
The 1963 conference-coorganized by M Gluckmanand F Eggan-brought
togetherleadingBritishandAmerican"socialanthropologists"fromthe "younger
generation"(Gluckman& Eggan 1965:xii).9 The paperswere published in four
distinctivevolumes [on religion, political systems, complex societies, and the use
of models (Banton 1965a-d)], with a common introductionfrom the two coorganizers. This set out an explicit agenda for the meeting: not so much the celebrationof the distinctivenessof British social anthropologyas an explorationof a
set of sensitive boundaries. The most obvious of these was between British and
American anthropology,and the opening shot came with Gluckmanand Eggan
implicitly cooptingthe likes of Schneiderand Geertzas "social"(ratherthan"cultural")anthropologists.Equallyimportant,however,were the boundariesbetween
anthropologyand the other social sciences-economics, political science, sociology, psychology-each of which was weighed up as a potentialpartnerin the
introduction.In the differentvolumes, the British contributors-on the wholeconcentratedon typologies and formal model building. [Turner(1965), as ever,
provideda magnificentexception in his classic paperon Ndembu color symbolism.] This was anthropologyas generic social science, ready for the brave new
world of the 1960s expansion, and many of the British participantsmoved into
chairsandreaderships,oftenin newjoint anthropologyandsociology departments,
in the subsequentdecade.
to anthrowasfarmoreimportant
of course,thattheSSRC/ESRC
8Itmustbe remembered,
neverclaimedmorethana tinyfractionof theorganizapologythananthropology-which
tion'sresources-wasto its mainfunder.Anthropology's
relativelylowprofilealsohadits
uses,as in theearly1980s,whensociologybecamethefocusof attackfromideologuesof
theNewRight.
fromthe participants
a fairamountof reminiscence
9Theoccasionhas attracted
(see e.g.
1988;Geertz1991, 1995;Goody1995;Schneider1995). Of courseit only
Frankenberg
becamerecognizedas the"first"Decennialmuchlaterin theday.

BRITISHSOCIALANTHROPOLOGY

13

The 1973 conference came at the peak of a decade of growth, and the publications that emerged reflected the kind of intellectual optimism that academics usually only manage in a period of apparentlyunlimited expansion. The
genericeditorialintroductionwas this time providedby EdwinArdener,who in his
MalinowskiMemoriallecture a few years earlierhad detected a spiritof novelty
runningthroughthe discipline: "[F]orpracticalpurposestext-bookswhich looked
useful, no longer are;monographswhich used to appearexhaustivenow seem selective; interpretationswhich once looked full of insightnow seem mechanicaland
lifeless" (Ardener1971:449). In keeping with Ardener'spassion for the new, the
conference theme was "New Directions." In his introduction,however,Ardener
seemed keen to stressthe "deeproots"of some of the topics covered,pointingout
that the offerings of the 1963 conferencehad not become the stuff of controversy
in the interveningyears, not least because "new"theory in the 1960s had usually
come fromFranceratherthanthe UnitedStates(Ardener1975). Of the topics covered by panels in the conference itself, six eventuallyfound their way into print:
on Marxism (Bloch 1975), symbolism (Willis 1975), "biosocial"anthropology
(Fox 1975), texts (Jain 1976), transactionalism(Kapferer1976), and mathematical techniques(Mitchell 1980). But whereas the founding monographsfrom the
1963 meeting had served as canonical texts in the new undergraduatesyllabuses
of the 1960s, only two or three of the 1973 volumes enduredto fill thatniche.
If the year of the "isms"(as 1973 is now recalled) provided a conference for
its time, this was even more true of 1983.10 Only one volume emerged from
the proceedings, althoughmore were originally planned. The theme was "social
anthropologyin the 1980s," and despite all the panels on gender (unrepresented
in 1973 but now a major theme), on family and economy, and on anthropology
and policy, and despite the keynote addresses(fromBeteille andTambiah,Goody,
Godelier,and MaryDouglas), the questionfor many participantswas whether,in
ThatcheriteBritain, there even would be a social anthropologyafter the 1980s.
The only volume to emerge from the conference was on the interface between
anthropologyanddevelopmentpolicy (Grillo& Rew 1985), reflectingwidespread
heart-searchingaboutthe futureof thediscipline,andtheprospectsfor employment
of the growingreservearmyof underemployedPhDsin the subject. Oneparticipant
was quoted in a contemporaryreporton the events: "Thisisn't a conference, it's
a psychodrama"(Grillo 1983:10).
For once, the most significantdevelopmentsoccurrednot in the set-piece presentationsby luminaries.(The "youngergeneration"this time mighthavebeen too
much of an embarrassmentto act as an intellectualfocus.) The most importantand heated-exchanges seem to have taken place in the business meeting, as
the members of the Association argued about the best solution to the current
employmentcrisis in the discipline. EdmundLeach in particularobjectedstrongly
10"[In1973a]women'ssessionmetamicablyoutsidetheofficialprogramme.
Someradical
leafletswerecirculated.Thethirdworldnowfiguredas a politicalas well as anacademic
subject.Thehistoricalperiodat least(it maywell be thoughtin 1983)wasunmistakable"
(Ardener1975:ix).

