Professor Adam Kuper

Professor Adam Kuper (FBA) is an anthropologist and public intellectual. Most recently a Centennial Professor in this department and a Visiting Professor at Boston University, and a recipient of the Huxley Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, he has authored or edited 19 books and published over 100 journal articles focusing on anthropological theory, the history of anthropology in the US and Britain, and southern African societies and cultures. He has made numerous appearances on BBC TV and radio, and reviewed regularly for the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Wall Street Journal. His new book, The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions, Profile Books, was launched in February 2023.

Expertise

South Africa, intellectual history of anthropology, kinship, Southern Africa

A LIFE IN ANTHROPOLOGY

This is a transcript of a lecture delivered at Sichuan University in China, in 2024

When Dr. Chenbo asked me to speak to you, I suggested that I might talk about a lifetime in anthropology, now stretching over sixty years. He agreed very enthusiastically. Then I thought, what have I done? Because I've never given this talk before. In fact, I've always avoided thinking about my life and my career in anthropology. How can I make sense of this long and potentially tedious tale of one scholar's journey? Are there any recurring themes in my career and my work? Because whenever people asked me about my projects in anthropology, I would joke that my problem is having a very short attention span. So every couple of years, I'd start something completely new. Only now, as I look back, do I think that perhaps I can identity a certain logic in my trajectory.

One thing that struck me as I prepared for this talk and reflected on my career is that there has always been an intersection between my anthropology and the broader field, as well as politics in my country and globally. Academic structures also influence the way in which disciplines develop, and constrained the choices I made. I'll try to incorporate these factors into my story to give it some coherence, so it's not just about one person waking up with a new dream or idea every day.

I was born in 1941, right in the midst of World War II. The world was undergoing significant changes. I was born in South Africa and lived there until the age of 19, which means I grew up in South Africa. Now, you might have some idea of South Africa, but let me emphasize a few key points. It was a society dominated by whites, despite the fact that approximately three-quarters of the population were black African people. In addition, there were minorities from India, a small number from China, and other ethnic groups. The white group, comprising seven percent of the population, monopolised political and economic power. But this white group was itself divided, almost evenly, between those who spoke English and those who spoke Afrikaans.

Afrikaans is a dialect of Dutch that emerged in Southern Africa after the Dutch East India Company colonized the Cape, the southernmost part of South Africa, at the end of the 17th century. Gradually, Dutch-speaking people migrated to South Africa and settled along the coast. Why was the Cape so important? Before the Suez Canal was built, the only way to travel from Europe to the East was by navigating around Africa. Possession of the southernmost tip of Africa, the Cape, was a strategic advantage. Dutch settlers in the Cape cultivated food, produced wine, and raised livestock. When ships passed by on their way to the East Indies, they could provide them with fresh supplies.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the British took control of the Cape. From 1820, settlers from Britain began arriving. This led to the presence of two distinct groups of white people in the Cape: the Dutch, who now spoke a local dialect of Dutch called Afrikaans (meaning 'African language'), and the increasing number of English-speaking Britons. And then, they began to move into the interior. From the coast, Afrikaans speaking “Boer” farmers started moving inland, fighting against African tribes and setting up two Boer republics. And then huge deposits of gold were discovered in one of these republics, and a war erupted between the Boer Republics and the British government for the control of the gold mines. The war continued from 1899 to 1902, and the British emerged victorious. They took over the entire region that is now known as South Africa. This is how the two distinct and rivalrous groups of white people in South Africa originally came to be: the Afrikaners and the British. In South Africa, only whites had the vote, and there were two parties: one predominantly English-speaking, the other comprising Afrikaner Nationalists.

When I grew up in South Africa, the Afrikaner Nationalists had just won political power in the 1947 election. Their platform was the imposition of a strict system of racial segregation to ensure the continued dominance of the white population. In power they implemented a system termed apartheid in Afrikaans. This word signifies separation and apartness. The blacks were compelled to reside apart from the white population, both in urban and rural areas. They couldn't move freely, and could only move into the cities if they obtained a special passport, which was typically granted solely on the condition of having a job. Upon losing their employment, they were compelled to return to the segregated black areas. They attended their own schools and were barred from enrolling in white schools, colleges, or universities, were denied access to white hospitals, and were forbidden to reside in white neighborhoods. There also was a law prohibiting marriage between white people and black people. And for a white person to have a romantic relationship with a black person was considered a crime. It was the most racist society one could imagine. I grew up in that society. And when I was a teenager, I began to try and understand it.

