An Academic Skating on Thin Ice

Peter Worsley''s studies at Cambridge were interrupted by war service as a communist officer in the colonial forces in Africa and India, and it was here that he developed a keen interest in anthropology. He work in mass education in Tanganyika and then studied with Max Gluckman at Manchester University. Banned from re-entering Africa, Worsley went to Australia where he was banned once more, this time from New Guinea, yet he did succeed in completing field-research for his Ph.D. on an Australian Aboriginal tribe.

His subsequent book on ''Cargo'' cults in Melanesia is now regarded as a classic, but his left-wing politics ensured that he could not get a job in anthropology, so he switched to sociology, on his return to Manchester.

Peter Worsley’s studies at Cambridge were interrupted by war service as a communist officer in the colonial forces in Africa and India, and it was here that he developed a keen interest in anthropology. He work in mass education in Tanganyika and then studied with Max Gluckman at Manchester University. Banned from re-entering Africa, Worsley went to Australia where he was banned once more, this time from New Guinea, yet he did succeed in completing field-research for his Ph.D. on an Australian Aboriginal tribe.

His subsequent book on ‘Cargo’ cults in Melanesia is now regarded as a classic, but his left-wing politics ensured that he could not get a job in anthropology, so he switched to sociology, on his return to Manchester.

List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Liverpool, My World

Chapter 2. Cambridge and the Army

• Swahili – My Doorway to Africa
• Into India
• Demobilisation

Chapter 3. Peace and the Cold War

• African Resistance
• Max

Chapter 4. Australia: Into the Lion’s Den

• The Aborigines of Groote Eylandt

Chapter 5. Out of Anthropology, into Sociology

• Mau Mau Hell
• Hull and Halifax
• Canadian Interlude

Chapter 6. Manchester University: Upheaval

• Champions!
• The Student Revolution
• Decline and Fall Into China

Chapter 7. Latin America

• Ecuador
• ¡Qué Viva México!
• Brazil

Chapter 8. Globalisation

• Ethnomethodology
• New York, New York!

Chapter 9. London Town

• Peace and War
• New Life and the Third Age
• The Millennium Revisited
• The Fourth Age
• The End of the World?

Notes and References