HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from Encyclopédie Bérose des histoires de l’anthropologie: an article (in English) on the ways in which science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin, the daughter of two major figures, was herself engaged with anthropology in her writings.

Grillot, Thomas, 2026. “‘The Daughter of the Great Kroeber’: Ursula Le Guin and the Literary Usefulness of Anthropology,” Encyclopédie Bérose des histoires de l’anthropologie.

Daughter of the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and the writer Theodora Kroeber, Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) is widely considered a major American writer of science fiction. She rose to fame in 1969 with the publication of her science fiction novel The Left Hand of Darkness. By then, she had already distinguished herself as a writer of fantasy and poetry. Her career reached an initial peak in the 1970s, as she became associated with so-called “soft” science fiction, of which she was one of the most highly regarded representatives. She continued to work into the 2010s, consistently drawing praise for the high standards she brought to the creation of fictional worlds. Her playful relationship with anthropology has long been the subject of commentary—and she proved adept at making the most of it. But while her work is notable for having been regarded early on as anthropological in nature, should we really care whether she herself was an anthropologist? Why not instead take a closer look at the uses she made of that discipline: its tropes, heroes, and clichés? Grillot argues that we might learn a great deal about the influence gained by anthropology’s practitioners over the course of Le Guin’s career, and about the sometimes circuitous path by which certain kinds of anthropological discourse came to be regarded not only as good science, but also as perfectly legitimate support for works of fiction. This might open a window onto a part of the history of the discipline that is not often considered: the uses to which its nonprofessional readers put it. This innovative article is published as part of the research theme “Transnational Circulations and Social Uses of Anthropological Knowledge in the Americas,” directed by Thomas Grillot and Sara Le Menestrel.