In white homes, even ordinary middle-class white homes, there were black servants, who lived in special rooms outside, in the garden of the house, not inside the house. But of course, they were my friends. I talked to them and did things with them. I was puzzled and trying to understand this situation, struggled to comprehend the politics behind it. And the politics were becoming increasingly complex. Because there was now a political movement advocating for African rights.

The African National Congress, later led by Nelson Mandela, had become a significant force. The government grew increasingly anxious and worried about them, ramping up its attempts to crush the movement. There were, however, some white people who supported the African freedom movements and participated in the struggle for justice in South Africa. This was the society in which I grew up.

At the age of 17, I went to university in Johannesburg. With the intention of understanding South African society more deeply, I decided to study history and anthropology as my major subjects. A few African and Indian students were allowed to attend the university. For the first time, I had African friends who were highly educated and who shared with me their lives and their experiences. They helped me to comprehend what they were enduring.

In those days there were three kinds of universities in South Africa. Firstly, there were the English-language universities, which conducted their classes in English and maintained connections with England, as well as other international ties. These universities tended to be more liberal politically, with several professors who are highly critical of apartheid and the government. Secondly, there were the Afrikaans-language universities. They supported apartheid, Afrikaner nationalism, and the Dutch Reformed Church, a fundamentalist Protestant denomination. The third kind of university comprised a few institutions specifically for African, Indian or so-called Coloured students, located. So here I was at one of the most liberal English-language universities, attempting to unravel the complexities of this intricate society

I became very interested in anthropology. There was another, special, reason for this. I had recently encountered another stimulus. My aunt, the wife of my father's brother, had completed her PhD in anthropology at the London School of Economics under the supervision of Malinowski. She conducted her fieldwork in Swaziland, a country in southern Africa, then a British colony. Malinowski himself visited her in the field. Anyway, one day she said to me: “You're studying anthropology now, and since you’re 18 years old and have a driver's license, you can help me. I need to go to Swaziland for a few weeks for business. Why don't you come along and be my driver?” I was thrilled, as I loved my aunt very much, and eagerly accepted her offer.

Swaziland was an African kingdom, within a British colony. My aunt had become a friend of the king and later wrote his biography. And under Malinowski's guidance, she wrote a book about the Swazi kingdom: An African Aristocracy, which became quite famous. The Swazi operated a dual monarchy, with separate royal settlements for the King and the Queen Mother. In the queen mother's capital, people could appeal against judges' decisions and sentences, making her a source of mercy in the kingdom. During her fieldwork, my aunt had spent over a year living in the queen mother's capital, Lobamba. Thus, she suggested, “First, we're going to La Bomba.” And so, we traveled to Lobamba.

Now, you must imagine it: it was all traditional Swazi houses, constructed primarily of straw and clay. They were called beehive houses, because they looked like beehives. They were beautiful, truly exquisite. All those houses, surrounded by charming fences, were inhabited solely by women and children. So I wasn’t allowed into the settlement. My aunt went with her friends, and they sent me to a camp guarded by the regiment responsible for protecting the queen mother's village. In charge of this camp was a Swazi prince, one of the many sons of the king who had numerous wives and sons. One of his sisters was also present. The prince, who was around my age, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, was adorned in full Swazi attire: a toga, a head ring, and a spear. Since his father had sent him to boarding school in England, he spoke perfect English.

We sat down in this beehive hut, and soon the soldiers entered, carrying a large pot of African beer and placing it down. We began drinking the beer and chatting about football. After a while, he turned to me and asked, “Do you believe in witches?” This was a difficult question for me. I knew what he expected me to say, but I felt compelled to tell the truth. I replied, “No, I don't believe in witches.” He then looked at me intently and quoted Shakespeare, saying, “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” I found it fascinating that an African prince, dressed as a warrior, would discuss witchcraft while quoting Shakespeare. I thought to myself, “This is a very interesting subject. I should become an anthropologist.”

Later, I visited King Sobhuza. He had many houses and camps scattered throughout the country, making it challenging to locate him, particularly since he was paranoid about being bewitched and often went into hiding. However, Hilda was secretly informed of his whereabouts. We drove to an ordinary European-style house in the countryside, where we found him. He was very friendly and invited us into the sitting room of the house.

There was a large painting of Queen Elizabeth on one wall and a big portrait of the Swazi king, Sobhuza, on the other. We sat down, my aunt, the king, and I, in the room, each taking a chair. The king then asked me if I would like some tea. He clapped his hands, and a stunningly beautiful young woman entered, carrying a tea tray. However, she was crawling on her knees with the tray, and she was naked except for a very small skirt. She served tea to me, my aunt, and the king. She addressed my aunt as “aunt,” which struck me as a stark contrast between the European-style house and this unusual form of service.

