Anthropology and Imperialism Revisited

'Anthropology and Imperialism' Revisited Kathleen Gough An article by the author in this journal in the late sixties noted that western anthropologists had neglected the study of imperialism as a world system. The author suggests below that this has been remedied, as various social and political movements catalysed a corpus of social science literature and debate. This article examines demographic and economic indicators to highlight the changing character of developed and less developed capitalist and socialist countries and its significance for social scientists, IN 1967 I wrote a paper, 'New Proposals for Anthropologists', for the Southwestern States Anthropological Association meeting in San Francisco. I couldn't think of a journal in the United States that might be likely to publish it, and it was published in Economic and Political Weekly. Monthly Review republished it in 1968 as 'Anthropology and Imperialism', after which it was translated into several languages and reprinted many times.