14

SPENCER
to attemptsto train anthropologygraduatesfor nonacademicemployment. He
followed this with a heartfeltletterto the committee set up by the ASA to report
on employmentin appliedanthropology:"TheASA was startedas a 'professional
tradeunion' in the sense thatit soughtto ensurethatwhen social anthropologywas
taughtin universitiesandelsewherethe people who were employedto do the teaching were properlyqualifiedin the subject....As a professionalbody we need to tell
Heads of Departmentsthatthey should discouragestudentsfrom embarkingon a
courseof studiesleadingto a PhD in social anthropology.It mustbe emphasisedto
such potentialstudentsthatthe prospectsof everbeing employedas a professional
social anthropologists[sic] are extremelysmall.... I would personallybe horrified
if it became apparentthat the 'syllabus design' of what is taughtin a University
Departmentof Social Anthropologywas slantedtowards 'appliedanthropology.'
This would indeed be ironical!... the originalrole of the ASA was to preventthe
Universitiesfrom employingunqualifiedrefugees from the disappearingColonial
service to teach 'appliedanthropology'!" (see Grillo 1994:309-10).
Leach's angerat the threateneddilutionof "pure"anthropologyin Britishuniversities has deep disciplinaryroots. In the late colonial period,academiccontrol
of the relevantcommitteesof the Colonial Social Science ResearchCouncil meant
thatBritishanthropologistsenjoyedenoughscientificautonomyto ignoredemands
for more relevantresearch,and Kuklick,for example, documentsthe disdain expressed by many leading anthropologistsin the 1940s (not least EdmundLeach
himself) forpractical,policy-orientedworkin thecolonies (Kuklick1991:190-93).
Yet-despite considerableresistance from some quarters-what happenedin
the early 1980s may well have transformedthe discipline. Fromthe firstcuts in the
then SSRCbudgetin the summerof 1979, some anthropologistsstartedto organize
for the bleak times ahead. A succession of workshopsandworking-groupson employment for anthropologygraduatesgave birthto a clusterof organizationswith
ever-changingacronyms(GAPP,BASAPP,SASCW) andculminatedin a reportto
the ASA (Grillo 1984). Much of this activityemanatedfrom the new departments
of the 1960s, which by now had fallen on hard times-Kent, for example, but
especially Sussex. With hindsight,the activists' efforts have proven remarkably
successful. Throughoutthe 1980s the only significantgrowth area in academic
anthropologywas in more-or-less vocational taught masters degrees. This was
paralleledby a growthin demandfor anthropologiststo work in nonacademicsettings, especially-but not exclusively-in the field of social development. In the
1990s, the betterresourced,but often more conservative,departmentsin London,
Oxford,and Cambridgehurriedto establish similarprogramsin such areasas developmentanthropology-a clear case of innovationat the disciplinaryperiphery
being appropriatedand reincorporatedat the core.
Symptomatically,however,this particulartransformationin disciplinarytrajectory was not especially apparentin the most recent celebrationof British social
anthropology,the 1993 Decennial. In contrastto the 1983 event, the mood was
upbeatand expansionist. The universitieshad startedto grow again-in student
numbersat least-and enough new posts had been advertisedin recent years to

