Edwin Ardener (1927–1987) was a British

social anthropologist Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In t ...

and academic. He was also noted for his contributions to the study of history. Within anthropology, some of his most important contributions were to the study of

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...

, as in his 1975 work in which he described women as "muted" in social discourse. A graduate of the

LSE LSE may refer to: Computing * LSE (programming language), a computer programming language * LSE, Latent sector error, a media assessment measure related to the hard disk drive storage technology * Language-Sensitive Editor, a text editor used ...

, Ardener took up an Oxford lectureship in social anthropology at the invitation of

E. E. Evans-Pritchard Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, Kt FBA FRAI (21 September 1902 – 11 September 1973) was an English anthropologist who was instrumental in the development of social anthropology. He was Professor of Social Anthropology at the University ...

. His

ethnographic research 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 ...

concentrated on Africa, particularly on

Cameroon Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...

. His history of the

Bakweri The Bakweri (or Kwe) are a Bantu ethnic group of the Republic of Cameroon. They are closely related to Cameroon's coastal peoples (the Sawa), particularly the Duala and Isubu. Early survey discussion of these topics may be found in Ardener 1956 ...

of Cameroon in the nineteenth century is regarded as definitive. In his works about Cameroon, he also wrote about a form of witchcraft in Cameroon known as Nyongo. One of his best-known contributions to anthropology came in the 1975 article ""The Problem" revisited", in ''Perceiving Women'', a volume edited by his wife and fellow anthropologist Shirley Ardener. In this essay he advanced the theory that women have been a muted group, comparatively unheard in social discourse, whose relative silence might also be seen as a function of the dominant group's deafness to them. He identified a problematic tendency in anthropological methodology to talk only ''to'' men and ''about women'', thereby ignoring at least half the sample of people they were supposed to be observing. Ardener diagnosed the problem as a result of the fact that ethnographic methods were both devised and verified by male anthropologists, who did not realise what they were overlooking.

References

1927 births 1987 deaths Alumni of the London School of Economics Social anthropologists British anthropologists Gender studies academics Fellows of St John's College, Oxford 20th-century anthropologists {{anthropologist-stub