Arthur Bernard Deacon (1903-1927) was a social anthropologist who carried out fieldwork on the islands of
Malakula
Malakula Island, also spelled Malekula, is the second-largest island in the nation of Vanuatu, formerly the New Hebrides, in Melanesia, a region of the Pacific Ocean.
Location
Malakula is separated from the islands of Espiritu Santo and Malo by ...
and
Ambrym
Ambrym is a volcanic island in Malampa Province in the archipelago of Vanuatu. Volcanic activity on the island includes lava lakes in two craters near the summit.
Etymology
Ambrym (also known as ''Ambrin'', ''"ham rim"'' in the Ranon language ...
in what is now
Vanuatu
Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (french: link=no, République de Vanuatu; bi, Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of no ...
.
Deacon was born in
Nikolayev, then in south
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
, where his English father worked for a shipping firm, and at the age of thirteen was sent back to finish his education in England. Deacon graduated from
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...
, and was awarded a grant for anthropological fieldwork in Malakula. He arrived there in January 1926 and died there on 12 March 1927 of
blackwater fever
Blackwater fever is a complication of malaria infection in which red blood cells burst in the bloodstream (hemolysis), releasing hemoglobin directly into the blood vessels and into the urine, frequently leading to kidney failure. The disease ...
.
[
]
Deacon's fieldwork was edited by
Camilla Wedgwood
Camilla Hildegarde Wedgwood (25 March 1901 – 17 May 1955) was a British anthropologist and academic administrator. She is best known for her research in the Pacific and her pioneering role as one of the British Commonwealth's first female anth ...
into an ethnography in 1934. Wedgwood incorporated the notes of the earlier field-worker
John Layard
John Willoughby Layard (27 November 1891 – 26 November 1974) was an English anthropologist and psychologist.
Early life
Layard was born in London, son of the essayist and literary writer George Somes Layard and his wife Eleanor. He grew up ...
into the book without Layard's knowledge and following threats of legal action the first edition only appeared with Layard's comments. The book was drawn on by both later ethnographers and present-day inhabitants of the islands, although later fieldwork by Margaret Patterson radically reinterpreted his evidence on the Ambrym marriage system.
Deacon had known
Margaret Gardiner, a fellow student, for more than a year before leaving Cambridge, but they only started a relationship on the evening before his departure from Cambridge.
Although they exchanged many letters, and arranged to meet in Australia to live as a couple, they never met again.
Gardiner's memoir of Deacon was published in 1984.
Works
* A. B. Deacon, ''Notes on Some Islands of the New Hebrides''. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 59:461–515 (1929), ed. C. Wedgwood.
* A. B. Deacon, ''Malekula: a vanishing people in the New Hebrides'', ed. C. Wedgwood (1934)
* A. B. Deacon, ‘The regulation of marriage in Ambrym’, ''Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute'', 57 (1927)
* A. B. Deacon, '4 Geometrical Drawings from Malekula and Other Islands of the New Hebrides.' ''Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland'' 64:129–175. (1934)
References
External links
''Drawing It Ou''t(Deacon's fieldwork sketches), by Haidy Geismar, Visual Anthropology Review 2014) 97-113.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Deacon, Bernard
1903 births
1927 deaths
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
Social anthropologists
British expatriates in the Russian Empire