Full Description
"Anthropology
is a child of Western imperialism," asserted the Marxist anthropologist
Kathleen Gough in 1968, during an intense period of anti-colonial struggle in
Asia and Africa. Since then, this assertion, now largely taken for granted
within the discipline, has become more well-known than the intellectual who
articulated it. A Radical Anthropologist: The Trials and Triumphs of Kathleen
Gough tells the story of a scholar who, like many of her female peers, has
been largely overlooked by history in spite of her striking contributions to
her field. In her day, in the face of rampant sexism, she was an
internationally renowned intellectual and political activist, publishing some
seventy articles and ten books.
With clear and empathetic prose, author Sandra Lindemann, herself an
anthropologist, invites us to trace the arc of a life lived according to the
values of a radical anthropologist. Born in England in 1925 as the youngest
daughter of the village blacksmith, Gough entered the world of higher
education on scholarship and continued into academia with a pronounced sense
of fairness and justice. Her outspokenness in favor of civil rights and
against nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War led to her placement on an FBI
watch list, and institutional reactions to her progressive views disrupted
her career trajectory on several occasions. She fielded the array of
obstacles presented by workplace misogyny, only to find herself fired from
some jobs and compelled, on principle, to resign from others. Eventually she
withdrew from academia altogether to become an independent radical scholar,
but not before her painstaking fieldwork in South India on marriage, class,
and caste reshaped the anthropological understanding of these critical social
relationships, and helped to transform the world of academia she had left
behind. Through it all, she maintained her fierce dedication to the
liberation of workers and peasants—whether in India, Vietnam, or anywhere in
the world people were oppressed. With the rise of fascism in the United
States, and the unleashing of malign forces around the world, more than ever
before those who struggle for justice are searching for examples of how to
live a politically relevant life: Kathleen Gough's is such a life. Fervently
anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist, Gough lived her life
keeping a Marxist vision of a better, more peaceful, more equitable world in
clear view at all times, never losing faith that such a world was within
reach.