It was very interesting, so I decided that I must concentrate on anthropology. At my university, there were two main teachers of anthropology, both very good and knowledgeable. One had worked with Max Gluckman in England and obtained his PhD under his supervision, while the other was an Englishman from Cambridge University who had studied with Meyer Fortes. They taught the British style of anthropology, and they were against apartheid. In contrast, at the Afrikaans-speaking universities, the anthropology departments were strongly pro-Apartheid. They were influenced by an anthropological theory that originated in Germany and was popularized in the United States by Franz Boas. This theory held that the most significant aspect of people worldwide is their culture, and all cultures are unique and distinct. According to this theory, if people lose their culture, they lose their moral compass and sense of purpose. The Afrikaans apartheid system was based on the belief that cultures are completely different and separate and must be maintained as such. According to this ideology, everyone belongs to a particular cultural space, and mixing cultures was discouraged. Afrikaners believed they were sent by God to colonize South Africa and were tasked with preserving their culture, Dutch Reformed religion, and language. Similarly, other ethnic groups like the Zulu, Xhosa, or Sotho were expected to maintain their own cultures, languages, and leaders, without intermarrying or integrating with other groups.

A very different conception of South African society was current in English South African universities. This posited that South Africa was a single society, but one organized into so-called racial groups. Even the most remote communities could be understood only in terms of the overarching structure of political oppression and economic exploitation. At my university, we delved into the political and economic structures that were intertwined with culture. Our field was deeply political, a fact that was further underscored by the escalating political tensions in South Africa during that era. The period was marked by a massive strike, spearheaded by the African National Congress, which was met with brutal suppression, resulting in numerous fatalities towards the end of the 1950s, most notably the Sharpeville massacre of 21 March 1960.

In 1959, while we were students, the government targeted professors critical of the regime who sought to forge political alliances with African communities. A number were arrested and imprisoned without due process. In response, we, the students, took to the streets. Fortuitously, the primary prison in Johannesburg, where our imprisoned professors were held, lay a mere two kilometers' walk from our university. On one fateful day, hundreds of us, banners in hand, marched towards the prison, chanting “Let them free!” Upon reaching the fortress-like prison, a handful of us, including myself, were detained. However, the authorities seemed uncertain of their next steps, and so they held us for several hours before releasing us. Nonetheless, our images, captured in photographs, made headlines across the newspapers, a testament to our small but significant act of defiance.

There was a lot of publicity about this, and then something happened to one of our anthropology teachers, John Blacking. He was an Englishman, a graduate in social anthropology from Cambridge University. He had been a military officer, serving in Malaya, before coming to South Africa. A very good-looking man, charismatic and dynamic, he was very critical of the government. Despite being married to a South African-English lady, he started an affair with an Indian woman student at the university, which was against the law.

When questioned in court he said, “We are in love with each other.” The government could have put him in prison, but instead, they expelled him from the country. Before he left, he told me that I must go and study anthropology at Cambridge University, and he would write a recommendation for me.

So I went to Cambridge University to do a PhD in anthropology. I fetched up in King’s College, Cambridge, in 1962, at the age of twenty, as a research student in social anthropology.^[1] This was still very much the pre-modern Cambridge, and for a young foreigner it was exotic and more than a little unnerving. But the department of social anthropology presented special problems for the newcomer. It was small. There were only perhaps a dozen research students, of whom four or five would be away in the field at any one time. The academic staff was only seven or eight strong. It was, however, deeply divided.

The dominant figures were the Professor, Meyer Fortes, and the Reader, Edmund Leach. Both men were fellows of King’s College. In my first week Leach invited me to lunch. Gigantic and dishevelled, he looked me over at the table. “I try to get people to work in South East Asia,” Edmund said as we hacked at the petrified potatoes on our plates. “The professor, of course, is interested in Africa.” I explained that I wanted to do fieldwork in Southern Africa. He considered me, not unkindly, writing me off but willing to soften the blow. “Well, perhaps I can tell you something about Cambridge,” he said. “Professor Fortes – for all his insight into Ghanaian society – has never really understood the place. The thing to grasp about Cambridge is that it is essentially lower middle class.”

A few days later Meyer Fortes had me to lunch in King’s. “You’ll be working in Africa, of course. Southern Africa? You will have to look up Schapera in London.” He then turned to other matters. “Let me tell you something about Cambridge. Nobody else will tell you this – people like Edmund probably wouldn’t even know it – but never forget that they don’t like Jews.” (Both Fortes and I came from South African Jewish families. That formed a bond.)

Both these characterisations turned out to be true, and helpful to the foreigner. But the most important thing I learnt from my lunches was that the rift between the two leading Cambridge anthropologists was a profound one. They were Big Men in the opposing factions of British social anthropology, the party of Malinowski and the party of Radcliffe-Brown. The new research student had to join one camp or the other. This had to do in part with where one wanted to work. In general, Fortes directed the Africanists, with the help of his lieutenant, Jack Goody, while anybody travelling East of Suez worked with Leach. (The rest of the world was divided up as convenient.) But this initial choice entailed an intellectual orientation as well. The Africanists were expected to work in the tradition of Radcliffe-Brown. The rest joined Leach in the Malinowskian camp. They were also, somewhat confusingly, introduced to the structuralist anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, to which Leach was increasingly committed.

We also all imbibed the faith that field research in the Malinowskian manner – by participant observation – would yield a more accurate view of another way of life than any other method. Indeed, it was hardly worth reading books about the societies we intended to study if their authors were not followers of Malinowski. I say we imbibed this faith, but it was imbibed without conscious effort, like mother’s milk. There was no instruction in the methods of fieldwork by participant observation. This provoked a certain nervousness as the moment approached to depart for the field. We began to solicit instruction. Several of us were about to leave for Africa, New Guinea, Madagascar, Mexico ... Couldn’t we be given some guidance, told how to go about it?

At last Jack Goody consented to talk to us. We met in his room in St John’s College one evening in the early summer, after dinner. My image of that occasion is still vivid, for there was a May Ball in the college that night, and we slipped into Goody’s rooms past young men in evening dress and young women in décolletée silk gowns; and while we sat talking we could hear the dance music across the lawn. This was the image of England that haunted Edwardian travellers as they dressed for solitary dinners in deserts and jungles. However, we did not, I am afraid, learn a great deal directly that evening. Jack Goody explained that there was no real method, nothing that could be taught. The important things to bear in mind were that one had to remain healthy and on good terms with the authorities, and keep duplicates of field notes, sending copies home as often as possible.

That was the established tradition. The veterans boasted that they had gone into the field without any guidance or, at best, with risible and conflicting pieces of advice on matters of etiquette. The great ethnographer, Edward Evans-Pritchard, claimed that he was told by his supervisor Charles Seligman to keep his hands off the local girls, while Malinowski advised him to take a native mistress as soon as possible. And yet, of course, the directives were in their way explicit enough, perhaps all the more powerful for being purveyed through indirection and, especially, by way of personal anecdote.

This was the only advice I received regarding fieldwork. However, I learned a lot from the other students I was with. They were very kind, and I also gained valuable insights from the seminars. I did some reading and began preparing to conduct fieldwork.

The country where they decided I would conduct my fieldwork was the Bechuanaland Protectorate, then a British Colony, since 1966 the independent state of Botswana. Located northwest of South Africa, it is an enormous country, roughly the size of Texas or Germany. However, its total population was estimated to be just under one million at that time. Most of the people in this country lived on the eastern frontier, in towns. The entire western region was largely uninhabited and mostly consisted of the Kalahari Desert. Schapera advised me to go there for my fieldwork. The district I was assigned to within the Kalahari Desert was about the size of the United Kingdom, but its estimated population was only around 35,000. It was a vast area, mostly desert, with a few scattered settlements, some cattle herders, and hunter-gatherer Bushmen. The language was related to Tswana so I studied Tswana and then ventured into the field to live in those tiny villages situated in the middle of vast, expansive deserts. I realise now that if someone took my son at the age of 21 and sent him to live alone in a desert with no roads, water, clinics, or electricity, I would never have allowed it.

How was I going to manage? As you can see, I went there and I managed. It was a truly bizarre experience. The settled villagers, the pastoralists, lived in the few areas of the desert where there was enough underground water to sustain life. They were able to dig wells and access water, which allowed them to grow some vegetables and provide water for their cattle and goats. These villages sometimes housed a few hundred, and sometimes a few thousand people.

The district headquarters were approximately 400 kilometres away from the village where I was staying. At the district headquarters, there was a district magistrate, an Englishman who was in charge of the entire district. There was also a small clinic and even a hotel, a tiny establishment. I spent eighteen months in one Kalahari village, Kole, getting to know the people, and traveling to other villages. Then I returned to Cambridge to write my thesis.

Given my background in South Africa, I chose to focus my research on local politics. I was curious to understand how the people governed themselves. And they did so in a highly democratic fashion. While there was a headman, or chief, the men, particularly the elders, gathered weekly in a court where they presided over all court cases, trials, and made decisions for the village. They would discuss, argue, and ultimately reach decisions. I wrote my thesis on this topic.

In 1966, the Bechuanaland Protectorate was on the verge of independence, when it became the Republic of Botswana. I felt compelled to witness this historic moment and observe how the Kalahari would be affected. I returned for another six-month fieldwork stint in 1966. Just prior to my departure, I got married, and my new wife accompanied me to the Kalahari Desert. We resided for six months once again in a humble mud hut in the Kalahari Desert. I then published my first book, Kalahari Village Politics: An African Democracy. (This echoed the title of my aunt's renowned book, The Swazi: an African Aristocracy.)

Edmund Leach kindly extended an invitation to join him as a tutor at Cambridge University. But my wife and I had set our hearts on returning to Africa. So, I applied for a position at Makerere University in a newly independent African nation, Uganda. I taught at the university, and my wife, with a Master's degree in Anthropology from the London School of Economics, embarked on fieldwork among a Christian East Asian community in Uganda. We lived there contentedly, and I began to think that perhaps we would stay longer. As my contract expired, I had to decide whether to apply for an extension or seek employment elsewhere. Initially, I intended to apply for an extension since we were very happy there. But I was friendly with a young diplomat who advised me against staying for another year.

Back then, all universities within the British Commonwealth, regardless of their location outside England, received monthly or bi-monthly newsletters listing job openings at Commonwealth universities around the world. The current issue listed three anthropology positions: in Singapore, Hong Kong, and University College London. I applied for all three, with Hong Kong being my preference, followed by Singapore. However, the only job I was invited to interview for was at University College London. In the British colonial Commonwealth system, if you were shortlisted for a job, the government would cover the cost of your flight to the interview. But if you were offered the job and turned it down, you had to repay the airfare. I flew to London for the interview at University College London. The department had a new professor, and during the interview, I took an immediate dislike to him. He was arrogant and authoritarian, and I dreaded the thought of working with him. Nevertheless, they offered me the job, and since I couldn't afford to pay back the airfare, I reluctantly accepted. This was lucky. A few months after we came to England there was a military coup in Uganda, and Idi Amin established a fascist dictatorship in Uganda.

I came back to London in 1970, just after the student revolutions in Europe in 1968. Everything was changing rapidly, young people reacting against the old order of things. In Uganda, we heard vague rumours of the student movement in Paris and so on, but we were absorbed with the crisis in East Africa and didn't really know what was going on in Europe.

When I came back to England, I spoke to an old mentor of mine, Audrey Richards, a famous anthropologist at Cambridge. I asked her, “Audrey, what has changed?” She replied, in her typically witty way, that the main difference is that nobody gets married any more, except for a few Roman Catholic priests. Another significant change was that young anthropologists were rebelling against the traditional forms of social research. They argued that the old-fashioned anthropology was colonialist in nature, aimed at assisting colonial governments, and so on. They believed we needed a more critical approach, an anthropology that challenged European domination, perhaps even a Marxist perspective. This idea became a powerful movement among the younger faculty members. I didn't agree with it. The only ally I had in the department was Mary Douglas, author of Purity and Danger.

After I finished writing my book on the Kalahari, I wondered what to do next. Isaac Schapera, an expert on Southern Africa who had sent me to the Kalahari Desert, approached me and said, “I have another project for you. I'm editing a series of books for Penguin Books in London on anthropology, and I want you to write a history of British anthropology.” I had never thought about it before, and I had no idea what to do, but he said they would give me, I don't remember exactly how much, maybe a thousand pounds. “Okay,” I said, but I only had a year to complete it because I had other commitments afterward. Starting from scratch, I wrote a book on British anthropology, Anthropologists and Anthropology.

In the meantime, I was offered the opportunity to conduct a study for the Government of Jamaica. With two small children in tow, we relocated to Jamaica. I knew nothing about Jamaica at all, but the authorities confronted a pressing issue that they believed an anthropologist could help address. Jamaica, at the time, had a population of just over one million people, with a quarter of them residing in Kingston, the capital city. In Kingston, the unemployment rate stood at a staggering 30%, resulting in a surge of crime and leaving many young people disillusioned and jobless. Conversely, in the countryside, there was a dire shortage of labor. The government was perplexed by the influx of people from rural areas into the city, where employment opportunities were scarce, while large farmers in the countryside were desperately seeking workers.

As it turned out, the solution to this puzzle was rather straightforward. Most farms were quite small. Consequently, only one child per generation could inherit the role of a farmer, while the rest were forced to seek alternative paths. One option was to work on the large sugar plantations, but that involved arduous labor, was only available for about five to six months of the year, and was poorly compensated. Alternatively, individuals could migrate to Kingston, the city, and find illegal work, such as engaging in petty criminal activities or working as domestic servants for a few days a week. While this work went unreported and therefore meant unpaid taxes, it provided a means of survival, albeit with limited income and job security.

