Keith Hart (born in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

) is a British anthropologist and writer living in Paris. His main research has focused on economic anthropology,

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

and the African

diaspora A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews after ...

, and

money Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money ar ...

. He has taught at

universities A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United State ...

including

East Anglia East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in ...

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

and the

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

, as well as at

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

where he was director of the African Studies Centre. He contributed the concept of the

informal economy An informal economy (informal sector or grey economy) is the part of any economy that is neither taxed nor monitored by any form of government. Although the informal sector makes up a significant portion of the economies in developing countri ...

to development studies and has published widely on economic anthropology. He is the author of ''The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World'' and ''Self in the World: Connecting Life's Extremes''. His written work focuses on the national limits of politics in a globalised economy.

Early life and education

Hart was born in Manchester and attended Manchester Grammar School. He later studied at

. He started as classicist before switching to the anthropology of religion, and then studied his PhD at Cambridge in migrant politics in Ghana.Hart, K. (2000). The memory bank: Money in an unequal world. London: Profile.

Prickly Pear Pamphlets

In 1993, Keith Hart and Anna Grimshaw started a small press called Prickly Pear. Together, they published a series of ten pamphlets. "We emulate the passionate amateurs of history who circulated new and radical ideas to as wide an audience as possible," they said. "And we hope in the process to reinvent anthropology as a means of engaging with society." In 2001,

Prickly Paradigm Prickly Paradigm Press is a new incarnation of Prickly Pear Pamphlets, which was started in 1993, in Cambridge, England, by anthropologists Keith Hart and Anna Grimshaw. Together they published a series of ten pamphlets on a range of topics in ...

established itself as a new incarnation of Prickly Pear with Marshall Sahlins as publisher.

Open Anthropology Cooperative

''Open Anthropology Cooperative'' was a social networking site for anthropologists founded by Keith Hart in June 2009 on the Ning. It acquired 8,000 members worldwide in its first decade and opened on Facebook, making a total membership of 22,000 members drawn from professional academics, postgraduates, undergraduates and amateur anthropologists.

Books

*''The Political Economy of West African Agriculture'' (1982) *''The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World'' (2000) *''The Hit Man’s Dilemma: Or Business, Personal and Impersonal'' (2005) *''Market and Society: The Great Transformation Today'' (edited with

Chris Hann Chris Hann (born 4 August 1953) is a British social anthropologist who has done field research in socialist and post-socialist Eastern Europe (especially in Hungary and Poland) and the Turkic-speaking world ( Black Sea coast and Xinjiang, ...

) (2009) *''The Human Economy: A Citizen's Guide'' (edited with Jean-Louis Laville and Antonio David Cattani) (2010) *''Economic Anthropology: History, Ethnography, Critique'' (with Chris Hann) (2011) *''People, Money and Power in the Economic Crisis: Perspectives from the Global South'' (edited with John Sharp) (2014) *''Economy For and Against Democracy'' (editor) (2015) *''Money in a Human Economy'' (editor) (2017) *''Self in the World: Connecting Life's Extremes'' (2022)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hart, Keith British anthropologists Economic anthropologists Living people 1943 births University of Pretoria faculty Academics of Goldsmiths, University of London Academics of the London School of Economics Academics of the University of Cambridge