Brian Street (1943-2017): A Personal Reflection

Brian Street was a scholar and teacher whose contributions to social anthropology, and influence on the discipline, span a range of interlocking themes. This article explores several of these: the relationships between anthropology and literature; the ethnographic study of literacies; anthropology and education; and anthropology as it can be practised and understood by non-specialists and ‘ordinary people’. Running through all these, in turn, are Street’s personal commitments to the practical applications of scholarship in informed development policy, education, and the furtherance of global citizenship; to the understanding of how power and inequality are perpetuated; and to the democratisation of knowledge.