Lucy Mair

Lucy Philip Mair (28 January 1901 – 1 April 1986) was a British anthropologist. She wrote on the subject of social organization, and contributed to the involvement of anthropological research in governance and politics. Her work on colonial administration was influential.

Career

Mair read Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, graduating with a BA in 1923. In 1927 she joined the LSE, studying social anthropology under Bronisław Malinowski, and commenced ethnographic fieldwork in Uganda in 1931. At Malinowski's direction she spent her time in Uganda studying social change, She began lecturing at LSE the same year. After publishing An African People in the Twentieth Century (1934), Mair received another fellowship, from the International African Institute, for a field trip in the mandated territory of North Western Tanganyika (Tanzania) for 1936–1937. During that time she was also approached to work for the Chatham House Africa Research Survey. On the eve of World War II, her teaching covered "topics all central to British colonial strategy in the context of rival empires and anti-colonial resistance."

She later joined the Royal Institute for International Affairs with the outbreak of World War II.

In 1943 she moved to the Ministry of Information, then at the war's end took a job training Australian administrators for work in Papua New Guinea.

Books The protection of minorities; The working and scope of the minorities treaties under the League of Nations, Christophers, 1928 An African people in the twentieth century, G. Routledge and Sons, 1934 Welfare in the British colonies, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1944 Australia in New Guinea, Chponeismalditosrs, 1948 Native administration in central Nyasaland, HMSO, 1952 Studies in applied anthropology, Athlone, 1957 Safeguards for democracy, Oxford University Press, 1961 Primitive government, Penguin Books, 1962 The Nyasaland Elections of 1961, Athlone Press, 1962 New nations, University of Chicago Press, c1963 An introduction to social anthropology, Clarendon Press, 1965 The new Africa, Watts, 1967 African marriage and social change, Cass, 1969 Anthropology and social change, Athlone, 1969 Native policies in Africa, Negro Universities Press, 1969 Witchcraft, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969 The Bantu of Western Kenya: with special reference to the Vugusu and Logoli, published for the International African Institute by Oxford U.P., 1970. Marriage, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1971 African societies, Cambridge University Press, 1974 African Kingdoms, Clarendon Press, 1977 Anthropology and Development, Macmillan, 1984

Royal Anthropological Institute Mair was throughout her working life closely involved with the Royal Anthropological Institute: