Adam Jonathan Kuper (born 29 December 1941) is a British social anthropologist.
Background
Kuper was the son of Simon Meyer Kuper and Gertrude Hesselson. Born in Johannesburg, Kuper was the first president of the European Association of Social Anthropology. He was a visiting professor at Boston University, 2011–14, and a Centennial Professor, London School of Economics, from 2013-14 where he still holds a visiting appointment.
He has lived in Muswell Hill for over 40 years.
Research
In the early 1970s Kuper did fieldwork in Jamaica, on attachment to the National Planning Agency in the Office of the Prime Minister. However his main ethnographic focus continued to be the societies of Southern Africa, on which he has published several books. In 1973 he published a history of British social anthropology, and since then he has continued to study and publish on the intellectual history of anthropology, including critical studies on the idea of "primitive society" and of "culture", and on the development of museums of anthropology. He was awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Grant for two years (2003-5) which allowed him to spend more time on research. The topic was cousin marriage and incest in nineteenth century England.
He has supervised many PhD students on Southern African ethnography, history of anthropology, family business, and kinship.
Retirement dispute
In January 2009 it was revealed that Brunel had reneged on an agreement to let him stay until 2010. Instead, he was forcibly retired in late 2008, just after the census date for publications submitted to the Research Assessment Exercise had passed. Kuper responded by suing the university for breach of contract. In 2011, employment laws were changed to permit phased retirements past the age of 65. This was because of changes to the 2006 Employment (Age) Regulations making mandatory retirement imposed by the employer unlawful.
Selected publications
- Wives for Cattle: Bridewealth and Marriage in Southern Africa, (Routledge, 1982)
- The Invention of primitive society: Transformations of an Illusion, (Routledge, 1988)
- The Chosen Primate: Human Nature and Cultural Diversity, (Harvard University Press, 1994)
- Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School, (Routledge, 3rd edn, 1996)
- The Social Science Encyclopaedia Adam Kuper, Jessica Kuper (eds.). (Taylor & Francis, 1996)
- Culture: The Anthropologists' Account, (Harvard University Press, 1999)
- Incest and Influence: The Private Life of Bourgeois England, (Harvard, 2009, )
- The Museum of Other People. From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions, (Profile Books, 2023, )