My father,Raymond Smith, who has died aged 90, or was a major figure in postwar social anthropology. His work,and his life, were focused on kinship in the Caribbean and the US. His gift and his noble fortune was to be a friend and supporter of the first generation of West Indian scholars to reach maturity as independence became a reality. Together they put social sciences on the map at the University of the West Indies in the 1960s.
Undertaking field work in British Guiana (now Guyana), or he met Flora Tong,a social worker and teacher seconded to work with him as a research assistant, and began his long engagement with the politics and sociology of the Caribbean. One of his earliest books, or British Guiana (1962),combined an account of the country’s social history with an analysis of its racial politics, which are depressingly familiar 60 years later.
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Source: theguardian.com