Harold Barclay Fonds/Collection
Biographical History
Anthropologist and professor Harold Barton Barclay (1924-2017) specialized in the fields of political anthropology (including anarchy) and anthropology of religion. Barclay received his PhD from Cornell University and was a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta (retiring in 1989). He was a conscientious objector during World War II. He travelled and worked in the Middle East and Africa (including two years at the University of Cairo) which resulted in publications such as Muslim Religious Practice In A Village Suburb of Khartoum (Cairo: The American University, 1963) and Buurri Al Lamaab, A Suburban Village in the Sudan (Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1964). His publications also include: People Without Government: An Anthropology Of Anarchy (London: Kahn & Averill, 1996), Culture and Anarchism (London: Freedom Press, 1997), Longing for Arcadia: Memoirs of an Anarcho-Cynicalist Anthropologist (Trafford Publishing, 2005), and Religious Movements: Today and Yesterday (London: Freedom Press, 2011).
Scope and Content
The fonds is comprised of correspondence, drafts of writings, research notes, photocopied printed material, and ephemera (brochures and pamphlets) relating to anthropologist Harold Barclay’s research and writing in the areas of political anthropology, anthropology of religion, and anarchy.