Polly Hill: Crossing and Contesting the Boundaries of Anthropology, Economics, African Studies, and Entrepreneurship Studies

Abstract

Polly Hill spent her long, productive and at times controversial career crossing and contesting disciplinary boundaries. She graduated in economics at Cambridge, but her doctorate was in social anthropology – with economist Joan Robinson as dissertation supervisor. Her thirteen years at the University of Ghana were initially in Economics, then in African Studies, and her readership at Cambridge was in Commonwealth Studies. As a woman in several male-dominated academic disciplines without a secure base in any (and with distinctive, unorthodox opinions in each), she never obtained a tenure-track appointment despite ten books and fifty scholarly articles. Her books drew attention to the underrecognized agency of indigenous entrepreneurs while her Development Economics on Trial: The Anthropological Case for the Prosecution (1986) critiqued a discipline, of disciplinary boundaries, and of outside experts, both mainstream and radical.