David Francis Pocock (3 September 1928 – 25 November 2007) was a British anthropologist whose main field of study was the people and diaspora of the Indian state of

Gujarat Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the ninth ...

, and in particular the

Patidar Patidar ( Gujarati: ) is an Indian landlord and agrarian caste found mostly in Gujarat but also in at least 22 other states of India. The community comprises at multiple subcastes, most prominently the Levas and Kadvas. They form one of the ...

community of that state. David Pocock was born on 3 September 1928 in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. After early education at Highbury School, he attended Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature under

F. R. Leavis Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis (14 July 1895 – 14 April 1978) was an English literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for much of his career at Downing College, Cambridge, and later at the University of York. Leavis ra ...

. During the 1950s, he moved to the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

to take a PhD in anthropology under the guidance of

Edward Evans-Pritchard Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, Kt FBA FRAI (21 September 1902 – 11 September 1973) was an English anthropologist who was instrumental in the development of social anthropology. He was Professor of Social Anthropology at the University ...

. It was at this time that he began to translate the works of

Emile Durkheim Emil or Emile may refer to: Literature *''Emile, or On Education'' (1762), a treatise on education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau * ''Émile'' (novel) (1827), an autobiographical novel based on Émile de Girardin's early life *''Emil and the Detective ...

and he also conducted fieldwork in Gujarat, as well as among the Indian diaspora in East Africa and London. Pocock moved to a post as

reader A reader is a person who reads. It may also refer to: Computing and technology * Adobe Reader (now Adobe Acrobat), a PDF reader * Bible Reader for Palm, a discontinued PDA application * A card reader, for extracting data from various forms of ...

at the

University of Sussex , mottoeng = Be Still and Know , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £14.4 million (2020) , budget = £319.6 million (2019–20) , chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar , vice_chancellor = Sasha Roseneil , ...

in 1966, having become disenchanted with life in Oxford. Sussex provided a more relaxed social environment and was at the time a centre of challenging intellectual ideas. ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' describes how, at Sussex, "He soon developed a wide range of friendships and famously celebrated his 40th birthday with a legendary "black party", draping the house in crepe and serving only black velvet and caviar, both in copious quantities." A personal chair was awarded to Pocock by Sussex in 1977. While there, he was influential in the foundation of the School of African and Asian Studies and also in rescuing the archives of

Mass Observation Mass-Observation is a United Kingdom social research project; originally the name of an organisation which ran from 1937 to the mid-1960s, and was revived in 1981 at the University of Sussex. Mass-Observation originally aimed to record everyday ...

. He was an inspirational teacher but became tired of changes occurring in the university system and retired early, in 1987. Although he then gave up formal study, he remained an intellectually rigorous and curious person. In particular, ''The Guardian'' notes, "... forgoing his long and intense association with Roman Catholicism, he looked to a deeper involvement in the mystery of human consciousness through his investigations of Buddhism". He also became a prison visitor. Pocock died on 25 November 2007. He had been awarded the Rivers Memorial Medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in 1974.

Works

Louis Dumont Louis Charles Jean Dumont (11 August 1911 – 19 November 1998) was a French anthropologist. Dumont was born in Thessaloniki, in the Salonica Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. He taught at Oxford University during the 1950s, and was then dire ...

was among the influential social anthropologists that Pocock met while at Oxford. As well as taking over Dumont's lectureship in Indian sociology while at that university, Pocock joined with Dumont to found '' Contributions to Indian Sociology'', an academic journal. in 1957. The pair worked together on this for five years. Much of his work remains unpublished, despite being influential and despite the existence of a lengthy bibliography. Among his published writings were: * * *

Works

References

Further reading