Geoffrey Nielsen Ostergaard was a British political scientist best known for his work on the connections between Gandhism and anarchism, on the British co-operative movement, and on syndicalism and workers' control.
13 Facts About Geoffrey Ostergaard
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Geoffrey Ostergaard's books included The Gentle Anarchists: A Study of the Sarvodaya Movement for Non-Violent Revolution in India, coauthored with Melville Currell, and Nonviolent Revolution in India, both dealing with the Sarvodaya movement.
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Geoffrey Ostergaard spent the majority of his academic career at the University of Birmingham.
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Geoffrey Nielsen Ostergaard was born on 25 July 1926 near Huntingdon, the son of a Danish immigrant.
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Geoffrey Ostergaard attended Huntingdon Grammar School and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he studied philosophy, politics and economics, graduating in 1950.
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Geoffrey Ostergaard taught and conducted research at the University of Birmingham from 1953 until his death.
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Geoffrey Ostergaard was a Rockefeller Foundation fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and a visiting professor at Osmania University, Hyderabad.
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Colin Ward wrote that "in his quiet, ironical way [Geoffrey Ostergaard] always relished the absurdities of the job he held" at Birmingham.
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Geoffrey Ostergaard was one of a number of writers who contributed to the development of anarcho-pacifist thought and action during and shortly after the Second World War; others included Read, Alex Comfort, Nicolas Walter, David Thoreau Wieck, Dorothy Day, and Paul Goodman.
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Geoffrey Ostergaard argues for the superiority of Narayan's approach over Bhave's, though with significant caveats.
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Geoffrey Ostergaard identifies the Sarvodaya movement as the only significant social movement motivated by the belief in nonviolent revolution.
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Geoffrey Ostergaard died of leukaemia in Birmingham on 22 March 1990.
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Geoffrey Ostergaard's papers are held at the University of Bradford Library.