Judith Okely

Last updated

Judith Melita Okely (born 1941) is a British anthropologist who is best known for her ethnographic work with the traveller gypsies of England. She is an Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Hull and Research Affiliate of the School of Anthropology, University of Oxford. [1] Her research interests encompass fieldwork practice, gypsies, feminism, autobiography, visualism, landscape representations, and the aged, mainly within Europe. The UK Data Service lists her as a "Pioneer of Social Research". [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Okely was born in Malta but grew up in Sussex and Lincolnshire. She attended boarding school from the age of nine at Upper Chine School for Girls on the Isle of Wight, but did not enjoy the experience, and later published work on the experience of girls in boarding schools. [2] [3]

She studied for two years at the Sorbonne in Paris and then enrolled at Oxford, where she began a campaign for the Oxford Union to admit women to their debating society. [4] [5] Admitting women to the Oxford Union required a 2/3 vote of its past and current members. The first vote failed, with 903 men voting to admit women and 435 voting against. [4] The second vote, on 9 February 1963, succeeded, 1,039 to 427. [6] Okely then became the first woman admitted to the Oxford Union. [7]

While at Oxford, Okely read PPE at St Hilda's College [8] of the University of Oxford, where she took a Certificate in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge (1970). [2]

An appointment with the Centre for Environmental Studies in 1970 led to her research work on gypsy-travellers, and to a DPhil from Oxford in 1977 and her 1983 book. [2]

Academic career

Okely was appointed as a lecturer at Durham University in 1976, moving to Essex in 1981, Edinburgh in 1990 and then becoming a professor at Hull in 1996. She retired from Hull in 2004, moving to become deputy director of the International Gender Studies Centre, Queen Elizabeth House, and Research Associate, School of Anthropology, University of Oxford. [2]

Her 1983 book The Traveller-Gypsies was based on extensive field work with traveller-gypsies in the 1970s and was described as "an important contribution to the scientific, as opposed to the romantic or antiquarian approach, to the study of British Travellers" [9] and "... not simply a work of scholarship however. It invites the public to understand in matters where prejudice and hostility have ruled. It deserves a wide readership". [10]

Awards

In 2011, she was awarded the Seal of the City of Plzeň in the Czech Republic, and also received a medal from the Faculty of Philosophy at Plzeň's University of West Bohemia, as a 'World Scholar.' [1] [11]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irish Travellers</span> Traditionally nomadic people of ethnic Irish origin

Irish Travellers, also known as Pavees or Mincéirs, are a traditionally peripatetic indigenous ethno-cultural group originating in Ireland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bronisław Malinowski</span> Polish anthropologist and ethnographer (1884–1942)

Bronisław Kasper Malinowski was a Polish-British anthropologist and ethnologist whose writings on ethnography, social theory, and field research have exerted a lasting influence on the discipline of anthropology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Audrey Richards</span> British anthropologist (1899–1984)

Audrey Isabel Richards, CBE, FRAI, FBA, was a pioneering British social anthropologist. She produced notable ethnographic studies. The most famous of which is Chisungu: A Girl's initiation ceremony among the Bemba of Zambia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cora Du Bois</span> American anthropologist and academic

Cora Alice Du Bois was an American cultural anthropologist and a key figure in culture and personality studies and in psychological anthropology more generally. She was Samuel Zemurray Jr. and Doris Zemurray Stone-Radcliffe Professor at Radcliffe College from 1954. After retirement from Radcliffe, she was Professor-at-large at Cornell University (1971–1976) and for one term at the University of California, San Diego (1976).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lila Abu-Lughod</span> American anthropologist

Lila Abu-Lughod is an American anthropologist. She is the Joseph L. Buttenweiser Professor of Social Science in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University in New York City. She specializes in ethnographic research in the Arab world, and her seven books cover topics including sentiment and poetry, nationalism and media, gender politics and the politics of memory.

The Romani people are known by a variety of names, mostly as Gypsies, Roma, Tsinganoi, Bohémiens, and various linguistic variations of these names. There are also numerous subgroups and clans with their own self-designations, such as the Sinti, Kalderash, Boyash, Manouche, Lovari, Lăutari, Machvaya, Romanichal, Romanisael, Kale, Kaale, Xoraxai and Modyar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kristen Ghodsee</span> American ethnographer and professor

Kristen Rogheh Ghodsee is an American ethnographer and Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is primarily known for her ethnographic work on post-Communist Bulgaria as well as being a contributor to the field of postsocialist gender studies. She was critical of the role of Western feminist nongovernmental organizations doing work among East European women in the 1990s. She has also examined the shifting gender relations of Muslim minorities after Communist rule, the intersections of Islamic beliefs and practices with the ideological remains of Marxism–Leninism, communist nostalgia, the legacies of Marxist feminism, and the intellectual history of utopianism.