BRITISHSOCIALANTHROPOLOGY

15

absorbalmost all the underemployedleftovers from the 1980s. Social anthropology was in especially good shapebecauseit was experiencingits own boom within
the bigger boom; it found itself in unexpecteddemandfrom a generationof new
students. It was still a very small discipline with a relatively low public profile,
but it was beginning to show signs of imminenttransitionto being a mass subject
taughtin an under-fundedmass universitysystem (Gledhill, in press).
The overalltheme for the conferencepromisedto addresssome of the changes
thathadovertakenthe disciplinein thepreviousdecade-"The Uses of Knowledge:
Global and Local Relations." Yet neitherpedagogy nor the dilemmas of practically engaged anthropologywere much discussed in the main sessions.11 These
insteadfocused on a mixtureof classic themes (religious certainties)and areasof
recent intellectual excitement (consumptionand modernity). Outside observers
noted the upbeatmood (Stolcke 1993), and the "continuingrapprochementwith
Americanculturalanthropology,"evincedby the numberof presentationsfromanthropologistsinstitutionallybased in North America (Stocking 1995:438). Some
of the most exciting discussion at the conference itself took place in fringe sessions on art, on new reproductivetechnologies, and on ethnic violence, and these
sessions were also more representativeof the new, post-1989 generationof anon the platformin the main conferencesessions).
thropologists(underrepresented
The conference organizer's"traditional"forewordto the eventualpublicationsexpansiveandcommandingfor the 1963 volumes, reducedbut still reasonablyfull
in 1973-was effectively shrunkto a shortbut challengingparagraphin 1993, as
if the kind of expansiveoverview offered with such confidenceby Gluckmanand
Eggan 30 years earlierwere simply no longer feasible (Strathern1995a).
We can look at the conferences of 1963, 1973, 1983, and 1993 as moments of
collective self-presentation.And we can look back at whathas andhas not survived
intellectuallyfrom the earlierones. But we can also look at these as occasions to
take stock, in particular,as occasions to renegotiatethe discipline's boundaries:
in 1963 with the other social sciences; in 1973 with sources of new ideas from
outsideBritainand/oroutsidethe discipline;in 1983 with the economic chill of the
so-called "realworld";and in 1993 with the forces of the global (in anthropology,
as well as in the world).

SOCIALSTRUCTUREAND CULTURALPERFORMANCE
At this point let's look at two importantthemes from recentwork in the social history of science. Reviewing the exteralism/intemalism debatein science studies,
and the linked issue of boundariesaroundculturalpractices like science, Shapin
(1992) points out that for historiansof science, "boundarytalk"helps us see the
nonnecessity of actors' accounts of scientific practice, especially when we have
1The mostnotableexceptionwas the sessionon the uses of socialknowledgeconvened
Moore(cf Moore1996).
by Henrietta

