Academic staff

Modules taught

 

• U20104 Introduction to Social Anthropology
• U20122 Anthropology of Art
• U20127 European Societies
• U21070 Anthropology at Work

 

Supervision

My present research students work on: social dimensions of the red kite reintroduction programme in Oxfordshire, and of the rise of wild boar numbers in the Forest of Dean; post-disaster reconstruction, via the anthropology of food, in Tohoku province, Japan; anthropological aspects of the work of Basque sculptor Jorge Oteiza.

Previous research students have worked on: the effects of EU grants on sociopolitical leadership in Donegal, north Ireland; Oxford homeless and their receiving organisations; the reception to and evolving uses of Japanese lacquerware in Western Europe since the 15th century; folk museumlife in Wales.

My interests are broad: I have written, do research, and supervise on: anthropologies of sport, art, and food; island Melanesia and Western Europe (especially Vanuatu, the Basque Country, Spain, and the West of Ireland); popular anthropology; history of anthropology; nationalism; research methods and ethics; the interface of social and biological anthropologies. I am ready to supervise research students on most of these topics.

My present research students work on: social dimensions of the red kite reintroduction programme in Oxfordshire, and of the rise of wild boar numbers in the Forest of Dean; post-disaster reconstruction, via the anthropology of food, in Tohoku province, Japan; anthropological aspects of the work of Basque sculptor Jorge Oteiza.

Previous research students have worked on: the effects of EU grants on sociopolitical leadership in Donegal, north Ireland; Oxford homeless and their receiving organisations; the reception to and evolving uses of Japanese lacquerware in Western Europe since the 15th century; folk museumlife in Wales.

NB: much of my work can be accessed via my page on academia.edu: https://oxfordbrookes.academia.edu/JMacClancy

 

Books

• MacClancy J, Anthropology in the Public Arena: Historical and Contemporary Contexts, Wiley-Blackwell (2013)
  ISBN: 978-1-118-47550-8
  
• MacClancy J, Fuentes A, Ed., Ethics in the Field: Contemporary Challenges, Berghahn (2013)
  ISBN: 978-0-85745-962-6 eISBN: 978-0-85745-963-3
  Website 
• MacClancy J, Fuentes A, Centralizing fieldwork: critical perspectives from primatology, biological and social anthropology, Berghahn (2010)
  ISBN: 9781845456900
  Abstract Fieldwork is a central method of research throughout anthropology, a much-valued, much-vaunted mode of generating information. But its nature and process have been seriously understudied in biological anthropology and primatology. This book is the first ever comparative investigation, across primatology, biological anthropology, and social anthropology, to look critically at this key research practice. It is also an innovative way to further the comparative project within a broadly conceived anthropology, because it does not focus on common theory but on a common method. The questions asked by contributors are: what in the pursuit of fieldwork is common to all three disciplines, what is unique to each, how much is contingent, how much necessary? Can we generate well-grounded cross-disciplinary generalizations about this mutual research method, and are there are any telling differences? Co-edited by a social anthropologist and a primatologist, the book includes a list of distinguished and well-established contributors from primatology and biological anthropology.

Journal articles

• MacClancy J, 'Before and beyond Brexit: political dimensions of UK lifestyle migration'
  Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 25 (2) (2019)
  ISSN: 1359-0987 eISSN: 1467-9655
  Abstract

  Lifestyle migration is a now-established section within the anthropology of migration, and interdisciplinary migration studies, usually justified by its extensive and increasing spread, globally.  Yet, bar a few exceptions, the political behaviour of lifestyle migrants has been relatively neglected. I redress this imbalance by critically comparing two overlapping processes where British migrants to Spain act politically: elected councillors in town-halls; campaigning anti-Brexit activists. This pair is as comparable as it is contrastive. In theoretical terms, I argue that modern versions of practice theory are a useful mode for analysing municipal activity by foreign agents, while the Brexit process, because novel, fast-paced, and open-ended, is better understood via Isin’s ‘enactment of citizenship’ approach. Both explanatory modes are powerful, have perspectival slants, and are best applied to different contexts and styles of contest: practice theorists research how people work with change; Isinians, how they produce it. The paper also furthers the anthropology of citizenship by investigating a case where the link between citizenship of a country as a prerequisite for legitimate political activity in it is broken.
  

  Website 
• MacClancy J, 'Transcending the academic/public divide in the transmission of theory: Raglan, diffusionism, and mid-century anthropology'
  History and Anthropology 28 (2) (2017) pp.235-253
  ISSN: 0275-7206
  Abstract

  Diffusionism has had a bad press, for dark reasons: time for a revaluation. Via an analysis of the productive yet neglected career of that incisive hyperdiffusionist, Lord Raglan, I investigate why would-be hegemons in postwar British anthropology misrepresented or dismissed the power of this paradigm. In fact diffusionism, though declared moribund, did not die but remained a potent explanatory mode for decades, especially in anthropological circles outside Academe. I conclude questioning the life of theory in our discipline, and the conventional historiography of British anthropology. 
  

