Talal Asad’s autobiographical reminiscences

Posted on by Rex

The latest number of the open access (yeah open access!) issue of Religion and Society contains an autobiographical reminiscence by Talal Asad and a series of short appreciations of him by his friends and colleagues. I found Asad’s life story very informative — I’m hardly an expert though, so ymmv. At any rate, the piece features a fine, highly-accurate portrait of him.

Talal Asad, from the open access article “Portrait: Talal Asad”

I am hardly an expert on Talal Asad, but at one point in my history of anthropology class I did do a lecture examining the intertwining lives of Siegfried Nadel and Talal Asad. Both men had Jewish fathers who came from Lemberg, now known as Lviv, in Ukraine. Both went on to become Africanists who conducted fieldwork in the Sudan. Asad was the editor of the classic edited volume Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, whereas Nadel was depicted in that book as the quintessential “government anthropologist” who put social science in the service of colonial domination. Asad is philosophical, humanistic, and still alive. Nadel aspired to an almost algebraic natural science of society and died unexpectedly at the age of 53 just as he was appointed foundation professor of anthropology at the Australian National University and was set to make make his mark on an entire country’s national tradition of anthropology. It’s funny how life works.

Siegfried Nadel, from his Oceania obituary.

Published by Rex

Alex Golub is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He is a political anthropologist who studies kinship, customary land tenure, and the mining and petroleum industry in Papua New Guinea. He also studies the video game World of Warcraft, and is an advocate for open access scholarly communications. His book "Leviathans at the Gold Mine" was published by Duke University Press.