SITW Contents

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction PART ONE         ANCESTORS Chapter 1          Writing the self: a genealogy Chapter 2          Anthropology: forgotten founders Chapter 3          The anti-colonial intellectuals: thinking new worlds PART TWO        SELF Chapter 4          I come from Manchester Chapter 5          The escalator: grammar school and Cambridge Chapter 6          An African apprenticeship Chapter 7          The development industry Chapter 8          […] →Read more

SITW Endorsements

Keith Hart           Self in the World: Connecting Life’s Extremes (Berghahn, Spring 2022) Keith Hart’s Self in the World is the story of a brilliant and sometimes troubled individual, one of the most creative intellectuals of the last 50 years. It is a story of anthropology as an intellectual project and vocation; of Africa, anti-colonial struggle, […] →Read more

Additions for Berghahn SITW page

Endorsements Contents →Read more

A humanist approach to money, markets and technology

I have opened up a new project to disseminate my work and interests. This link is to the first page. There will be pages on other themes — Africa, networks, current writing, cinema & music etc. My daughter Constance, a young design student, is helping me in this project. I hope you enjoy the display […] →Read more

David Graeber (1961-2020)

David Graeber died unexpectedly from a massive haemorrhage of the pancreas in Venice on September 2nd of this year. Obituaries summarize the life of someone who is no longer with us. This is not an obituary in that sense – it is prospective more than retrospective. It is clear that David affected so many people […] →Read more

Writings on Money and Economy (2000-2018)

Compiled for a special part-issue on my work of the Revista Sociologia & Antropologia Rio de Janeiro, 2019.   Published books and articles The Memory Bank: money in an unequal world, Profile Books, London, ix, 340p. Re-published 2001 as Money in an Unequal World: Keith Hart and his memory bank, Texere, New York and London, ix, […] →Read more

A betting man’s reflections on money

A betting man’s reflections on money[1] Keith Hart Abstract Part 1 describes my life as a betting man, starting out as a teenager in Manchester and achieving some success as a student at Cambridge. When asked in 2007 why I took up economic anthropology, I replied that I want to save my family from the […] →Read more

The real economy? The challenge of dialectical method

The real economy? The challenge of dialectical method[1]  Keith Hart[2] Abstract This blatantly introspective essay seeks to trace a path from the postulation of an informal economy as a device of ethnographic realism to participation in virtual reality through the social media. The Human Economy Programme at the University of Pretoria is the dialectical outcome […] →Read more

The roots of modern Europe’s links to classical antiquity through the Arabs

Jairus Banaji has posted a beautiful memoir in Facebook showing the linguistic and practical history of Arab mediation between the ancient Greeks and 13th century Venice with reference to a building allocated to German merchants there (the Fontego dei Todeschi). The task of breaking down the imperialist separation of Europe from its African and Asian […] →Read more

At home in Durban, September 2013, first interview

In September 2103, Alice Sala and Gregoire Mayor, from the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland and on behalf of the multimedia French-language journal ethnographiques.org came to South Africa to film a conference organized by the Human Economy Programme at the University of Pretoria. Afterwards they joined Keith Hart in Durban for three filmed interviews of which […] →Read more