16

SPENCER
the cultural distance of the historian looking at past practice. In his book, We
Have Never Been Modem, BrunoLatour(1993) goes furtherand stresses the fictive natureof all attemptsto bound off "science"from "society"or "politics,"or
"nature"as a discrete realm from "culture,"the place of those who study it. In
practice,networksof actors transgressthese boundaries,and our world is full of
hybrids-part nature,partculture. To deal with this a greateffort is put into what
Latourcalls the "workof purification."In a close, but slightly different,neck of
the historiographicwoods, attentionhas been drawnto the ways in which scientific
"facts"are made (in laboratoriesand other highly structuredsettings), not given
(in nature). And if "facts"are made, so are the specialists who observe them, the
communityof scientists-to invoke the language of Shapin & Schaffer's (1985)
study of Hobbes and Boyle, a boundedgroupwith special powers of "witness."
These historical argumentsoffer a new perspectiveon the shifting concerns
revealedin the four ASA Decennial conferences. Each, in differentways, might
be thought of as a returnto the questions I opened with: Is it still British? Is it
still social? Is it still anthropology? There is a long history here. In the early
1950s, in a carefullystagedand still celebratedexchangein the pages of American
Anthropologist,George Murdockand RaymondFirthdebatedthese very issues.
Concentratingon the then recently published African Systems of Kinship and
Marriage, Murdock leveled a number of accusations at his British colleagues.
Sure they'regood at what they do, but theirgeographicalandtheoreticalinterests,
their reading, their ideas are so narrow. Crucially,they shy away from all talk
of "culture,"a fact which reveals them in theirtruecolors-they're not anthropologists at all, they'reactually sociologists (Murdock1951:471).12
Here we face an apparentparadox, for virtually all of Murdock's marks of
British distinction in the 1950s appearto have melted into air in the 1970s and
1980s. By the 1960s, the earlyconcentrationon Africa,whichtaxedMurdock,was
alreadygiving way to workin Asia and Europe(SSRC 1968, Kappers1983). The
apparentobsession with kinshipat the expense of all otherareasof life (Murdock
1951:467) seems also to have declined: the topic was barely mentioned in the
main sessions of the 1993 Decennial, and its recent revival in Britainowes more
to the influence of that arch culturalist,David Schneider, than to the ghost of
Radcliffe-Brown (cf Carsten 2000, Franklin 1997, Strathern1992). "Culture"
has probablybeen as much discussed in Britain as in the United States in the
1990s, whereas a whole host of topics-until recently rigorously policed by
the anthropologicalboundarypatrol, for example psychological (Bloch 1998)
and psychoanalytic (Heald & Deluz 1994) work-have been quietly admitted
to the mainstream. These days more attention is probably paid to the work
of American anthropologistsin Britain than to the work of British (or French
or Norwegian or German) anthropologistsin the United States. Even applied,
or practical,anthropology-anathema to professionalanthropologistsof Leach's
fairanddiplomatic,andin the
12Firth's
(1951)responseto Murdockis characteristically
withsuchAmerican
in
active
he
decade
was
colleagues
bridges
building
especially
following
as DavidSchneider.

BRITISHSOCIALANTHROPOLOGY

17

generation-has, for manyBritishanthropologists,become the discipline'sbreadand-buttersince the 1980s.

Yet as anyone who has spent time aroundBritish anthropologydepartments
would admit, boundarytalk remains a vigorous idiom in everyday practice. In
an unjustlyneglected paperfrom the early 1980s, Watson(1984) provideda rich
vein of examples of the social/culturalboundarypatrol, from both sides of the
Atlantic.It is probablytrue thatexplicit boundarytalk is slightly less likely to be
found in printthanin the past, but the question "Is this anthropology?"is still the
stuffof some PhD examinationsin Britainand"Shedidn'tseem to reallyknowthat
much anthropology"is not unknown as an explanationof the failure to appoint
some brilliant outsider to a new position.13 How are these judgments formed
when, as we have just seen, the formal criteriaseem so shifting and evanescent?
From whence do new Britishanthropologistsgain theirtrulyanthropologicaldispositions?
One clue can be found in a recent essay by Kuper(1992). In the context of a
he provides
complaintaboutthe corrosiveeffects of alien American"culturalism,"
a brilliantlyvivid evocation of Cambridgein the mid-1960s: "A universitylike
Cambridgeis an efficientengine of acculturation.The departmentitself impressed
a very specific academic identity on the new recruit. Within a couple of terms it
would turn out a fledgling Fortesian Africanist or structuralistSouth Asianist,
armed with some ideas but above all with strong loyalties. It is interestingthat
these ideas were inculcated with a minimum of direct instruction.One had to
pick up a great deal on one's own. That also made one less likely, perhaps,to
rebel. There was little explicit control,though it is significantthat when we tried
to establish a small seminarof our own, Fortes did his best to nip it in the bud"
(Kuper1992:60).
This, remember,was the departmentthat produced a disproportionatenumber of today's academic anthropologistsin Britain. It did so, apparently,with a
"minimumof directinstruction."(The oral archivesuggests that Kuper'saccount
is at least as true of Oxford, where the ability to leave students to "pick up a
great deal on one's own" was elevated to an art form.) We are in the realm, I
suggest, of "tacitknowledge,"whose importancein scientific practicehas been
well documentedsince Polanyi'sPersonalKnowledge(1958). How is this kind of
knowledgeimparted,if not through"directinstruction"?The conventionalanswer
is throughwhat Lave & Wenger(1991) call "legitimateperipheralparticipation,"
the acquisitionof membershipin a "communityof practice."
And where is it imparted? Kuper'slast sentence gives one clue: in the seminar. Seminarsloom large in British anthropologicalreminiscence.Gell startshis
posthumously published, autobiographicalaccount of his own anthropological
formationwith severalpages of reflectionon "seminarculture"in British anthropology: "[A]n anthropologydepartmentwithouta weekly seminarseries is like a
themostimaginative
recentworkonanthropology's
talk(Gupta
13Unfortunately,
boundary
& Ferguson1997)choosesto ignorethe Atlanticdivisionandinsteadtalksof a unitary
"Anglo-American
anthropology."

