Professor Susan Bayly has been honoured with the publication of a collection of essays edited by former students and colleagues from the Department. Entitled An Anthropology of Intellectual Exchange: Interactions, Transactions and Ethics in Asia and Beyond, the book was developed to mark Professor Bayly’s retirement. As well as recognising her landmark scholarly work on both Vietnam and India, it builds on her pioneering analyses of social transformations and intercultural encounters to make a distinctly anthropological intervention into a cutting-edge field of interdisciplinary enquiry: the study of intellectual exchange.
In their introduction to the book, the editors – Jacob Copeman, Nick Long, Lam Minh Chau, Joanna Cook, and Magnus Marsden – note how anthropological perspectives have a huge amount to add to the work on intellectual exchange currently being undertaken in the fields of archaeology, education, and history. Anthropologists draw on a diverse range of ethnographic materials in order to challenge received wisdoms as to what and who counts as ‘intellectual’. Moreover, there is a vast canon of anthropological writings – from undergraduate reading list staples such as Mauss and Levi-Strauss to contemporary works on the anthropology of interactions and ethics – that anthropologists can use to shed light on what is happening, and to what effect, during moments of intellectual exchange.
The book’s chapters cover a range of fascinating topics, including the reception of non-Marxist anthropological theory in socialist Vietnam, the ways drumming becomes an instrument of intellectual exchange in West Bengal, and the predicaments and perils facing Mongolians and Indonesians who travel overseas in search of knowledge. The book has been published open access, meaning it can be accessed and downloaded for free from the publisher’s website, here.
The editors presented Professor Bayly with a copy of the book at the conclusion of a major international conference held at Christ’s College in September 2023, which brought together distinguished scholars from several countries, including three eminent anthropologists from Vietnam.
Professor Bayly said, ‘I’m thrilled beyond measure by the marvellous volume to which so many distinguished friends and colleagues have contributed. The editors have done remarkable things to make it all come together as a truly ground-breaking contribution to the field, with immense potential for continuing development in its exploration of intellectual exchange as concept, process and dynamic in a wonderfully diverse array of Asian contexts. And it’s an honour, I can’t begin to feel I deserve that they have wanted to associate the concerns of my own research with that exciting new agenda they’re setting in train.’
Sunil Amrith, Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History at Yale University, wrote in his foreword to the volume,
‘It is fashionable to talk about boundary-crossing scholarship; Susan Bayly embodies it. Her oeuvre sits at the fruitful intersection between History and Social Anthropology – deeply archival yet richly ethnographic; conceptually sophisticated, yet never losing sight of the everyday. It has also crossed the borders of area studies – between the study of South and Southeast Asia – earlier and more boldly than many others. This volume is a tribute to her enormous influence on multiple fields. In keeping with the spirit of Susan Bayly’s work, it is a volume that looks forward as much as back: it is pushing the frontiers of inquiry, towards a new history and anthropology of intellectual exchange.’