Wolfson College Record 2021

Obituaries
Marcus Banks
(1960–2020)
Research Fellow 1988–95, Governing Body
Fellow 1995–2021, Vicegerent 2014–16,
died on 23 October 2020. University
Proctor in 2007–08, he recalled his ‘year
in sub fusc’ in the Record for 2007–08.
This obituary is by Richard Vokes, Associate
Professor in Anthropology at the University
of Western Australia.
Photo: Wolfson College
The anthropologist Marcus Banks
transformed our understanding of the possibilities for cultural representation
through visual media. He also played an influential role in the wider transformation
of anthropology, from a discipline once framed as a study of ‘exotic’ faraway
peoples, towards one primarily concerned with the politics of social and cultural
difference in the world around us.
Born in Liverpool in a working-class household, where he attended New Heys
Comprehensive School, Marcus went up to Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1978
to read Social Anthropology. Having taken a First, he stayed on for a PhD with
Caroline Humphrey and Deborah Swallow, completing his thesis in 1985.
Even at that stage, Marcus’ work was breaking new ground, his doctorate being
a study of Jainism in both Jamnagar, Gujarat, and Leicester, UK. At a time when
anthropology was still generally equating cultures with singular places, his study
– published in 1992 as Organizing Jainism in India and England (OUP) – was
an exemplar for understanding how cultural forms may be also extended and
transformed across transnational fields. Methodologically, the study was an early
example of what came to known as ‘multi-sited ethnography’, and – in its focus
upon Leicester – of ‘anthropology at home’.
However, it was at Oxford that Marcus was to make his greatest contribution.
After his appointment as a ‘Demonstrator’ at the Institute of Social and Cultural
Anthropology (ISCA) in 1987, he remained at that university for the rest of his
life, later being promoted to Professor (2001) and Director of the School of
Anthropology and Museum Ethnography (2012–16).
Personal News
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