  Website 
• Macclancey J, 'Cutting and covering up ethnographica: The culture of curatorship'
  Journal of the Association of Social Anthropologists 8 (1) (2013) pp.--
  ISSN: 2073-4158
  Abstract

  Anthropologists of ethnographic museums have neglected to study how the items in their collections have been altered. I here investigate one telling variant: the loinclothing or emasculation of male figures, by whom, when, where, why, to what consequence. The results of my survey indicate that especially curators had complex relationships with their objects. Yet they have tended to remain silent about these changes. I discuss internal reasons for the neglect of this topic and for this silence, which uncovers a broader, previously neglected side to museum studies yet to be illuminated.

• MacClancy J, 'Nakomaha: a Counter-colonial Life and Its Contexts. Anthropological Approaches to Biography'
  Oceania 77 (2007) pp.191-214
  ISSN: 0029-8077
  
• Macclancy J, 'Revitalization or Continuity in European Ritual? The Case of San Bessu'
  Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3 (1) (1997) pp.61-78
  ISSN: 1359-0987 eISSN: 1467-9655
  Abstract This article argues against Boissevain's thesis that many European rituals have recently undergone rivitalization after a post-war period of deritualization. We analyse, as a counter-example to Boissevain's thesis, a ritual which has displayed a remarkable degree of continuity over the last eighty years. We suggest that this counter-example is not an isolated one, and that Boissevain's position only appears convincing because it relies on excessively limiting notions, ultimately derived from Durkheim, of ritual and deritualization.Website 
• MacClancy J, Parkin R, 'Revitalization Or Continuity in European Ritual? the Case of San Bessu'
  Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3 (1997) pp.61-78
  ISSN: 1359-0987
  

Book chapters

• MacClancy J, 'Plodding towards prosopograhy: Oxford anthropology from 1976 on' in de Pina-Cabral J, Bowman G (ed.), After society: anthropological trajectories out of Oxford, Berghahn (2020)
  ISBN: 9781789207682 eISBN: 9781789207699
  Abstract

  My aim is to introduce prosopography to the history of anthropology, by comparing the trajectories of two cohorts of taught anthropology postgraduates who started at the Institute in Oxford in the mid-1970s and the late 1980s. My objectives are to see what this comparison might tell us about students’ initial hopes and their subsequent career paths.  This should give us an at least reasonable idea of what effect, where relevant, the Thatcherite cuts of the 1980s did, and did not have on the fulfillment of their aspirations. As far as I am aware, this is the first attempt to apply prosopography, even a rudimentary version, to a department of anthropology.
  

  Website 
• MacClancy J, 'Anthropology and public service' in MacClancy J (ed.), Anthropology and public service: the UK experience, Berghahn (2017)
  Website 
• MacClancy J, 'Down with identity! Long live humanity!' in Thomas H Eriksen (ed.), Identity destabilised: Living in an overheated world, Pluto (2017)
  ISBN: 9780745399126
  
• MacClancy J, Fuentes A, 'Centralizing fieldwork' in Centralizing fieldwork: critical perspectives from primatology, biological and social anthropology, Berghahn (2010)
  ISBN: 9781845456900
  
• MacClancy J, 'Popularizing fieldwork: examples from primatology and biological anthropology' in Centralizing fieldwork: Critical perspectives from primatology, biological and social anthropology, Berghahn (2010)
  ISBN: 9781845456900
  

Conference papers

• MacClancy J, 'Navarra: Historical Realities, Present Myths, Future Possibilities'
  Basque Politics and Nationalism on the Eve of the Millennium (2002) pp.127-154
  

Reviews

• MacClancy J, review of Possessed Prose, in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16 (2010) pp.901-904ISSN: 1359-0987
  Website 
• MacClancy J, review of War, Judgment, and Memory in the Basque Borderlands 1914-1945, in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16 (2010) pp.698-699ISSN: 1359-0987
  
• MacClancy J, review of Market Day in Provence, in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (2009) pp.641-642ISSN: 1359-0987
  
• MacClancy J, review of The Restaurants Book: Ethnographies of Where We Eat, in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (2009) pp.214-215ISSN: 1359-0987
  
• MacClancy J, review of Woman and Eta. the Gender Politics of Radical Basque Nationalism, in Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 10 (2008) pp.256-258ISSN: 1461-3190
  
• MacClancy J, review of Skin: a Natural History, in Anthropological Quarterly 80 (2008) pp.1199-1201ISSN: 0003-5491 eISSN: 1534-1518
  
• MacClancy J, review of Art As Politics: Recrafting Identities, Tourism, and Power in Tana Toraja, Indonesia, in Australian Journal of Anthropology 18 (2008) pp.351-352ISSN: 1035-8811 eISSN: 1757-6547
  
• MacClancy J, review of The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink, in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14 (2008) pp.434-435ISSN: 1359-0987
  
• MacClancy J, review of The Literary Image of Anthropologists, in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11 (2005) pp.549-575ISSN: 1359-0987
  
• MacClancy J, review of The Most Offending Soul Alive - Tom Harrisson and His Remarkable Life, in Tls-the Times Literary Supplement (2002) pp.3-4ISSN: 0307-661X
  
• MacClancy J, review of High Art Down Home: An Economic Ethnography of a Local Art Market., in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4 (1998) pp.361-361ISSN: 1359-0987
  
• MacClancy J, review of Kitchens: the Culture of Restaurant Work - Fine,ga, in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3 (1997) pp.379-380ISSN: 1359-0987