18

SPENCER
body without a heart,"and "seminarcultureis what really defines my academic
metier,ratherthanmembershipof a rathernebulous'profession"'(Gell 1999:2,3).
Gell providesan accountof his own anthropologicalself-makingin termsof successive seminarshe presentedto, and participatedin: as an undergraduatewith
Meyer Fortesin Cambridge;as a fledgling researcherto the postgraduateseminar
at the LSE; and then, to his amazement,to the full departmentalseminarpresided
over by Raymond Firth. Gell concentrateson the pleasures of performancebut
also remarkson the skills of the listener, as acquiredin the audience of Firth's
seminarat the LSE: "[A]ll those in attendancewere assumed to be able to comment intelligently, and would be asked to do so if the chairmansaw fit. Since
I never knew when Raymondmight ask 'Well, what do you think, Mr Gell?' it
was absolutelynecessaryto pay attentionboth to the paperand to the subsequent
discussion, on pain of possible public humiliation.I still retainthe abilityto listen
to an hour'spaperand 50 minutes of discussion, withoutlapses of concentration,
as a resultof this early,invaluable,training"(Gell 1999:5).
In his own memoir,David Schneiderdescribesthe impactof RaymondFirth's
seminarat the LSE in very similar terms [and contrastsit to the ghastly experience of trying to tell Gluckman'sseminaraboutZulus in Manchester(Schneider
1995:125-29)]. Goody, reminiscingof the ASA in the 1950s, drawssome further
links: "Attendance... was virtuallyobligatoryin the fifties. However the general
atmospherewas one of camaraderie,of solidarity,of communitas,ratherthan authority; the seminars and the drinking were done together....Life was in some
ways like an on-going seminar,with continuingdiscussions of this or thattheme,
whatX thought,whatnew empiricalworkhadto say on the subject. The closeness
of the fraternitywas one way in which the highly amorphoussubjectof anthropology (which can be all things to all men) was given some manageablebounds,and
some continuingfocus was providedfor currentinvestigations"(Goody 1995:83,
my emphasis). And Leach, like many others,describesthe ultimatesource for the
whole tradition:Malinowski'sseminarat the LSE in the 1920s and 1930s (Leach
1986:376; cf Firth 1975:2-3, Stocking 1995:294-5).14
Here the importanceof the continuingdominationof the discipline by a handful of core departmentsbecomes obvious. With over half of the membersof the
disciplinecoming out of three,relativelysmall, departments-even now, the combined membershipof the departmentsconcernedis no more than 30 or 40-and
others passing throughto give papers on a reasonablyregularbasis, just a few
of theseminaras thelocusof scientific
14Historians
of sciencehavetracedtheimportance
to the scientificseminarsof eighteenth-andnineteenth-century
bildung,or self-creation,
Germany(Clark1989, Olesko1991). This wouldseemto providea stronglink to the
worldof Malinowski(andof courseBoas). Schaffer'swonderfulessay,"FromPhysics
to Anthropology-andBack Again"(1994), containsthe most imaginativetreatment
butit
of the placeof scientificself-makingin the earlyhistoryof Britishanthropology,
andits practicesandhasrelativelylittleto say about
moreon thelaboratory
concentrates
seminarsandseminarculture.Hereis a topicforfuturehistorians.