Judith O. Becker is an American academic and educator. She is a scholar of the musical and religious cultures of South and Southeast Asia, the Islamic world and the Americas. Her work combines linguistic, musical, anthropological, and empirical perspectives. As an ethnomusicologist and Southeast Asianist, she is noted for her study of musics in South and Southeast Asia, including Javanese gamelan, Burmese harp, music and trance, music and emotion, neuroscience, and a theoretical rapprochement of empirical and qualitative methods. Becker teaches at the University of Michigan. In 2000, Becker was named the Glenn McGeoch Collegiate Professor of Musicology at the University of Michigan, and she was named professor emerita of music in 2008. From 1993 to 1997, she was a Senior Fellow of the Michigan Society of Fellows.

Gloria Goodwin Raheja is American anthropologist who specializes in ethnographic history. She is the author of several historical works where she explores the concepts of caste and gender in India, colonialism, politics of representation, blues music, capitalism in the Appalachia and other diverse topics. Raheja argues that caste stratification in India was influenced by British colonialism. Monographs on ethnographic history and India have been considered "acclaimed" by the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Shirley G. Ardener is a pioneer of research on women and a committed anthropological researcher working with Bakweri people in Cameroon since the 1950s, initially with her husband Edwin Ardener (1927–1987).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen B. Strier</span> Professor of anthropology

Karen B. Strier is a primatologist. She is a Vilas Research Professor and Irven DeVore professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and co-editor of Annual Review of Anthropology. The main subject of her research is the Northern Muriqui, a type of spider monkey found in Brazil.

Linda Helen Connor is an Australian anthropologist. She is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney.

Dr. Faye Venetia Harrison is an American anthropologist. Her research interests include political economy, power, diaspora, human rights, and the intersections of race, gender, and class. She is currently Professor of African American Studies and Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She formerly served as Joint Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies at the University of Florida. Harrison received her BA in Anthropology in 1974 from Brown University, and her MA and PhD in Anthropology from Stanford University in 1977 and 1982, respectively. She has conducted research in the US, UK, and Jamaica. Her scholarly interests have also taken her to Cuba, South Africa, and Japan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aparna Rao</span> German anthropologist

Aparna Rao was a German anthropologist who performed studies on social groups in Afghanistan, France, and some regions of India. Her doctorate studies focused on anthropogeography, ethnology, and Islamic studies. Rao taught anthropology at the University of Cologne, serving for a brief time as chair of the Department of Ethnology at the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University, Germany.

Alaka Malwade Basu is an Indian sociologist and demographer, a professor of development sociology at the Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Between 2002 and 2008, she was the director of the South Asia Program of Cornell University. She is a senior fellow for public health at the United Nations Foundation and a member of the editorial boards of the Population and Development Review and the Asian Population Studies. She is also a member of the Lancet-Guttmacher Commission on sexual and reproductive health and rights. Basu has extensive publications in the fields of social demography, gender and development, and South Asian Studies.

Pratiksha Baxi is an Indian sociologist and feminist legal scholar, whose research has focused on courtroom procedures, ethnography and sexual violence against women. She is currently a member of the faculty in Jawaharlal Nehru University's Center for the Study of Law and Governance.

Martha Ann Chowning was an American anthropologist, ethnographer, archaeologist and linguist known for her work on the peoples, languages, cultures and histories of Oceania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Off the verandah</span> Phrase in anthropology

Off the verandah is a phrase often attributed to anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, who stressed the need for fieldwork enabling the researcher to experience the everyday life of his subjects along with them. In this context, it is also interpreted as criticism of armchair theorizing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Pink</span> Ethnographer and social science researcher

Sarah Pink is a British-born social scientist, ethnographer and social anthropologist, now based in Australia, known for her work using visual research methods such as photography, images, video and other media for ethnographic research in digital media and new technologies. She has an international reputation for her work in visual ethnography and her book Doing Visual Ethnography, first published in 2001 and now in its 4th edition, is used in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, photographic studies and media studies. She has designed or undertaken ethnographic research in UK, Spain, Australia, Sweden, Brazil and Indonesia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sharlotte Neely</span> American anthropologist(born 1948)

Sharlotte Kathleen Neely is an American anthropologist who is known for her research on Native North Americans, especially the Cherokee Indians. As of 2017, she was Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Northern Kentucky University.

