Rodney Needham (15 May 1923 – 4 December 2006 in

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

) was an English

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 ...

. 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 Field research, field studies, or fieldwork is the collection of raw data outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting. The approaches and methods used in field research vary across disciplines. For example, biologists who conduct f ...

was with the Penan of

Borneo Borneo () is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world, with an area of , and population of 23,053,723 (2020 national censuses). Situated at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, it is one of the Greater Sunda ...

(1951-2) and the Siwang of

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

(1953-5). His

doctoral A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

thesis on the Penan was accepted in 1953. He was University Lecturer in Social Anthropology,

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

, 1956–76; Professor of Social Anthropology, Oxford, 1976–90; Official Fellow,

Merton College, Oxford Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 126 ...

, 1971–75; and Fellow,

All Souls College All Souls College (official name: The College of All Souls of the Faithful Departed, of Oxford) 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 me ...

, Oxford, 1976-90. Together with Edmund Leach and Mary Douglas, Needham brought

structuralism Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns t ...

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 () 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 that things which could be thought to b ...

, introducing the terms "monothetic" and "polythetic" into anthropology. He had two children, one of whom, Tristan, 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 Times

Full text of doctoral thesis, "The social organisation of the Penan"
via Oxford Research Archive 1923 births 2006 deaths English anthropologists British social anthropologists Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences fellows Alumni of Merton College, Oxford {{anthropologist-stub