Episode Overview

Episode Title: Academic Inspiration: Deputy Director of LSE Stuart Corbridge
Date: September 30, 2013
Host: LSE Film and Audio Team
Guest: Stuart Corbridge, Professor of International Development and Deputy Director/Provost, LSE

This special edition podcast in the LSE Academic Inspiration series features Stuart Corbridge reflecting on the books that shaped his intellectual journey. Corbridge traces the evolution of his academic thinking—from his Marxist influences at Cambridge to seminal works on India, field-defining ethnographies, and even a cherished history of The Beatles. The conversation is personal, revealing, and attentive to the deep links between literature, scholarship, and lived experience.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Cambridge Years and Early Marxist Influence

[00:49]

• Corbridge situates his "academic socialisation" in the mid-1970s at Cambridge, during a time when younger faculty were heavily influenced by Marxism.
• Quote:

  "I was socialized rather unusually, thinking that Marxism was the truth. Marxism was really the cutting edge in the academy, as in some respects I still think it was."
  — Stuart Corbridge (00:56)

Foundational Texts:

• David Harvey's Social Justice and the City:
  A formative, albeit challenging, text for Corbridge, which he read repeatedly with friend Jerry Kearns.
  • Quote:

    "I found the book very, very difficult to understand to start with, and I read it many times with my great friend Jerry Kearns."
    — Stuart Corbridge (01:19)

• Harvey's The Limits to Capital (1982):
  The "great book" that he returned to frequently, engaging critically over the years.

Evolution of Interest:

• By his third undergraduate year, Corbridge's focus broadened to India, imperialism, and the development debate, reading key figures like Lenin and Latin American dependency authors Furtado and Cardoso.

Pivotal Academic Moments & The Varieties of Capitalism Debates

[02:15]

• Robert Brenner’s article on Neo-Smithian Marxism:
  Shifted Corbridge’s attention toward the concept of Varieties of Capitalism.
• Marx's Capital and Capitalism Today (by Tony Cutler, Barry Hindis, Paul Hearst, Attar Hussain):
  As a graduate student, this obscure two-volume work especially volume one, "made me rethink my own political positions", anticipating later debates on capitalist diversity.

India, Imperialism, and Postcolonial Critique

[03:07]

• Early fieldwork in Eastern India brought Corbridge into closer contact with ground realities and influential literature.
• David Selbourne’s An Eye to India
  A Penguin book depicting the "dark side" of post-Emergency India, paralleling themes picked up by Salman Rushdie in Midnight's Children.
• Edward Said’s Orientalism
  Described as "a formative book for anybody... thinking about the relationship between the West and the rest".
  • Quote:

    "The book that made a huge impression on a lot of geographers... was Edward Said's book Orientalism. Orientalism was just a formative book..."
    — Stuart Corbridge (04:01)

• The book catalyzed reflections on academic traditions such as SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) and their historical framing.

Gender, Ethnography, and the Influence of Subaltern Studies

[04:38]

• Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990):
  Opened new perspectives on gender, particularly regarding how landscapes are "feminised" or "sexualised."
• Corbridge expresses a preference for ethnographic storytelling tied deeply to place but narrating broader issues—what he calls the "synecdocal."
  • Mike Watts’ Silent Violence (1983):
    Fieldwork-driven account of famine in rural Nigeria.
  • Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ Death without Weeping (1995):
    Study of resilience and grief in northeast Brazil.
  • Johnny Parry’s Death in Banaras:
    A favorite, used in teaching, exploring the existential and cultural practices around death in India.

On Death in Banaras:

• Quote:

  "It actually tells a story about life and death and the meanings of both that helped me to understand Hinduism, to understand the nature of Brahmanism, and more particularly, it says something very deep and very profound... about life itself."
  — Stuart Corbridge (06:00)

Subaltern Studies and Contemporary Indian Thought

[06:24]

• Cites engagement with and critique of the Subaltern Studies School (Spivak, Ranajit Guha, Ramachandra Guha).
• Finds Partha Chatterjee, at Columbia and Kolkata, to be "one of the great public intellectuals of our time" and a constant source of intellectual stimulation.

Indian Novels:

• Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
• Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy
  Corbridge describes Seth as "an absolute genius".
• Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games
  Praises Chandra's "incredible" investigation of gangsters and geopolitics in contemporary Mumbai.

Non-Academic but Scholarly Love: The Beatles

[07:19]

• Corbridge’s hypothetical "desert island book" would be Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald—a complete, chronologically organized history of every Beatles song.
  • Quote:

    "...takes you through every single Beatles song. It tells you how they recorded who wrote which bits... That would be my non-academic book, I think, but it's a very scholarly book nonetheless."
    — Stuart Corbridge (07:30)

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• "I was socialized rather unusually, thinking that Marxism was the truth." (00:56)
• "Orientalism was just a formative book for anybody that had been thinking about the relationship between the West and the rest..." (04:01)
• "I've always loved books that are ethnographic, based on deep field work, long time commitment to place, but come out of a particular place to tell a story about bigger issues. I think the word for that is synecdocal." (05:16)
• "It actually tells a story about life and death and the meanings of both..." [on Death in Banaras] (06:00)
• "Partha Chatterjee... is one of the great public intellectuals of our time." (06:44)
• "...Revolution in the Head, which takes you through every single Beatles song... it’s a very scholarly book nonetheless." (07:30)

Segment Timestamps

• 00:49 – Academic context in 1970s Cambridge; early Marxist influence
• 01:19 – David Harvey’s works; Marxist underpinnings
• 02:15 – Shift to India, imperialism, dependency theory, and new Marxist debates
• 03:07 – Early fieldwork in India, key writings (Selborne, Said, Rushdie)
• 04:38 – Gender, ethnography, and the "synecdocal"
• 05:16 – Influential ethnographies: Watts, Scheper-Hughes, Parry
• 06:24 – Subaltern Studies, novels of Indian modernity
• 07:19 – Beatles scholarship: Revolution in the Head

Conclusion

Stuart Corbridge’s seminal reading journey moves fluidly through Marxist politics, postcolonial critique, gender theory, immersive ethnography, and literary fiction, culminating in the rich tapestry of his contemporary interests. His reflections are honest, occasionally wry, and always intellectually generous—offering listeners both a roadmap to navigating the social sciences and an invitation to read broadly, passionately, and critically.