Raymond Firth in the Antipodes: A “Capacity for Organising and Administration as well as First-Rate Anthropology”

Raymond Firth ‘is remembered today principally as an area specialist and by historians of the discipline as an ‘organization man’. [1] This doesn’t discount his importance as an economic anthropologist, particularly his ‘work on non-industrial economies’. Indeed British anthropologist Maurice Bloch credits him with ‘single-handedly’ creating ‘a British form of economic anthropology, which is still thriving’. [2] John Davis, in an obituary for the British Academy, described him as an ‘organisation man from the 1930s, both in his theory and in his administrative activities. … In administration he was a consistent and fair-minded advocate for anthropology at home and abroad’. [3] It is this aspect – a consistent and fair-minded advocate for anthropology – that we pursue by examining his place in the establishment and development of anthropology in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand.