Charles William Merton Hart (1905–1976) was a social anthropologist and sociologist best known for his study of the Tiwi people of the Bathurst and Melville Islands (or Tiwi Islands) in

north Australia North Australia can refer to a short-lived former British colony, a former federal territory of the Commonwealth of Australia, or a proposed state which would replace the current Northern Territory. Colony (1846–1847) A colony of North Austr ...

during the 1920s. He has been described as a "legendary ethnographer".

Education and career

Hart studied anthropology at the University of Sydney. His first teaching position was at the University of Toronto, from 1932. From 1947 to 1959 he was at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and from 1959 to 1969 at

Istanbul University , image = Istanbul_University_logo.svg , image_size = 200px , latin_name = Universitas Istanbulensis , motto = tr, Tarihten Geleceğe Bilim Köprüsü , mottoeng = Science Bridge from Past to the Future , established = 1453 1846 1933 ...

. In 1969 he retired to North America, taking a visiting position at Wichita State University in 1971 which he held until his death.

Research and publications

Together with Arnold R. Pilling, Hart authored ''The Tiwi of North Australia'' (New York, 1960), a classic work of

ethnography Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

based in part on his fieldwork among the Tiwi in 1928–1929. At the heart of the study was the manner in which older men maintained authority over younger men and over women through their power to provide brides. This was one of the first participant-observation studies of a population of Australian Aborigines still functioning as a hunter-gatherer society. The third edition (1988) was revised by Jane Goodale. In 1947 and 1948 Hart conducted sociological research into industrial relations in Windsor, Ontario on behalf of the Institute of Industrial Relations of the University of Toronto.

Criticism

Hart is now sometimes noted for his failure to take proper account of the role of grandmothers in hunter-gatherer society, dismissing elderly women as "a terrible nuisance" and "physically quite revolting".Natalie Angier,
Weighing the Grandma Factor; In Some Societies, It's a Matter of Life and Death
, '' The New York Times'', Nov. 5, 2002. Accessed 7 April 2010.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hart, Charles William Merton 1905 births 1976 deaths Australian anthropologists University of Sydney alumni Academic staff of the University of Toronto University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty Academic staff of Istanbul University Wichita State University faculty 20th-century anthropologists Australian expatriates in the United States Australian expatriates in Turkey Expatriate academics in Turkey