Lucy Philip Mair was a British anthropologist. She wrote on the subject of social organization, and contributed to the involvement of anthropological research in governance and politics.

Career

Mair read Classics

Classics

Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

 at Newnham College, Cambridge

Newnham College, Cambridge

Newnham College is a women-only constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1871 by Henry Sidgwick, and was the second Cambridge college to admit women after Girton College...

, graduating with a BA in 1923. In 1927 she joined the LSE

London School of Economics

The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

, studying social anthropology

Social anthropology

Social Anthropology is one of the four or five branches of anthropology that studies how contemporary human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies , the social organization of a particular person: customs,...

 under Bronisław Malinowski, and commenced ethnographic fieldwork in Uganda

Uganda

Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

 in 1931. At Malinowski's direction she spent her time in Uganda studying social change, returning to the UK in 1932 to submit her dissertation and receive her PhD. She began lecturing at LSE the same year, but joined the Royal Institute for International Affairs with the outbreak of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. In 1943 she moved to the Ministry of Information

Minister of Information

The Ministry of Information , headed by the Minister of Information, was a United Kingdom government department created briefly at the end of World War I and again during World War II...

, then at the war's end took a job training Australian administrators for work in Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...

.

In 1946 Mair returned to LSE as reader in colonial administration, commencing a second readership (in applied anthropology) in 1952. In 1963 she became a professor, a post she held until retirement in 1968. In 1964 she was made president of Section N of the British Association for the Advancement of Science

British Association for the Advancement of Science

frame|right|"The BA" logoThe British Association for the Advancement of Science or the British Science Association, formerly known as the BA, is a learned society with the object of promoting science, directing general attention to scientific matters, and facilitating interaction between...

. She gave the 1967 Frazer Lecture

Frazer Lecture

The Sir James George Frazer Memorial Lectureship in Social Anthropology is a British academic lecture series.In the year 1920 a sum of £675 was raised by a Committee of the University of Cambridge for the purpose of commemorating Sir James Frazer’s contributions to learning...

 at Cambridge University.

Works

Mair published books and papers throughout her life. Primitive Government, first published in 1962, discusses political patronage in relation to state formation and is cited by over 160 academic works.

Books

• The protection of minorities; The working and scope of the minorities treaties under the League of Nations, Christophers, 1928
• An African people in the twentieth century, G. Routledge and Sons, 1934
• Welfare in the British colonies, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1944
• Australia in New Guinea, Christophers, 1948
• Native administration in central Nyasaland, HMSO, 1952
• Studies in applied anthropology, Athlone, 1957
• Safeguards for democracy, Oxford University Press, 1961
• Primitive government, Penguin Books, 1962
• New nations, University of Chicago Press, c1963
• An introduction to social anthropology, Clarendon Press, 1965
• The new Africa, Watts, 1967
• African marriage and social change, Cass, 1969
• Anthropology and social change, Athlone, 1969
• Native policies in Africa, Negro Universities Press, 1969
• Witchcraft, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969
• The Bantu of Western Kenya: with special reference to the Vugusu and Logoli, published for the International African Institute by Oxford U.P., 1970.
• Marriage, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1971
• African societies, Cambridge University Press, 1974
• African Kingdoms, Clarendon Press, 1977
• Anthropology and Development, Macmillan, 1984

RAI

Mair was throughout her working life closely involved with the Royal Anthropological Institute: after winning the RAI Wellcome medal in 1936 she was the Hon Secretary from 1974–8 and the Vice-President for the year 1978-9. After her death, the RAI instituted the Lucy Mair Medal for Applied Anthropology in 1997 to commemorate her.