Self in the World

Keith Hart’s research has been on economic anthropology, Africa, money and the internet. He contributed the concept of informal economy to development studies. His books include The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World (Profile, 2000) and the edited volume Money in a Human Economy (Berghahn, 2017). He has taught on four continents and co-founded the Human Economy Programme in Pretoria.

“The book contains many jaw-dropping moments. These come from the author’s depth of insight on the brutal logic of globalized apartheid, for instance, or the role of modern universities as bureaucracies for managing national capitalism…Hilarious, sometimes devastating stories are recounted with wit alongside piercing summaries of intellectual works, historical episodes, and speculative, utopian hopes.” • History of Anthropology Review“This is a work of great originality. Keith Hart has had an unorthodox academic career and it has liberated him in many ways from academic pieties. The book is full of surprises and mind-shifting observations. I actually couldn't put it down.” • Sherry B. Ortner“For decades, Keith Hart has been our guide through the contradictions and cohabitations that help us become what we are—human, whatever that may come to mean. This remarkable memoir takes the reader on a life’s journey with a purpose and passion to do nothing less than reorganize how we think in and on the world. This is a profoundly hopeful text.” • Bill Maurer“Here is a fat sandwich with a rich filling that tells his own story as no other anthropologist could: a streetwise journey from Manchester to Paris via Cambridge and a dozen other key locations worldwide. To call it picaresque risks giving the Picaroon pirates a bad name. The young Hart made his name with self-consciously scholarly works where “I had to convert all my stories into the third person”. Now he does the opposite and we get lifelong learning distilled magically into a compelling first-person narrative.” • Peter Clarke“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 also a story of anthropology as an intellectual project and vocation; of Africa, anti-colonial struggle, and digital revolution; even of life in Manchester, Paris, and Durban. It is moving, informative, engaging and, indeed, important.” • Craig Calhoun

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsChronologyIntroductionPart I: AncestorsChapter 1. Writing the Self: A GenealogyChapter 2. Anthropology's Forgotten FoundersChapter 3. The Anti-Colonial Intellectuals: Thinking New WorldsPart II: SelfChapter 4. I Come From ManchesterChapter 5. The Escalator: Grammar School and CambridgeChapter 6. An African ApprenticeshipChapter 7. The Development IndustryChapter 8. Learning to Fly in AmericaChapter 9. Back to Cambridge; Caribbean InterludeChapter 10. When the World TurnedChapter 11. Restart in Paris and DurbanChapter 12. Health ProblemsPart III: WorldChapter 13. Movement and the Globalization of ApartheidChapter 14. An Anthropologist in the Digital RevolutionChapter 15. Economies Connecting Local and Global HumanityChapter 16. Africa 1800-2100: Waiting for EmancipationPart IV: Lifelong LearningChapter 17. After the British Empire: Politics and EducationChapter 18. Explorations in Transnational HistoryChapter 19. Money is How We Learn to Be More Fully HumanChapter 20. Learning, Remembering and SharingAfterword: What Question is This the Answer To?Appendix: Hart Papers Online (By Year)ReferencesIndex