References

  1. 1 2 "Professor Judith Okely". www.anthro.ox.ac.uk. University of Oxford: School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography. Retrieved 5 April 2021. Judith Okely receiving the Seal of the City of Pilsen, Czech Republic, from the mayor (2011).
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Pioneer detail: Judith Okely". www.ukdataservice.ac.uk. UK Data Service. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  3. ↑ Schaverien, Joy (5 June 2015). Boarding School Syndrome: The psychological trauma of the 'privileged' child. Routledge. p. 5. ISBN   978-1-317-50659-1 . Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  4. 1 2 Cherry, Libby (15 July 2018). "SEXIST POLITICS, SILENCING, AND PREDATORY TUTORS: OXFORD FEMINISTS' BATTLE TO BE HEARD". Isis. Retrieved 15 April 2021. Before even arriving at Oxford, Okely vowed to get women into the Union as a point of principle. And two votes later, she was successful
  5. ↑ Rowbotham, Sheila (2001). Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties. Verso. p. 50. ISBN   9781859846223. Judith [Okely] embarked next on a campaign to get women into the Oxford Union -- we were still not allowed to be members. The Daily Express arrived to take pictures and Judith recruited me as the voice of the grass roots.
  6. ↑ "Centenary Women's Timeline". Oxford University. 2020. Retrieved 19 April 2021. On 9 February 1963, after years of campaigning, the Oxford Union Society – an important training ground for aspiring politicians – admitted women to full membership, after the required two-thirds majority was secured in a poll of members. Voting was 1,039 in favour and 427 against.
  7. ↑ Maclean, Ruth (14 February 2013). "Gender Equality To Be Celebrated At Hilda's Festival". OxfordStudent.com. Retrieved 19 April 2021. The 'broad' line-up includes trans activist Jess Pumphrey, who succeeded in getting the amendment passed which allows women to wear trousers as part of sub fusc. Other trailblazing speakers include Professor Judith Okely, the first female member of the Oxford Union, the Very Reverend Dean Vivienne Faull, the first female Dean of the Church of England, and Professor Hermione Lee, now head of Wolfson College.
  8. ↑ "Professor Judith Melita Okely CV" (PDF). Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  9. 1 2 Nadel, Jane Hurwitz (1985). "Review of The Traveller-Gypsies". Nomadic Peoples (17): 115–117. ISSN   0822-7942. JSTOR   43124022 . Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  10. 1 2 Moore, Robert (1983). "Review of The Traveller-Gypsies". Sociology. 17 (4): 613–614. doi:10.1177/0038038583017004026. ISSN   0038-0385. JSTOR   42852665. S2CID   220441166 . Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  11. ↑ "Historická pečeť města Plzně pro světově uznávanou antropoložku Judith Okely" [The historical seal of the city of Plzeň for the world-renowned anthropologist Judith Okely] (in Czech). Czech Radio. 27 January 2011. Retrieved 15 April 2021.
  12. ↑ Rehfisch, F. (1984). "Review of The Traveller Gypsies". Man. 19 (2): 347. doi:10.2307/2802311. ISSN   0025-1496. JSTOR   2802311 . Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  13. ↑ Mot, Toril (1986). "She came to stay". Paragraph. 8: 110–120. doi:10.3366/para.1986.0016. ISSN   0264-8334. JSTOR   43151634 . Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  14. ↑ Robinson, Lillian S. (1987). "Simone, Our Teacher". The Women's Review of Books. 5 (2): 15–17. doi:10.2307/4020091. ISSN   0738-1433. JSTOR   4020091 . Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  15. ↑ Sanders, Todd (1999). "Review of Own or Other Culture". American Ethnologist. 26 (2): 528–529. doi: 10.1525/ae.1999.26.2.528 . ISSN   0094-0496. JSTOR   647345 . Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  16. ↑ Mascia-Lees, Fran (1998). "Review of Own or Other Culture". Journal of Anthropological Research. 54 (2): 258–260. doi:10.1086/jar.54.2.3631744. ISSN   0091-7710. JSTOR   3631744 . Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  17. ↑ Kristmundsdottir, Sigridur Duna (1997). "Review of Own or Other Culture". The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 3 (4): 792. doi:10.2307/3034051. ISSN   1359-0987. JSTOR   3034051 . Retrieved 5 April 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.