Ageing with Anthropology

Abstract

The paper will argue that social anthropology, as an intellectual discipline, is ageing alongside its practitioners. In my case, I have been ageing with social anthropology since my university years (1962-1967). My teachers were Ladislav Holý, Milan Stuchlík, and Dmitri A. Ol’derogge. However, at the same time, I formed myself as a social anthropologist through self-study, specifically in the library of the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences in Leningrad. Another factor was criticism of dogmatic Marxism, particularly the renewed discussions about the Asiatic Mode of Production. That was long before the arrival of anthropological Marxism in the West. The critical approach to the problematic of the state, in fact, the early state (the term I have coined in discussions with my Dutch older colleague, Henri (nicknamed Hans) Claessen), was derived from both firsthand experience with the communist state dictatorship and the study of African state formation. The paper discusses the vicissitudes of my anthropological career as they developed, reflecting both theoretical shifts in social anthropology and world politics during the decades of my life.