BRITISHSOCIALANTHROPOLOGY

19

weekly seminarscan continue to act as a testing groundfor what is or is not anthropologicallycorrector theoreticallyinteresting. They can, moreover,do so in
a flexible way: The seminardoes not necessarilycare if the boundariesshift over
the years. It may appearto have some sort of collective memory,but it is not a
court,susceptibleto formalappealsto precedent.It is ratherthe settingfor certain
stylized kinds of performance,andfor the passing of, often tacit,judgments. Insofar as the performancebecomes second nature,the judgmentsthemselves may be
allowed to differ. Cambridgein the 1960s was, afterall, a departmentin which the
dominantfigures-Leach and Fortes, Tambiahand Goody-were, intellectually
at least, perceivedto be at warwith each other(Gell 1999:4, Kuper1992:60). And
British anthropology,in what may have been its real golden era-the 1950s and
1960s ratherthan the 1930s-was the scene of endless set-piece public controversies. Besides those of Fortesand Leach, therewere battlesbetween Leach and
Gluckman,Needham and Gellner,Needham and Beattie. My point is that these
were the productsof a close-knit seminarculturethat, ratherthan inculcatinga
simple and narroworthodoxy,set the terms for what was deemed worthy of argument. The decline of such bitter academic argumentsince the 1980s may be
a symptomof many things-the changingpolitics of academic employment,the
shifting genderbalance of the discipline-but it may above all heraldthe decline
of the kinds of multiplex social relationscelebratedby Goody in his description
of the 1950s.
In itself, the demographicgrowthof the discipline has threatenedthe kinds of
tacit structureI havejust been describing-the annualASA conferences,for example, have for years been too big to reproducethe intellectualcommunitasinvoked
by Goody, yet too small to act as all-purposeoccasions of professionaleffervescence like the AAA meetings (cf Ardener1983). And it is debatablewhetherthe
kind of tight disciplinarityGoody celebratescan survivebeyond a certainpoint of
demographicexpansion, whateverthe institutionalenvironment.But the institutional environmentin Britisheducationis now especially hostile to the endurance
of the implicit and the unstated. In her Cambridgeinauguralin 1994, Marilyn
Strather concluded with a meditationon the recent mania in higher education
for renderingexplicit what often works best by being left implicit: To put it more
crudelythanshe ever would, the translationof Kuper's"educationwithoutinstruction"into a set of aims and objectivesat the head of a readinglist, with appropriate
cross referencesto the institutionalmission statement(Strathern1995b). A classic examplewould be fieldworkitself, which, in Evans-Pritchard's
Oxford,simply
could not be taught,it could only be learnedby doing-"methods andmethodology
were Americanterms"(Gilsenan 1990:225). Now, however,the ESRC demands
explicit methodstrainingfrom all departmentsthatwould receive its funding,and
anthropologyhas yielded to this demandlike the other social sciences.
Yet it is worth ending with one characteristicanthropologicalresponse to the
demandsof the new educationalcommandeconomy in Britain.If we look at the
disciplinary guidelines for research training in different subjects drawn up for
the ESRC, anthropology'sentrylooks odd (ESRC 1996). Where sociologists, for

