Kathleen Gough

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Eleanor Kathleen Gough Aberle (born August 16, 1925 in Hunsingore , Yorkshire , England ; died September 8, 1990 in Vancouver , British Columbia , Canada ) was a British anthropologist and feminist known for her work on South Asia and Southeast Asia. As part of her doctoral thesis, she undertook field studies in Malabar , India , from 1947 to 1949 . Further studies followed from 1950 to 1953 and 1976 in Tanjore , India and 1976 and 1982 in Vietnam . Some of her work includes campaigning for nuclear disarmament, civil rights, women's rights, the developing world and the end of the Vietnam War. Because of her Marxist tendencies, she was on the FBI's watch list .

Life

Kathleen Gough was born in 1925 in Hunsingore, a village near Wetherby in Yorkshire, England, which at the time had a population of about 100, no electricity and no piped water supply. Her father Albert Gough was a blacksmith who had to do with the introduction of agricultural machinery and was described by the American anthropologist David Price as a radical representative of the working class ( English working-class radical ).

Kathleen Gough was educated at the Church School in Hunsingore, where she received a scholarship to King James's Grammar School, Knaresborough. In 1943 she went to Girton College , Cambridge . She excelled at Girton in anthropology and followed it up with postgraduate research. She received her Ph.D. 1950 at Girton College. While doing this research, Gough married fellow student Eric John Miller in July 1947. The couple did anthropological fieldwork in Kerala , India, where Gough was looked after by the old-fashioned John Henry Hutton until he retired . Then the modern-thinking Meyer Fortes became her supervisor. Gough and Miller found their marriage weighed down by field research and unanimously decided to divorce in 1950. She completed her PhD in anthropology at Cambridge University that same year and returned to India alone to do further field research.

In 1955 Kathleen Gough married her anthropology colleague David Aberle . In 1990 she died of cancer in Vancouver after a four-month illness and was buried in the Capilano View Cemetery.

Career

Gough's research in India took place from 1947 to 1949 mainly in the Malabar district and from 1950 to 1953 in the Tanjore district . She published five scientific articles in the 1950s. More than half of her work was published in 1961 as Matrilineal Kinship (German: Matrilineare Sippen).

“Her analysis is a brilliant example of the structural-functionalist anthropology associated with Britain in her day, and everyone since has begun from her explanations of matriliny or marumukatayam as descent through the female line. (...) The debates that raged about matriliny, marriage ceremonies, hypergamy, and polyandry after these definitive studies were complex. "

“Your analysis is a brilliant example of the structural-functionalist anthropology associated with the Britain of its time. And since then everyone has begun their declarations of matrilinearity or marumukatayam as descent through the feminine lineage. (…) The debates that raged after these authoritative studies about matrilinearity, marriage ceremonies, hypergamy and polyandry were complex. "

- Heike Moser, Paul Younger : Kerala: Plurality and Consensus 2013

Gough returned to India in 1976. After that visit, most of their research was published. In the same year she visited Vietnam, where she traveled again in 1982.

Kathleen Gough was a lecturer at Brandeis University from 1961 to 1963 , at the University of Oregon from 1963 to 1967, and at Simon Fraser University from 1967 to 1970 . From 1947 until her death in 1990, she worked as an honorary research fellow at the University of British Columbia . Gough has also taught and researched at Harvard University , Manchester University , Berkeley University , University of Michigan , Wayne State University, and Toronto University .

politics

Gough was a Marxist, which is why she got into trouble with various university administrations because of her left-wing political views. She supported Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis and bluntly condemned all police brutality . As a result, most of the agreed trips during her teaching career were canceled. What's more, Gough's membership in the Johnson Forest Tendency and her work for civil rights and against the Vietnam War piqued the interest of the US Department of Justice's FBI , which she and her husband put on their watch list. In addition, Gough was active in peace movements on the Brandeis campus from 1961 to 1963.

Gough supported welfare for the lower castes in India, hoping to teach them the principles of communism . She turned violently against the upper castes, who generally supported right-wing politicians and anti-Marxists.