There was this underground economy, and it was rational for people to engage in it. One of the places where I conducted fieldwork was in a squatters' camp by the harbor. It's not a legal settlement. It's a place where people live in makeshift shacks, sometimes using sacks and boxes as their homes. They build illegal houses, and occasionally, the government comes and takes them away, only for the squatters to rebuild them at night. I was working in this camp, among very violent young men involved in criminal activities. I was walking around with these gangs, talking to people, and observing what was happening. One day, there were four young men with us, and we were watching a big ship enter the harbor. One of them said, “Do you see that ship? If I take a job on that ship, scrubbing, cleaning, and go on a three-month voyage, they'll pay me $5,000. They give me $ 5,000 in cash upon landing back.” I asked, “Why don't you do that?” And he said, “You know, every night, no matter what I'm doing, I go to visit my mother. I'd be very unhappy if I didn't see her, and she would be very unhappy if she didn't see me.” Other men agreed, saying, “Yes, the same applies to us. We can't go and leave our mothers all alone.”

This was the strange city life I was trying to understand. I also worked in a sugar plantation, located in a small village. There, I learned a valuable lesson about fieldwork – that playing sports, you can make friends. In South Africa, I had learned to play cricket. I was quite good at it, and in the village where I lived, I played for the local cricket team. We would play matches against all the other villages nearby, and it was quite a spectacle. The whole village would gather to watch, shouting, cheering, and even placing bets. The first time I played, I faced a big, fast bowler who was running up and throwing the ball at me with all his might. He was a strong guy, barefoot, and throwing the ball with great force. As I stepped up to the bat, I could feel the tension in the air. People were everywhere, shouting, calling, betting, and some were even smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol made from sugar cane. In the corner of my eye, I noticed an old lady standing there, watching me intently. As the bowler ran up to deliver the ball, she shouted, “Get the white man out!” But I managed to play on, determined to do my best. Playing cricket was great because it gave me an opportunity to interact with the locals. The next day, they would talk to me about the game, asking me about my performance and offering suggestions. We became friends, and the people in the village started to trust me because I was part of the cricket team. My presence in the cricket team also made me known throughout the village. Everyone knew about the foreigner who had come to play cricket with them and was making his way around the community. So that was Jamaica.

Meanwhile, my book on British anthropology was published in 1973. (So last year was its 50^th anniversary.) Returning to London, I discovered that everyone had read my book, and all the seasoned professors were very cross with me, partly because I had criticized and even made jokes about most of them. They also wondered, “Who is this young man daring to embark on such a venture?” So now I suddenly found myself at odds with all these influential figures. It was only after many years, around a decade later, that the tide turned. You might be familiar with Raymond Firth, a renowned figure at the London School of Economics (LSE), head of its anthropology department, and a protégé of Malinowski. Malinowski's right-hand man. A stern and somewhat arrogant individual, he had taken a dislike to me. He did his best to check my career. However, time heals many wounds, and at a party hosted by the Royal Anthropological Institute around a decade later, Raymond Firth's wife said to me: “Raymond has forgiven you.” I didn't say that I hadn't forgiven him, but we got on after that.

But I was increasingly fed up by the tensions in my department at University College London, and accepted an offer to be a professor of anthropology at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where I served for nine years, from 1976 to 1985. The leaders of the anthropology group there were structuralists, adherents of Lévi-Strauss' theories, and I now undertook structuralist studies of Southern African societies. One theme was the kinship system and the practice of bridewealth payments in cattle. This was tightly bound up with their economic system, which combined farming and cattle-rearing. Men were primarily responsible for cattle-keeping and owned the livestock. Women carried out the routine tasks in the fields, planting, weeding and harvesting, while men ploughed the land at the beginning of the season with cattle or oxen. This dual economy was a well-conceived survival strategy. Cattle provided meat and milk, but they were also vulnerable to disease or theft during wartime. Agriculture provided backup. On the other hand, there might be plant diseases or an exceptionally severe drought, resulting in crop failures. But if the cattle survived they could be sold and food bought.

These dual-economy societies valued cattle highly, as paying a bridegroom in cattle not only secured a wife but also invested in the agricultural sector. Cattle were in effect traded for wives and agricultural labour. However, in some regions of the country, cattle were more valuable than agriculture, leading to a lower bride wealth price. Conversely, in other parts of the country, where cattle were harder to come by and agriculture was paramount, the bride wealth price remained low despite the importance of cattle. There were related variations in cousin marriage rules and other marriage customs. My book, Wives for Cattle, published in 1982, offered a structural comparison of systems of marriage and bridewealth in Southern Africa.

