Introduction

In Socialisation: The Approach from Social Anthropology, ¹ published in 1970, Audrey Richards argued that, in British anthropology, socialisation as an analytical concept had fallen from favour by the 1960s. One reason, she suggested, lay in the crudities of early American anthropological analysis; another lay in a professional self-denying ordinance resulting in the neglect of educational processes and in concentration on other areas of social life such as social structures and political typologies. In her view it was time to reconsider its significance and she called for a return to the ‘institutional study of socialisation’. ² This volume of essays is an early attempt by educationalists, historians, political scientists and sociologists to satisfy this request in the specific context of British imperialism.