Celebrating LSE’s 120th Anniversary in the Department of Anthropology

On Friday, 11 December 2015, as part of the celebrations for the LSE’s 120th anniversary, the Department of Anthropology will hold a one-day event to explore its history in the formative period of Malinowski’s leadership and the years immediately after. In the 1930s, Malinowski, together with his younger colleagues and research students, who mostly worked in Africa, established the LSE department as the home of the new, fieldwork-based, functionalist social anthropology that would become dominant in Britain in the following years. Although several historians of British anthropology have described Malinowski’s achievements and their importance, most practising anthropologists have only a rough idea about them and, perhaps especially in LSE, Malinowski is often little more than a legendary name. Through a series of short talks and exhibits, designed to inform and entertain both anthropologists and others interested in the LSE’s history, this event will explore the department between the early 1930s and the 1950s, looking at some topics that have been thoroughly investigated by historians, as well as others that have not.

PROGRAMME

9:30 – 9:40: welcome/introduction by Katy Gardner, Head of Department

9:40 – 10:30: Michael Young’s new chapter on Malinowski at the LSE (read by Catherine Allerton in his absence) and with Adam Kuper’s commentary

10:30 – 11: coffee break

11 – 11:30: Michael Cox on the place of Anthropology in the LSE, c. 1930-1950

11:30 – 12: Sherry Ortner on Hortense Powdermaker, LSE PhD 1928

12 – 12:30: Jean La Fontaine on Audrey Richards, LSE PhD 1930

12:30 – 1:30 lunch

1:30 – 2: Chris Fuller on Anthropology and the LSE’s links with India and China

2 – 2:30: Stephan Feuchtwang on Fei Hsiao-t’ung, China, LSE PhD 1938

2:30 – 3: Filippo Osella on A. Aiyappan, India, LSE PhD 1937

3 – 3:30: coffee break

3:30 – 4: David Mills on what happens after Malinowski leaves the LSE

4 – 4:30: Adrian Mayer, LSE PhD 1953 on being a PhD student at the LSE + the seminar

4:30 – 5:15: Maurice Bloch on the Department in more recent times with commentaries and a round table discussion by Laura Bear and Hans Steinmuller