Table Of ContentParticipant Observers
Berkeley Series in British Studies
Edited by James Vernon
1. The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain, edited by Simon Gunn
and James Vernon
2. Dilemmas of Decline: British Intellectuals and World Politics, 1945–1975,
by Ian Hall
3. The Savage Visit: New World People and Popular Imperial Culture in Britain,
1710–1795, by Kate Fullagar
4. The Afterlife of Empire, by Jordanna Bailkin
5. Smyrna’s Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide, and the Birth of the Middle East,
by Michelle Tusan
6. Pathological Bodies: Medicine and Political Culture, by Corinna Wagner
7. A Problem of Great Importance: Population, Race, and Power in the British
Empire, 1918–1973, by Karl Ittmann
8. Liberalism in Empire: An Alternative History, by Andrew Sartori
9. Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern, by James Vernon
10. Edmund Burke and the Conservative Logic of Empire, by Daniel I. O’Neill
11. Governing Systems: Modernity and the Making of Public Health in England,
1830–1910, by Tom Crook
12. Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britain’s Empire of Camps, 1876–1903, by Aidan Forth
13. Aging in Twentieth-Century Britain, by Charlotte Greenhalgh
14. Thinking Black: Britain, 1964–1985, by Rob Waters
15. Black Handsworth: Race in 1980s Britain, by Kieran Connell
16. Last Weapons: Hunger Strikes and Fasts in the British Empire, 1890–1948,
by Kevin Grant
17. Serving a Wired World: London’s Telecommunications Workers and the Making
of an Information Capital, by Katie Hindmarch-Watson
18. Imperial Encore: The Cultural Project of the Late British Empire, by Caroline Ritter
19. Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire,
by Emily Baughan
20. Cooperative Rule: Community Development in Britain’s Late Empire,
by Aaron Windel
21. Are We Rich Yet? The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Britain, by Amy Edwards
22. Participant Observers: Anthropology, Colonial Development, and the Reinvention
of Society in Britain, by Freddy Foks
Participant Observers
Anthropology, Colonial Development,
and the Reinvention of Society in Britain
Freddy Foks
University of California Press
University of California Press
Oakland, California
© 2023 by Freddy Foks
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Foks, Freddy, 1989– author.
Title: Participant observers : anthropology, colonial development,
and the reinvention of society in Britain / Freddy Foks.
Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press,
[2023] | Series: Berkeley series in British studies ; 22 | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2022027199 (print) | lccn 2022027200 (ebook) |
isbn 9780520390324 (cloth) | isbn 9780520390331 (paperback)
| isbn 9780520390348 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Ethnology—Great Britain—History—20th century.
| Economic development—Great Britain—20th century. |
National characteristics, British. | Great Britain—Colonies—
History—20th century.
Classification: lcc gn308.3.g7 f65 2023 (print) | lcc gn308.3.g7
(ebook) | ddc 306.0941/0904—dc23/eng/20220714
LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2022027199
LC ebook record available at https://l ccn .loc .gov /2022027200
Manufactured in the United States of America
32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Map vii
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
1. Islands and Institutions
Anthropology in Britain and the British Empire in the First
Decades of the Twentieth Century 9
2. Philanthropists and Imperialists
Indirect Rule, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rise
of LSE Anthropology 32
3. Pencils, Schemes and Letters
Fieldwork and Pedagogy in 1930s Social Anthropology 58
4. Popularising the Field
Interwar Anthropologists on the Radio and in Literary Culture 80
5. From Kinship Studies to Community Studies
‘Race Relations’, the ‘Traditional Working-C lass Neighbourhood’
and the ‘Social Network’ in Post- war British Sociology 102
6. The Development Decades
The African Survey, the CSSRC and Three Approaches
to Social Anthropology in the British Empire, 1935–1955 130
7. From Development Economics to the ‘Moral Economy’
At the Margins of Anthropology, Economics and Social History
in the 1950s and 1960s 152
Epilogue 175
Notes 183
Bibliography 229
Index 257
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Acknowledgments
This book argues that academics’ ideas are nurtured by patrons, funders
and colleagues. I could not have written what follows without the la-
bour of others.
Peter Mandler’s advice and encouragement guided this project from
a vague research proposal into the PhD dissertation that formed the
first draft of this book. Over many years he has answered panicked
emails, written endless references, read terrible drafts and suggested re-
finements, and has done so with kindness and gentle encouragement.
Thank you Peter. I wrote my PhD dissertation often with my examiners,
Susan Pedersen and Joel Isaac, in mind. Their combined knowledge and
close reading during my viva prompted me to write what I hope is a
much better book. James Vernon has been a constant source of enthusi-
asm and intellectual inspiration throughout that process of revision and
has kept me on track and open to new ideas. The two reviewers for the
University of California Press were a dream. They both offered ways
to improve the text and a much-n eeded confidence boost in the final
stretch of writing up. At the Press I would like to thank Niels Hooper
and Naja Pulliam Collins for shepherding the manuscript through the
editing process, and my thanks to Jon Dertien and Sharon Langworthy
for their help in preparing the book for publication.
I owe my friends and colleagues so much. Every idea and every word
has been run past multiple people multiple times. My interest in social
anthropology was sparked by Rev. Rupert Demery, who showed some
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