Works

Kathleen Gough's major works include Ten More Beautiful: The Rebuilding of Vietnam (1978), Rural Society in Southeast India (1981), Rural Change in Southeast India, 1950s – 1980s (1989), and Political Economy in Vietnam (1990).

  • The Traditional Kinship System of the Nayars of Malabar . Harvard University, 1954.
  • Cult of the dead among the Nayars . 1958.
  • Anthropology and Imperialism . Radical Education Project, 1960.
  • Nayar: Central Kerala . University of California Press, 1961.
  • as ed. with DM Schneider: Matrilineal Kinship . University of California, Berkeley 1961.
  • The Decline of the State and the Coming of World Society. An Optimist's View of the Future . Correspondence Publishing Company, 1962.
  • Female Initiation Rites on the Malabar Coast . 1965.
  • Literacy in Traditional Societies . University Press, 1968.
  • Caste in a Tanjore Village . Department of Archeology and Anthropology at the University Press, 1969.
  • The Struggle at Simon Fraser University . Thurston Taylor, 1970.
  • Imperialism and Revolution in South Asia . Monthly Review Press, 1973, ISBN 0-85345-273-3 .
  • The Origin of the Family . New Hogtown Press, 1973.
  • Class developments in South India . Center for Developing-Area Studies, McGill University, 1975.
  • Ten times more beautiful: The Rebuilding of Vietnam . Monthly Review Press, 1978, ISBN 0-85345-464-7 .
  • Dravidian Kinship and Modes of Production . Indian Council of Social Science Research, 1978.
  • Rural Society in Southeast India . Cambridge University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-04019-8 , doi : 10.1017 / CBO9780511557606 (first edition: 1981).
  • Southeast Asia. Facing the Challenge of Socialist Construction . Synthesis Publications, 1986.
  • Rural Change in Southeast India. 1950s to 1980s . Oxford University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-19-562276-6 .
  • Political Economy in Vietnam . Folklore Institute, 1990.
  • Class and Power in a Punjabi Village (Introduction) . Monthly Review Press, New York 1977, ISBN 0-85345-385-3 .
  • Women in Asia . WIRE, New York, NY, OCLC 27419488 .

literature

  • Joan Mencher: Kathleen Gough and Research in Kerala . In: Anthropologica . tape 35 , no. 2 . Canadian Anthropology Society, S. 195-201 , JSTOR : 25605731 (English).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerald D. Berreman: Ethics and Responsibility: Themes in the Life and Work of Kathleen Gough . In: Anthropologica . tape 35 , no. 2 , 1993, p. 249-262 , doi : 10.2307 / 25605738 (English).
  2. ^ A b Ronald Frankenberg: Gough, (Eleanor) Kathleen. In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed February 14, 2017 .
  3. ↑ a b c David H. Price: Threatening Anthropology. McCarthyism and the FBI's Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists . 1st edition. Duke University Press Books, 2004, ISBN 978-0-8223-3326-5 (English).
  4. ^ A b c Richard Lee, Karen Brodkin Sacks: Anthropology, Imperialism and Resistance. The Work of Kathleen Gough . In: Anthropologica . tape 35 , no. 2 , 1993, p. 181-193 , doi : 10.2307 / 25605730 (English).
  5. ^ A b c d Wayne Murdoch: Kathleen Gough - Description. In: UBC Archives. University of British Columbia (UBC), 1992, archived from the original on March 21, 2008 ; accessed on February 14, 2017 (English).
  6. ^ Heike Moser, Paul Younger: Kerala: Plurality and Consensus . In: Peter Berger, Frank Heidemann (Eds.): The Modern Anthropology of India: Ethnography, Themes and Theory . Routledge, 2013, ISBN 1-134-06111-0 , pp. 141 (English).
  7. ↑ Kathleen Aberle. Minnesota State University, June 3, 2010; Archived from the original on June 3, 2010 ; accessed on February 14, 2017 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Gough, Kathleen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gough Aberle, Eleanor Kathleen (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British anthropologist and feminist
DATE OF BIRTH August 16, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Hunsingore , Yorkshire , England
DATE OF DEATH September 8, 1990
Place of death Vancouver , British Columbia , Canada