Anthropology, Imperialism and Resistance: The Work of Kathleen Gough

Abstract

In November 1991 a group of friends and colleagues of Kathleen Gough came together at the meetings of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago at a symposium titled Anthropology, Imperialism and Resistance: The Work of Kathleen Gough. Six months later a similar group convened at the Canadian Anthropology Society annual meetings in Montreal in May of 1992. This special issue is the result of both symposia.(f.2) Although Kathleen Gough was trained in the heyday of British structural - functionalism, her work guided a radical reshaping of anthropology, and the integrity with which she lived has inspired many anthropologists who came of academic age since the 1960s. The long 1960s decade -- it stretched well into the 1970s -- was a time of infinite possibility when it seemed that global democracy might prevail if we all put our shoulders to the wheel. In the accompanying intellectual ferment progressives called universities to account and challenged knowledge - as - usual to meet criteria of social responsibility. Gough's work was among the first to bring Marxist perspectives to anthropology, to name imperialism and to challenge anthropology's relationship to it. Her individual counsel gave many younger scholars the courage to speak out. However, Kathleen paid a price even in the halcyon days of hope. Today when we see democracy in retreat it is easy to laugh at our optimism, to criticize the intellectual mission along with the particular works it generated. In the academy, scholarly stances of irony and cynicism do just that when they lock progressive ideals along with conventional wisdom, as if they were two varieties of the same intellectual error. Kathleen Gough never abandoned her belief that knowledge can and should serve social justice, however chilly the climate. This volume is a critical appreciation of Kathleen Gough's contributions to that agenda. It constitutes a modest tribute by friends and colleagues to a distinguished and visionary Marxist scholar. In these opening pages we would like to offer a perspective on Kathleen Gough's life and work and to introduce the contributions that make up this volume. Kathleen Gough was born in Hunsingore, Yorkshire, England on August 16, 1925, and died in Vancouver on September 8, 1990. These two dates span a life of extraordinary richness, compassion, and commitment to the cause of social justice.Throughout her life Kathleen Gough struggled for the rights of women, minorities and the oppressed of the Third World. She also made a number of significant contributions to the knowledge, theory and practice of social anthropology. Educated at Girton College, Cambridge, Gough received her B.A. in 1946 and her Ph.D. in 1950. Her doctoral dissertation, Changes in Matrilineal Kinship on the Malabar Coast, was written under the supervision of John Hutton and Meyer Fortes. Kathleen maintained a life - long interest in South Asian social formations, their continuities and their transformations under the forces of Imperialism. Her main period of field work in India in 1947 - 53 was followed by other research trips in the 1970s and 1980s. Trained during the high - water mark period of structural - functionalism, Kathleen embodied the best of that much - maligned tradition: the discipline of long field work, meticulous data gathering and careful generalizations. But operating during an era of catastophic change, she added to her field work agenda the very unBritish and unfunctionalist focus on transformative change in mode of production. Working at the village level Gough dedicated her ethnographic knowledge to the goal of expanding the options people actually had open to them for empowerment. Just as Engels' studies of Manchester led him to Marx and the cause of the proletariat, Kathleen Gough's ground - level studies of the condition of the peasantry in Tanjore led her in turn to the close investigation of and critical support for revolutionary social movements. …