20

SPENCER
example, are given a crisp one-page list of things every new sociologist should
know ("the principlesof descriptiveand inferentialstatistics and bi- and multivariableanalysis;the systematicanalysisof textualandotherqualitativedata... "),
social anthropology'sentryis long andhighly discursive,yet somehowit manages
to omit any list of requiredtechniques,except for broadgesturestowardfieldwork
and language learning. What is describedin the social anthropologyguidelines
is a set of desired relationships(primarilywith the supervisor),a long process
(fieldwork)of an otherwise open-endedkind, and a certainkind of central social
event: the researchseminar.Describedwith care, this crucibleof anthropological
trainingcould be one of the Cambridgeseminarsof the 1960s, or it could be at
the Institutein Oxford, or in Gluckman'sManchester,or at the LSE with Bloch,
Parry,and Gell taking on some puzzled foreign star in the 1980s. Although it
misses out on a certainamountof telling local detail-there is no requirementthat
the seminarbe chairedby an apparentmegalomaniacand no allusion to the high
levels of dysfunctionalbehaviorexhibitedin the classic seminarsof British social
anthropology-it links the anthropologyof the 1990s back to the primalscene that
still hauntedthe anthropologistswho consolidatedBritish social anthropologyin
the 1950s, Malinowski's seminar at the LSE. It seems to me at the very least
arguablethat here-rather than the rite of fieldwork, which is after all, hard to
control from a distance-is one key site of continuity,a place where we do "the
workinvolvedin makinginterdisciplinaryboundariesappearsui generis"(Watson
1984:352).
Finally, a note of caution. The kind of demographicpictureI presentedearlier
should rule out anything as final as a conclusion. British social anthropology
has just passed througha decade of growthand expansion,in which its teaching
and researchinterestshave been transformed.AlthoughI suspect its institutional
oddities will ensure its survivalas a distinctive strandof an increasingly global
discipline,it is neverthelesspossible thatfuturehistorianswill insteadsee the 1990s
as the end of Britishsocial anthropologyas we haveknownit. In the end I havetold
the story as it makes most sense to me, concentratingon institutionalfacts rather
than more conventionalintellectual history. Even within my picture of centerperipherydynamics, I can see how some of my interpretivechoices have shaped
the story I have told. For reasons of space I have not, for example, attempted
to develop an argumentabout British anthropology'spresence (or absence) in
the public sphere-from Leach's Reith lectures in the 1960s, throughhis role
in rejuvenatingthe RAI in the 1970s, and taking on board the importantrole of
British public service broadcastingas a sponsor for the discipline in the years
that followed (Leach 1968, 1974). One of the most vital productsof that story
is the RAI's "popular"publications,RAINand laterAnthropologyToday,which
betweenthe two provideas good a sense of the changingconcernsof the discipline
in Britain as any source (Benthall 1996). I have concentrated,I now see, most
heavily on the years since I sat in my firstanthropologylecturein the early 1970s.
Had I sat in the lecture 10 years earlier,I suspect I would have had more to say
about the earlieralternativestrandsopened up by Gluckmanand his proteges at

BRITISHSOCIALANTHROPOLOGY

21

Manchester. Writing from one particular perspective, especially one so close to

the object being described, has its limitations. But, if I have one point to make, it is
one anticipated by Leach (1984:3) in his memoir from the 1980s: "The sociology
of the environment of social anthropologists has a bearing on the history of social
anthropology." That, it seems to me, is a very social anthropological way of
approaching one's own history.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have been especially fortunate in the advice and help I have received from many
colleagues. Pat Caplan and Ralph Grillo generously shared their memories of
the difficult decades of the 1970s and 1980s. Both helped me locate important
documents from the 1980s, as did Alan Barnard and Nigel Rapport. Seminar
audiences in Saint Andrews and in the Department of Sociology at Edinburgh raised
important questions and supplied further insights. In this respect I must especially
thank Jonathan Hearn, John Holmwood, Steve Sturdy, and Neil Thin. Jonathan
Parry directed my attention to Gell's crucial commentary on seminar culture after
I had completed a first draft of the argument. Given his own mercurial brilliance
as a seminar performer, it is only fitting that the paper itself be dedicated to the
most original and sorely missed anthropologist of his generation, Alfred Gell.
Visit the Annual Reviews home page at www.AnnualReviews.org
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