Keith Hart

is an anthropologist by training and a self-taught economist who lives in Paris with his family. He also has a home in Durban, South Africa. He is Centennial Professor of Economic Anthropology in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and International Director of the Human Economy Program in the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria. He is also Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Keith started out studying classical languages and literature and went on to explore Atlantic society from the point of view of Africans in West Africa, North America, the Caribbean, Britain, France and South Africa. He has taught in a dozen universities on both sides of the Atlantic, for the longest time in Cambridge, where he was Director of the African Studies Centre. He has worked as a consultant, journalist, publisher and gambler.

His interests:

Building a human economy; economic anthropology; money and finance; informal economy; African development; the African diaspora; urbanization; migration; national capitalism; regional integration; the corporations’ drive for independence; the digital revolution in communications; social media; intellectual property and its discontents; history of economic ideas; history of anthropology and social theory; the emergence of world society; world citizenship.

His recent books include Market and Society: The Great Transformation today (2009) and The Human Economy: A citizen’s guide (2010), both co-edited volumes. He wrote Economic Anthropology (2011) with Chris Hann. The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World (2000) and many papers which may be found on this website. His next book will be Africa: The coming revolution, about African development in the twenty-first century.

His life is now defined by the poles of solitary writing and world travel. In this he is sustained by his family and by the virtual social network in his laptop.

Keith among the prickly pears

Curriculum Vitae
List of Publications

Here is a soundbite from a two-hour interview with Alan Macfarlane:

A bottle of Manchester United Chardonnay

Professor Geoffrey Crossick, Warden of Goldsmiths College, introduces Keith Hart’s inaugural lecture, 23rd October 2007

Professor Sophie Day on Keith Hart