Rodney Needham (15 May 1923 – 4 December 2006 in
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
) was an English
social anthropologist.
Born Rodney Phillip Needham Green, he changed his name in 1947; the following year he married Maud Claudia (Ruth) Brysz.
The couple would collaborate on several works, including an English translation of Robert Hertz's ''Death and the Right Hand.''
His
fieldwork was with the
Penan of
Borneo
Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and e ...
(1951-2) and the Siwang of
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federal constitutional monarchy consists of thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Mal ...
(1953-5).
His
doctoral thesis on the Penan was accepted in 1953.
He was University Lecturer in Social Anthropology,
Oxford University, 1956–76;
Professor of Social Anthropology, Oxford, 1976–90; Official Fellow,
Merton College, Oxford, 1971–75; and Fellow,
All Souls College
All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full members of ...
, Oxford, 1976-90.
Together with
Edmund Leach and
Mary Douglas, Needham brought
structuralism from France and anglicised it in the process. A prolific scholar, he was also a teacher and a rediscoverer of neglected figures in the history of his discipline, such as
Arnold Van Gennep and
Robert Hertz.
Among other things, he contributed to the study of
family resemblance
Family resemblance (german: Familienähnlichkeit, link=no) is a philosophical idea made popular by Ludwig Wittgenstein, with the best known exposition given in his posthumously published book '' Philosophical Investigations'' (1953). It argues t ...
, introducing the terms "monothetic" and "polythetic" into anthropology.
He had two children, one of whom,
Tristan
Tristan ( Latin/Brythonic: ''Drustanus''; cy, Trystan), also known as Tristram or Tristain and similar names, is the hero of the legend of Tristan and Iseult. In the legend, he is tasked with escorting the Irish princess Iseult to wed ...
, became a professor of mathematics.
Bibliography
*1962 ''Structure and sentiment''
*1971 ''Rethinking kinship and marriage''
*1972 ''Belief, language and experience''
*1973 ''Right and left. Essays on dual symbolic classification''
*1974 ''Remarks and inventions – Skeptical essays about kinship''
*1975 ''Polythetic classification: Convergence and consequences''
*1978 ''Primordial characters''
*1978 ''Essential perplexities''
*1979 ''Symbolic classification''
*1980 ''Reconnaissances'', U. of Toronto Press,
*1981
Circumstantial deliveries', Berkeley: University of California Press,
*1983 ''Against the tranquility of axioms''
*1983 ''Sumba and the slave trade ''
*1985 ''Exemplars'', Berkeley: University of California Press,
*1987 ''Counterpoints''
*1987 ''Mamboru, history and structure in a domain of Northwestern Sumba''
References
External links
Filmed in Canberra in 1979 by Timothy Asch, in conversation with James J. Fox.*Obituaries:
The TimesFull text of doctoral thesis, "The social organisation of the Penan"via Oxford Research Archive
1923 births
2006 deaths
English anthropologists
Social anthropologists
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences fellows
Alumni of Merton College, Oxford
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