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• School of Social and Political Studies

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 Office Hours

• I no longer hold regular office hours, so please contact me by email if you want to arrange a meeting.

Research Interests

• Tamil Nadu, South India; Sri Lanka

• asylum and immigration law; refugees
  
• family and kinship

  
• Hinduism

  
• social development policy; NGOs

Biographical Statement

My principal overseas field research was in Tamil Nadu, South India, though I also have considerable experience of Sri Lanka, as a physical chemistry lecturer and later a human rights researcher. I carried out very much shorter pieces of work in Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Cambodia on behalf of the UK's Department for International Development (DfID). I have also done substantial recent research in the UK, on the administrative and legal processes involved in claiming asylum.

My initial ethnographic research in South India concerned family and kinship, focusing on domestic life-cycle ceremonies, especially those of puberty, marriage, and death. Subsequent field research in a Hindu temple was concerned with the ceremonial economy linking gods, priests and worshippers, as well as with daily and festival worship.

In the past, I acted as a senior consultant for DfID, and convened a team of Edinburgh anthropologists providing advice to DfID on NGO-implemented community development projects. I was also extensively involved in policy-related work for DfID itself. 

I frequently act as an expert witness in asylum appeals in the UK and Canada, mainly involving Sri Lankan Tamils. In 2003, 2006, and February 2010 I made brief fact-finding visits to assess the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, producing reports for use as evidence in asylum appeal cases. In 2000/01 I carried out ESRC-funded research into uses of expert evidence in the British asylum courts, and my subsequent AHRC-funded research on the asylum process is described below.

AHRC Research Project

Together with Dr Robert Gibb of Glasgow University I recently completed the fieldwork phase of a project funded under the Diasporas, Migration and Identities (DMI) Programme of the Arts & Humanities Research Council, titled The Conversion of Asylum Applicants' Narratives into Legal Discourses in the UK and France: a Comparative Study of Problems of Cultural Translation. There is a summary of the project's aims and objectives here, and you can find a brief case study describing the project on the DMI Programme website.

Outputs from the project so far include the following:

• Robert Gibb, 'Problems of cultural translation in the preparation and adjudication of asylum claims in France.' Seminar paper, Department of Anthropology, Leiden University, Netherlands, 31 March 2008. 

• Anthony Good, 'The taking and making of asylum claims: credibility assessments in the British asylum courts.' Keynote Lecture, Seeking Refuge: Caught Between Bureaucracy, Lawyers, and Public Indifference, ESRC-funded Conference, School of Oriental & African Studies, 17 April 2009. Read it here.

• Anthony Good, 'Asylum claims and the politics of truth: witness statements and credibility assessments in the British asylum courts.' Keynote Lecture, Managing Migration Conference, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 6 May 2009.

• Anthony Good, 'Witness statements and credibility assessments in the British asylum courts'. Invited paper, workshop on South Asian Culture À la barre, École des hautes Études en sciences sociales, Paris, 20 November 2009; seminar at Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Applied Social Science, University of Glasgow, 20 January 2010; seminar at Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, 19 February 2010.

One highlight of the project was a workshop, held in Edinburgh in March 2009, which brought together judges, lawyers, interpreters, senior executives of NGOs, and judicial and ministerial officials from both countries. Over two days they described their activities to one another, and discussed the legal, bureaucratic, and financial problems involved in securing fair asylum decisions in both countries.

   

The Workshop programme, and the list of participants, can be found here. You can also view our own presentations at the workshop, summarising the administrative and legal processes involved in claiming asylum in France and the UK.

Summaries of other current projects being carried out by the Social Anthropology subject group at Edinburgh can be found here.

Selected Publications

'Elder sister's daughter marriage in  South Asia.' Journal of Anthropological Research 36: 74-500 (1980). [Reprinted in S.M. Channa (ed.) Family and Marriage: a Critical Appraisal (International Encyclopaedia of Anthropology, Vol. 10). Cosmo Publications: Delhi (1998)].

‘Gender-based persecution: the case of South Asian asylum applicants in the UK.’ Pp 274-99 in Navnita Chandra Behera (ed), Gender, Conflict and Migration.  Delhi: Sage (2006).

‘Writing as a kind of anthropology: alternative professional genres.’ Pp 91-115 in Geert De Neve & Maya Unnithan-Kumar (eds), Critical Journeys: the Making of Anthropologists. Aldershot: Ashgate (2006).

 

Anthropology and Expertise in the Asylum Courts.  London: Routledge-Cavendish (2007).

‘Cultural evidence in courts of law.’  Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) S47-S60 (2008); reprinted at pp. 44-57 in Matthew Engelke (ed), The Objects of Evidence: Anthropological Approaches to the Production of Knowledge. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell (2009).

'Persecution for reasons of religion under the 1951 Refugee Convention.' Pp 27-48 in Thomas G. Kirsch & Bertram Turner (eds), Permutations of Order: Religion and Law as Contested Sovereignties. Farnham & Burlington VT: Ashgate (2009).

'Witness statements and credibility assessments in the British asylum courts.' Pp 94-122 in Livia Holden (ed), Cultural Expertise and Litigation: Patterns, Conflicts, Narratives. London & New York: Routledge (2011).

'Tales of suffering: asylum narratives in the refugee status determination process.' West Coast Line 68: 80-89 (2011).

Working Papers and Work in Progress

(Please do not quote or cite without permission)

'Role confusion in the asylum courts: some instantaneous ethical dilemmas.' Unpublished seminar paper. Read it here.

PhD in Social Anthropology; PhD in South Asian Studies