The British Addendum

by Alex

Two more scholars who got the nod as a result of my post of “popular ethnographies”:http://alex.golub.name/log/index.php?p=324, both from University of London affiliated schools.

Over at “Goldsmiths”:http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/ (who, by the way, get kudos for using the excellent “moodle”:http://moodle.org/ for their online stuff) I’ve been pointed to “Rebecca Cassidy”:http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/departments/anthropology/staff/r-cassidy.php, who studies ideas of ‘nature’, blood, and heredity in racehorse breeding and training and class, race, kinship and gender amongst racing professionals. Her first book, “The Sport of Kings”:http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=052100487X is available through Cambridge, which is good because all of the articles she’s published have been in journals that are utterly, utterly unavailable to me. My knowledge of the UK scene is very partial, but Rebecca’s project seems to me to fit into the whole Carsten/Strathern thing in a very very ingenious way and I’d love to read some of her stuff.

Meanwhile, over at “SOAS”:http://www.soas.ac.uk/ we have “David Mosse”:http://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staffinfo.cfm?contactid=95, who wins the award for ‘academic who looks the most like Willem Dafoe in his staff photo’. His book “The Rule of Water”:http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Politics/ComparativePolitics/IndiaPakistan/?view=usa&ci=0195661370 looks like it combines anthro with natural resource management and more poli sci type stuff — part of the anthropology of development which is yet _another_ area I’d like to read up on.