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Meyer Fortes
Meyer Fortes FBA FRAI (25 April 1906 – 27 January 1983) was a South African-born anthropologist, best known for his work among the Tallensi and Ashanti in Ghana. Originally trained in psychology, Fortes employed the notion of the "person" into his structural-functional analyses of kinship, the family, and ancestor worship setting a standard for studies on African social organization. His celebrated book, ''Oedipus and Job in West African Religion'' (1959), fused his two interests and set a standard for comparative ethnology. He also wrote extensively on issues of the first born, kingship, and divination. Life Fortes received his anthropological training from Charles Gabriel Seligman at the London School of Economics. Fortes also trained with Bronisław Malinowski and Raymond Firth. Along with contemporaries A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Sir Edmund Leach, Audrey Richards, and Lucy Mair, Fortes held strong functionalist views that insisted upon empirical evidence in orde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Britstown
Britstown is a small farming town situated in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, in the Pixley ka Seme District Municipality, Emthanjeni Local Municipality. The town is named after Hans Brits who settled here after he accompanied David Livingstone on a venture into the interior. Britstown lies in the heart of the Central Karoo and is located exactly halfway between Cape Town (via Three Sisters) and Johannesburg (via Kimberley, Northern Cape, Kimberley) on the N12 (South Africa), N12 national route, and thus is about 700 km from both cities. The N10 (South Africa), N10 national route crosses the N12 500m outside the town. De Aar is the closest big town and lies 50 km East from Britstown on the N10. History In 1877 a community centre and a church was built on a section of Brits's farm. A private irrigation scheme was started by the Smartt Syndicate in 1885 and liquidated in 1954. The concern built two dams, planted Alfalfa, lucerne and wheat. They grazed karakul ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethnology
Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural anthropology, cultural, social anthropology, social, or sociocultural anthropology). Scientific discipline Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct contact with the culture, ethnology takes the research that ethnographers have compiled and then compares and contrasts different cultures. The term ''ethnologia'' (''ethnology'') is credited to Adam František Kollár, Adam Franz Kollár (1718-1783) who used and defined it in his ''Historiae ivrisqve pvblici Regni Vngariae amoenitates'' published in Vienna in 1783. as: “the science of nations and peoples, or, that study of learned men in which they inquire into the origins, languages, customs, and institutions of various nations, and finally into the fatherland and ancient seats, in order to be able be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Gluckman
Herman Max Gluckman (; 26 January 1911 – 13 April 1975) was a South African and British social anthropologist. He is best known as the founder of the Manchester School of anthropology. Biography and major works Gluckman was born in Johannesburg in 1911. Like many of the other anthropologists he later worked with, he was Jewish. He was educated at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he obtained a BA in 1930. Although he intended to study law, he became interested in anthropology and studied under Winifred Hoernle. He earned the equivalent of an MA at Witwatersrand in 1934 and then received a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Exeter College, Oxford. At Oxford, Gluckman's work was supervised by R.R. Marett, but his biggest influences were Radcliffe-Brown and Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, who were proponents of structural functionalism. Gluckman conducted his Ph.D. research in Barotseland with the Lozi. In 1939 he joined the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and in 1941 became ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African Political Systems
''African Political Systems'' is an academic anthology edited by the anthropologists Meyer Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard which was published by Oxford University Press on the behalf of the International African Institute in 1940. The book contains eight separate papers produced by scholars working in the field of anthropology, each of which focuses in on a different society in Sub-Saharan Africa. It was the intention of the editors to bring together information on African political systems on a "broad, comparative basis" for the first time. Background Describing the purpose of ''African Political Systems'', Fortes and Evans-Pritchard related that it offered "both an experiment in collaborative research and an attempt to bring into focus one of the major problems of African sociology. Many dogmatic opinions are held on the subject of African political organization and are even made use of in administrative practice; but no one has yet examined this aspect of African society on a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Empirical Evidence
Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and plays a role in various other fields, like epistemology and law. There is no general agreement on how the terms ''evidence'' and ''empirical'' are to be defined. Often different fields work with quite different conceptions. In epistemology, evidence is what justifies beliefs or what determines whether holding a certain belief is rational. This is only possible if the evidence is possessed by the person, which has prompted various epistemologists to conceive evidence as private mental states like experiences or other beliefs. In philosophy of science, on the other hand, evidence is understood as that which '' confirms'' or ''disconfirms'' scientific hypotheses and arbitrates between competing theories. For this role, it is important that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Structural Functionalism
Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is "a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability". This approach looks at society through a macro-level orientation, which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole, and believes that society has evolved like organisms. This approach looks at both social structure and social functions. Functionalism addresses society as a whole in terms of the function of its constituent elements; namely norms, customs, traditions, and institutions. A common analogy, popularized by Herbert Spencer, presents theses parts of society as "organs" that work toward the proper functioning of the "body" as a whole. In the most basic terms, it simply emphasizes "the effort to impute, as rigorously as possible, to each feature, custom, or practice, its effect on the functioning of a supposedly stable, cohesive system". For Talcott Parsons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucy Mair
Lucy Philip Mair (28 January 1901 – 1 April 1986) was a British anthropologist. She wrote on the subject of social organization, and contributed to the involvement of anthropological research in governance and politics. Her work on colonial administration was influential. Career Mair read Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, graduating with a BA in 1923.Lucy Mair obituary in Anthropology Today Volume 2, No. 4, August 1986 In 1927 she joined the , studying social anthropology under Bronisław ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Audrey Richards
Audrey Isabel Richards, CBE, FRAI, FBA (8 July 1899 – 29 June 1984), was a pioneering British social anthropologist. She produced notable ethnographic studies. The most famous of which is ''Chisingu: A Girl's initiation ceremony among the Bemba of Zambia.'' Her work also covered diverse topics such as nutrition, family structure, migration, and ethnicity. She conducted her field work in Zambia, Uganda and Essex. Early life and education Audrey was the second of four girls born to a well-connected family in London, England. Her father, Sir Henry Erle Richards, was posted in Calcutta, India, where she spent her early childhood, and later from 1911 to 1922 was Chichele Professor of Public International Law at Oxford. Richards was educated at Downe House School and Newnham College, Cambridge, where she read natural sciences. She served as a relief worker in Germany for two years before returning to England and beginning graduate work. She attended the London School of Economi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmund Leach
Sir Edmund Ronald Leach FRAI FBA (7 November 1910 – 6 January 1989) was a British social anthropologist and academic. He served as provost of King's College, Cambridge from 1966 to 1979. He was also president of the Royal Anthropological Institute from 1971 to 1975. Early years Personal life Leach was born in Sidmouth, Devon, the youngest of three children and the son of William Edmund Leach and Mildred Brierley. His father owned and was manager of a sugar plantation in northern Argentina. In 1940 Leach married Celia Joyce who was then a painter and later published poetry and two novels. They had a daughter in 1941 and a son in 1946. Education and career Leach was educated at Marlborough College and Clare College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a BA with honours in Engineering in 1932. After leaving Cambridge University, Leach took a four-year contract in 1933 with Butterfield and Swire in China, serving in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Chungking (now Chongqing), Tsingt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raymond Firth
Sir Raymond William Firth (25 March 1901 – 22 February 2002) was an ethnologist from New Zealand. As a result of Firth's ethnographic work, actual behaviour of societies (social organization) is separated from the idealized rules of behaviour within the particular society (social structure). He was a long serving Professor of Anthropology at London School of Economics, and is considered to have singlehandedly created a form of British economic anthropology. Early life and academic career Firth was born to Wesley and Marie Firth in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1901. He was educated at Auckland Grammar School, and then at Auckland University College, where he graduated in economics in 1921.Huntsman, Judith (2003). "Raymond Firth (1901–2002)". ''American Anthropologist''. 105 (2): 487–490. He took his economics MA there in 1922 with a 'fieldwork' based research thesis on the Kauri Gum digging industry, then a diploma in social science in 1923. In 1924 he began his doctoral rese ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London School Of Economics
, mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 million (2020–21) , chair = Susan Liautaud , chancellor = The Princess Royal(as Chancellor of the University of London) , director = The Baroness Shafik , head_label = Visitor , head = Penny Mordaunt(as Lord President of the Council '' ex officio'') , students = () , undergrad = () , postgrad = () , city = London , country = United Kingdom , coor = , campus = Urban , free_label = Newspaper , free = '' The Beaver'' , free_label2 = Printing house , free2 = LSE Press , co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Gabriel Seligman
Charles Gabriel Seligman FRS FRAI (24 December 1873 – 19 September 1940) was a British physician and ethnologist. His main ethnographic work described the culture of the Vedda people of Sri Lanka and the Shilluk people of the Sudan. He was a professor at London School of Economics and was highly influential as the teacher of such notable anthropologists as Bronisław Malinowski, E. E. Evans-Pritchard and Meyer Fortes all of whose work overshadowed his own. Seligman's work promoted scientific racism and he was a proponent of the Hamitic hypothesis, according to which, some civilizations of Africa were thought to have been founded by Caucasoid Hamitic peoples. Since the 1960s the Hamitic hypothesis, along with other theories of "race science", has become entirely discredited in science. Life Seligman was born into a middle class Jewish family in London, the son of wine merchant Hermann Seligmann (Charles shortened his name to Seligman after 1914). He studied medicine at St Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
