Social change in Eastern Liberia
No one knows better than the people of Liberia what it feels like to live in a ‘failed state’. Until the late 1970s, Liberia was a very peaceful country, by the standards of the region, albeit marked by an almost apartheid-like division in wealth and life chances between settlers and indigenes (hundreds of small and independent language units very loosely gathered into a dozen larger ‘tribes’). Never colonised by a European power, Liberia’s social history contrasted strikingly with its West African neighbours…
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Crime and the British military in the 20th century
In 1947 the Home Office published a survey of the Criminal Statistics for England and Wales between 1939 and 1945. On the first page it declared: “In times of peace when the number of persons serving in the Armed Forces is comparatively small, the number of ordinary crimes, such as thefts, frauds, etc., dealt with by courts martial is also small…”
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Environmental history of the Firth of Forth
How, in a European estuary like the Firth of Forth, does rich and changing biodiversity exist alongside human use? How has it been affected by it over the centuries? Scientists and conservationists generally consider the ‘natural’ to be a pre-human state, and so may fail to appreciate the degree to which a vibrant modern eco-system can also be partly the consequence of economic history…
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Industry and inequality in central India
My project is concerned with social transformations brought about by industrialisation in and around the central Indian steel town of Bhilai, where I have been doing anthropological fieldwork since 1993. Its focus is on differences between the working lives of those employed in public and private sector factories…
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