I then undertook a structural analysis of the settlements themselves, drawing on pre-colonial accounts from early missionaries and others. Villages were laid out in a manner reminiscent of Chinese towns, with a strong emphasis on symbolic landmarks. There was a distinct axis running west to east. The west was traditionally associated with death, while the east was linked to birth and life. Intriguingly, despite its association with death, the western part of the village was also considered the most prestigious and was situated at the highest point. If there was a hill in the area, the village would typically be laid out with the chief’s hut located on the hill, while the rest of the huts would be arranged in a semicircle facing towards the east. In the center of the village was a special corral for cattle, particularly oxen. Women were not allowed to enter this area, and men were buried there within the cattle corral. While the overall structure of the villages shared similarities, there were also many differences, with some villages being considerably larger than others.

In the capitals of large kingdoms such as the Swazi or housed thousands of people. However, these settlements adhered to the same principles of east-west, up-down, and inner-outer organization as ordinary villages. The huts themselves also shared these structural features, with clear distinctions in their layout.

My study of traditional settlements caught the attention of archaeologists. They realized that they could trace the same structural patterns back over a thousand years, gaining a deeper understanding of why settlements were arranged in this way. It became clear why cattle were kept at the center of villages and why the settlements were built from high to low, with the most important individuals residing at the top. This structural pattern, now known as the central cattle pattern, became widely accepted among scholars in southern and parts of central Africa. I was very happy about that.

I also delved into other structuralist ideas, particularly those focused on myths and kinship. Structuralists were intrigued by the complex relationships within families and the patterns found in myths and folktales. As I explored further, I realized that many folktales center around dreams. In many societies, there are experts who interpret people's dreams and explain their meanings.

This led me to the idea of examining dreams and dream reports from a structuralist perspective. I began publishing studies that analyzed dreams structurally, including a famous dream by Sigmund Freud known as “The Dream of Irma's Injection.” My analysis was structuralist in nature, rather than psychoanalytic. I also analyzed the dreams reported by people in the villages I studied. So I was becoming more of a structuralist.

In 1985 I moved to England, to head up an interdisciplinary social science department at Brunel University in London. At the same time, I became editor of an international journal, Current Anthropology, which covered cultural anthropology, biological anthropology and prehistoric archaeology. This was the established range of subjects in American anthropology, but as a British trained social anthropologist it was all rather new to me. By this point, I had reached the conclusion that social anthropology could not exist in isolation. It needed to be more interdisciplinary, to be an integral part of the broader social sciences. Therefore, my wife and I embarked on editing an international encyclopedia titled the Social Science Encyclopedia, which was quite successful. It eventually underwent three or four revisions and boasted 500 contributors from social scientists across the globe. In the introduction, I argued that many theories are shared or can be borrowed across all social sciences, and this borrowing can be both useful and productive. This further solidified my commitment to interdisciplinary work.

I now wrote a book, The Chosen Primate: Human Nature and Cultural Diversity (1996), which delved into the interplay between culture and biology. This was a time when “sociobiology” a new theoretical synthesis, emphasized the role of genes in shaping our actions and even beliefs. As I was writing this book, nearing its completion, I received a phone call from Harvard University Press offering to publish it.

My experience with Cultural Anthropology, and a year at a think tank at Stanford University, got me thinking about the role of ‘culture’ as the central concept in American cultural anthropology. British social anthropologists treated culture as a secondary, symbolic elaboration on more fundamental social institutions. Edmund Leach made this point by observing that in England, brides are dressed in white, while widows wear black. In China, brides wear red dresses, and widows wear black. That is the symbolic code. However, in both countries, brides are brides, and widows are widows, in many ways sharing similar social roles. I sorted out my ideas on the subject in the course of a sabbatical year at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, where Clifford Geertz, a prominent American expert in cultural theory, headed the social science unit. The result was Culture: The Anthropologists Account (2000).

In the late 20^th century a novel political and intellectual movement gained ground that I found particularly challenging because it addressed – and criticized – the whole field of kinship studies, traditionally one of the most important areas of study in social anthropology. People ceased focusing solely on kinship and turned their attention to gender relationships and gender studies, often from a feminist perspective. Kinship systems were treated as mechanisms for defining and controlling women. It was argued that gender differences are culturally defined. Biological differences are far less pronounced than were traditionally assumed to be. In reality, they exist on a continuum. While I empathized with the political motivation behind this shift of emphasis, I thought it unnecessary to give up on questions that have occupied kinship studies for a century, as well as the insights gained from comparative studies of various systems. Students were no longer being taught these foundational concepts; they had been removed from the curriculum and replaced by these newer areas of inquiry. So I decided to return to writing about kinship, but with a focus on English kinship.

