The Enigma of Max Gluckman

"If you are curious about this innovative South African anthropologist and the foundations of twentieth-century social science, let alone British social anthropology in the colonial period and after, this volume provides unique insights."—Robin Palmer, Anthropology Southern Africa
"This book offers an authoritative perspective into the life and day-to-day thoughts of the eminent anthropologist and convener of the 'Manchester School,' Max Gluckman."—Toby Leon Moorsom, International Journal of African Historical Studies
“The Enigma of Max Gluckman is a masterwork. With an eye for telling detail, Gordon has crafted a biography of Max Gluckman that reveals the deep humanity and idiosyncratic research of a pioneering anthropologist who studied community and defied convention.”—Benedict Carton, Robert T. Hawkes Professor of History at George Mason University and author of Blood from Your Children
“Robert Gordon does an excellent job of examining the broader intellectual, social, and political milieus in which Max Gluckman worked. Every paragraph is bursting with previously unknown aspects of Gluckman’s scholarship and personal life. This volume will appeal to all professional anthropologists with an interest in the history of our discipline and to those interested in African history and colonial politics as well.”—Cameron B. Wesson, Lucy G. Moses Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Lehigh University and author of Historical Dictionary of Early North America
“A rich account of Max Gluckman’s family background and his political and educational formation. A particularly fascinating section deals with Gluckman’s research in Zululand in the 1930s.”—Adam Kuper, visiting professor of anthropology at Boston University and author of Anthropology and Anthropologists: The British School in the Twentieth Century
“Robert Gordon's book on Max Gluckman is a much-needed and brilliant biography of a major anthropologist whose work is brought to life in the process. Gordon places Gluckman’s intellectual originality and leadership in the context of the icons of his time, his friends and teachers, Evans-Pritchard, Myer Fortes, Malinowski, and A. R. Radcliffe Brown. Gordon demonstrates, in ways that have not been fully recognized, the powerful reorientation of anthropology toward a historical and global analysis of colonial processes that was led by Max. Among its outstanding contributions, the book provides enlightening new interpretations of the roots of political anthropology which resonate in crucial ways with contemporary debates in the field and beyond.”—Ida Susser, past president of the American Ethnological Society and fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Van Mildert College, Durham University
“Gordon is a leading scholar of the history of anthropology and a master of the anecdote, who excels in bringing to light unknown and forgotten aspects of the past. In this biography he turns his attention to Max Gluckman, one of the most influential, but at the same time, controversial, anthropologists of modern times. The result is fascinating reading, which deepens our understanding of the social relations embodied in anthropological work.”—Isak Niehaus, senior lecturer in anthropology at Brunel University London and author of Witchcraft and a Life in the New South Africa