Anthropological Ancestors

Clicking through the links on a recent NeuroAnthropology post about the open access archives of the Cambridge anthropology department, I found Alan Macfarlane’s Anthropological Ancestors website.

The interviews were started by Jack Goody in 1982. He arranged for the filming of seminars by Audrey Richards, Meyer Fortes and M.N.Srinivas. Since then, with the help of others, and particularly Sarah Harrison, I have filmed and edited over ninety archival interviews. Having started with leading anthropologists, my subjects have broadened to include other social scientists and, recently, biological and physical scientists.

The full list of interviews can be found here.

2 thoughts on “Anthropological Ancestors

  1. A wonderful collection, if only they weren’t so large (the ones I’ve downloaded are around 400mb). To remedy this, some of the interviews (along with other related videos) have been uploaded onto Alan Macfarlane’s youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/ayabaya

  2. One great one Macfarlane wasn’t able to film was Karl Marx. Berg’s out with a new book, _Karl Marx, Anthropologist_, by Thomas C. Patterson.

    http://www.bergpublishers.com/?TabId=4901&v=1625957

    From the pub.’s blurb:
    After being widely rejected in the late 20th century the work of Karl Marx is now being reassessed by many theorists and activists. Karl Marx, Anthropologist explores how this most influential of modern thinkers is still highly relevant for Anthropology today.

    Marx was profoundly influenced by critical Enlightenment thought. He believed that humans were social individuals that simultaneously satisfied and forged their needs in the contexts of historically particular social relations and created cultures. Marx continually refined the empirical, philosophical, and practical dimensions of his anthropology throughout his lifetime.

    Assessing key concepts, from the differences between class-based and classless societies to the roles of exploitation, alienation and domination in the making of social individuals, Karl Marx, Anthropologist is an essential guide to Marx’s anthropological thought for the 21st century.

    About the author

    Tom Patterson is Distinguished Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of California at Riverside. He is author of many publications including Marx’s Ghost: Conversations with Archaeologists (2003) and A Social History of Anthropology in the United States (2001).

Comments are closed.