I conducted a historical study on English kinship, published in 2009 under the title Incest and Influence: The Private Life of Bourgeois England. The title wasn't mine; it was chosen by the editor. This was my third book published by Harvard University Press, and as with the previous two, I struggled immensely with finding the right title. Titles have always been a challenge for me. Even when writing articles, I find crafting an abstract a daunting task, let alone condensing the entire essence of my work into a few words for a title. The pressure to encapsulate an entire book in just a handful of words is often overwhelming. This book on English kinship, cousin marriage, and debates surrounding incest, once again posed a significant problem. In the end, the editor intervened, proposing “Incest and Influence” as the title. He made it clear that it was a take-it-or-leave-it offer; if I didn't accept it, he wouldn't publish the book. Thus, “Incest and Influence” became the title, despite my initial reservations. He had been reading Jane Austen, the renowned English novelist known for her works centered around family life, such as “Sense and Sensibility” and “Pride and Prejudice.” He wanted to emulate the style of Jane Austen's titles and came up with “Incest and Influence.” I acquiesced, and the title stuck.

In 2008, I stopped teaching at. that interdisciplinary department in Brunel University. They said I was too old and that I had to retire. So, I went on to teach at Yale for a semester. Then the London School of Economics (LSE) offered me a position. However, I was a widower. My wife had passed away, and my new partner lived in Boston. I needed to spend part of the year in London and part in Boston. So I arranged to teach the fall semester at Boston University and the spring semester at the LSE. Professor Chen Bo attended my course at the London School of Economics. Professor Shen Yang, who also invited me to speak in China, attended my course at Boston University. I found myself constantly traveling back and forth between London and Boston. Then, COVID-19 struck. I realized that traveling was no longer feasible, so I decided to stop teaching altogether during the pandemic.

I retreated to my home, pondering what to do next. Obviously, I should write another book. For a long time, I had been contemplating the topic of anthropology museums, as they had become embroiled in numerous controversies. Some argued that they were mere vehicles of colonialism and racism, with their exhibits representing stolen artifacts. There was a call for these items to be returned to their rightful owners. These debates fascinated me, and over the course of five years, including the COVID-19 period, I wrote The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions. It was released in Europe in 2023 and in the United States in 2024. I believe that the book is currently being translated into Chinese, though we have yet to hear from the publisher regarding its progress.

That's my story. As you can see, it's a tapestry woven from a series of accidents, political pressures, structural forces emanating from diverse universities, and the ever-shifting winds of political and theoretical fashions within academia. Looking back, I realize that my career has been a succession of serendipitous events, a pilgrim’s progress from country to country, university to university, field to field, and from one political interest to another.

However, I omitted one crucial aspect, which I believe represents a tangible, organizational legacy that I've left behind. In 1989, I became the inaugural president of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, the EASA. The various small European anthropology departments had their own national associations. There was no pan-European organization to unite them. A group of younger anthropologists, in their 40s and 50s, decided to take matters into their own hands. They said, “We will form a European association and put aside the bickering of the old guard in our respective countries. They can join us, but they won't dictate to us. We, as a new generation, will steer this new organization.” Naturally, the initial focus was on Western Europe, as Soviet and East Bloc anthropologists faced significant obstacles in visiting the West during that era. But let me remind you, this all began in 1989. And what else happened in 1989? The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union collapsed.

We were supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, publishers of the journal Current Anthropology, for which I served as editor, allowing me to maintain close ties with them. They were particularly interested in this European Association of Anthropology. They agreed to fund the travel expenses of any Russian, Polish, Czech, and other anthropologists who wished to attend our inaugural conference in Portugal. The news spread, and anthropologists from Russia, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, Slovakia, and other countries piled into small cars and drove across Europe to Portugal. There, we met and suddenly realized that we were part of a vast Europe, far beyond just Western Europe, that also housed anthropologists with whom we could engage, share ideas, and unite. This European Association has been running for a little over 30 years now. Attending their biennial conferences, I have this wonderful feeling of being a part of a new European community that I helped create.

So, if you ask me where I feel that I belong, I would say that I am a Londoner. What kind of anthropologist am I? I'm not sure. But where is my anthropology? I am a member of the EASA; it is my intellectual home. Thank you.

2 The following paragraphs are drawn from Adam Kuper, ‘Post-modernism, Cambridge and the great Kalahari debate’, Social Anthropology, 1992, 1 (1a): pp. 57-71.