Introduction by Levente Koroes

It is often said that the social sciences complement each other to allow for a complete understanding of the world and the people around us. Some have longer histories than others: early scholars of the University of Copenhagen defined anthropology as early as 1647, while economics can be traced back to the ancient Greeks. In this book anthropologist and historian Alan Macfarlane interviews Sir Vince Cable, an economist with vast experiences in the political sphere, discussing Vince’s past before moving to their views of the world around us today. The broad themes of this book are international relations, politics, societies and the future from two vastly different perspectives. The two find plenty of common ground while exploring points of disagreement. The book illuminates the labyrinth of cross-cultural understanding as well as the British political realm.

A particular focus is placed on China as she continues to re-claim her place as one of the most important states and economies in the world. Macfarlane has  visited China eighteen times and Cable several times as a government minister. They saw the meteoric rise of the Chinese economy after the premiership of Deng Xiaoping, as well as the golden days of the Anglo-Chinese relationship which soured only recently. The publication of this book precedes the Chinese publication of Cable’s recent book, The Chinese Conundrum (Alma Press, 2021), which tackles the question of engagement with China from a British perspective.

Sir Vince Cable is Professor in Practice at the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, as well as Honorary Professor at the School of Economics at the University of Nottingham. From 1966-68 he was a Treasury Finance Officer for the Kenya Government (ODI Fellow). After lecturing economics at Glasgow he worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as 1st secretary in the Diplomatic Service. He was then Deputy Director of the Overseas Development Institute including a period as Special Advisor to the Secretary of State, John Smith. From 1983 to 1990 he was Special Advisor on Economic Affairs to the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Sir Sonny Ramphal.

In 1990 he joined the Shell scenario planning team and became Shell’s Chief Economist. He spent a period as Head of the Economics Programme at Chatham House. Vince served as a Labour councillor in Glasgow before joining the SDP-Liberal Alliance and the Liberal Democrats. He was elected to parliament in Twickenham in 1997 30 years after he first contested a parliamentary seat and at the fifth attempt. Among his other recent books are Partnership and Politics in a Divided Decade, How to be a Politician, Money and Power and After the Storm.

Alan Macfarlane is a Life Fellow of King’s College at the University of Cambridge. He was educated at the Dragon School, Sedbergh School, the University of Oxford (BA, PhD) and the LSE (MPhil) and the School of Oriental and African Studies (Ph.D.) He has worked in England, Nepal, Japan and China as both an historian an anthropologist. He was elected to the British Academy in 1986, and he is now Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of over 40 books which examine the roots and histories of the world and people around us.

Readers of this book may enjoy other pieces in the Cambridge Conversations series, such as Wonder and Art: Cambridge Conversations with Tim Yip, Understandings of the Modern World: Conversations at a Time of COVID with Dr Richard Marshall, and A Comparative Dialogue on Education with leading Chinese educator, Professor Zhu Yongxin.