Boundaries of Memory and Anthropology

Abstract

The history of anthropology is a growing field of study within the discipline itself. Our series 'Key Informants on the History of Anthropology' contributes to the discussion of how anthropology, as it is understood and practised today, evolved and took shape. In the following invited contribution Sandra Wallman uses her experience of fieldwork in the Italian Alps in the 1970s to reflect on the essential fuzziness of our categorial boundaries--between then and now, us and them, participant and observer, etc. Professor Sandra Wallman has also done fieldwork in Lesotho, London, Turin, Uganda and Zambia. She has worked in the universities of Amsterdam, Bristol, LSE, Stockholm and Toronto. From 1993 to 1997 she was chair of the (GB) Association of Social Anthropologists. Widely published on a range of contemporary issues, her books include Take out Hunger (1969), Eight London Households (1984), Kampala Women Getting By (1996), and the edited volumes Perceptions of Development (1977), Ethnicity at Work (1979), Social Anthropology of Work (1979), and Contemporary Futures (1992).