Jack Goody's book explores the development of the discipline of social anthropology through its key practitioners and how far its concerns interacted with the political and ideological debate of the interwar years. It is a study of the different ideological and intellectual approaches adopted by the emerging subject of social anthropology and how far these views were incorporated into and defined by the structures and institutions in which they developed. However it is also an analysis of how far the subject was created by its own response to key issues of the time: colonialism - specifically Africa, anti-Semitism and communism. Goody's approach is characteristically personal: Malinowski dominates the discussion, as well as Fortes, Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard, and his own experience, gathered over a wide-ranging life of fieldwork informs the conclusion of the book.

"Goody sheds a new, bright light on the origins and early development of British social anthropology." Choice

"...a valuable contribution to the history of British social anthropology and thus to the general cultural history of Britain in this century....they offer a wonderfully illuminating and provocative account of a central intellectual enterprise in twentieth century Britain." Thomas William Heyck, American Historical Review