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Radcliffe-Brown

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The Building of British Social Anthropology

Part of the book series: Studies in the History of Modern Science ((SHMS,volume 8))

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Abstract

Alfred Reginald Brown, who changed his surname by deed poll in April 1926 to Radcliffe-Brown, came to Cambridge as an undergraduate in 1901. At first, his main interest seems to have been in philosophy, where he was influenced by Whitehead, but he also studied experimental psychology under Rivers for several years. In 1904, when Rivers began teaching anthropology, Radcliffe-Brown became his first pupil in that subject. Radcliffe-Brown’s other anthropological mentor at Cambridge was Haddon, whose influence at first seems to have been even more profound than that of Rivers. Hence, Radcliffe-Brown received his initial training in anthropology from the two founders of the Cambridge school of ethnology, in those heady days before the first flush of enthusiasm generated by the Torres Straits expedition had died down. All in all, Radcliffe-Brown’s total undergraduate training in anthropology amounted to one year, which may not sound much to us but, by the standards of the day, would have been judged a fairly comprehensive introduction to the discipline.1

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Notes and References

  1. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “The Study of Kinship Systems”, original 1941, reprinted in Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (New York, 1965), p. 50.

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  2. Raymond Firth, “Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown 1881–1955”, Proc. Brit. Acad. 42 (1956).

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  3. Fred Eggan and Lloyd Warner, “Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown 1881–1955”, Am. Anthrop. 58 (1956).

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  4. Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Rev. W. A. Goodwin dated 9 Jan. 1922, Haddon Collection, Envelope 4.

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  5. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “The Methods of Ethnology and Social Anthropology”, original 1923, reprinted in M. N. Srinivas (ed.), Method in Social Anthropology (Chicago, 1958), p. 22.

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  6. Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Mauss dated 6 Aug. 1912. Quoted in Steven Lukes, Émile Durkheim. His Life and Work (London, 1973), p. 527.

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  7. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (Free Press, 1965), pp. 123 ff, 178 ff.

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  8. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, 1932 Preface to The Andaman Islanders (Free Press, 1964), p. viii.

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  9. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Social Organization of Australian Tribes Oceania Monograph No. 1 (1931), p. 15, n. 5.

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  10. Fragment headed “Aranda Totemism” found in Radcliffe-Brown’s personal copy of the above monograph, Rare Book Room, Fisher Library, University of Sydney.

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  11. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “Australian Social Organization”, Am. Anthrop. NS 49, 151–154 (1947).

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  12. J. Roy. Anthrop. Inst. 12 (1882).

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  13. Sir Richard Temple, obituary for E. H. Man, Man 30, 9 (1930).

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  14. Letter from Temple to Haddon dated 16 Mar. 1906, Haddon Collection, Envelope 8.

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  15. Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Haddon dated 10 Aug. 1906, Haddon Collection, Envelope 8.

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  16. Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Haddon written circa 26 Aug. 1906, Haddon Collection, Envelope 8.

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  17. Ibid.

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  18. Ibid.

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  19. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders (1964, Free Press reprint of 1922 Cambridge University Press edn.), p. 82 n. See also p. 69 n., p. 322 n.

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  20. Ibid., p. 72 n.

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  21. J. Roy. Anthrop. Inst. 12, 421–425 (1882).

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  22. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, 1932 Preface to The Andaman Islanders (Free Press edn., 1964).

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  23. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “The Religion of the Andaman Islanders”, Folklore XX, 257–271 (1909).

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  24. W. Schmidt, “Pulaga, the Supreme Being of the Andamanese”, Man 10 2 (1910).

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  25. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “Pulaga — A Reply to Father Schmidt”, Man 10 17 (1910).

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  26. A. Lang, “Pulaga”, Man 10 30 (1910).

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  27. Sir Richard Temple, Obituary for E. H. Man, Man 30, 9 (1930).

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  28. M. Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory (New York, 1968), p. 391.

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  29. H. R. Hays, From Ape to Angel (Capricorn edn., New York, 1964), p. 134.

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  30. E. L. Grant Watson, But to What Purpose (London, 1946), pp. 83, 84.

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  31. Ibid., p. 83.

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  32. M. Mead, letter to Ruth Benedict dated 18 Oct. 1928. Quoted in Margaret Mead, Writings of Ruth Benedict. An Anthropologist At Work (New York, 1966), p. 310.

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  33. Ruth Benedict, letter to Margaret Mead dated 28 Dec. 1932. Quoted in Mead, ibid., p. 327. For other comments revelatory of Radcliffe-Brown’s personality, see Mead, ibid., pp. 309, 326–328, 333–335, 433.

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  34. A. P. Elkin, “A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, 1880–1955”, Oceania XXVI, 243 (June 1956).

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  35. Firth, op. cit. (note 1), p. 296.

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  36. Ibid., p. 290.

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  37. M. N. Srinivas, “Introduction” to Method in Social Anthropology. Selected Essays By A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (Chicago, 1958), p. xviii. Meyer Fortes informs me that Radcliffe-Brown “never said” that Kropotkin was his neighbour in Birmingham, but claimed to have met Kropotkin in Kent while on holiday there. For an article which argues that Kropotkin was an important early influence on Radcliffe-Brown’s anthropology, see Richard J. Perry, “Radcliffe-Brown and Kropotkin: The Heritage of Anarchism in British Social Anthropology”, Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers Nos. 51 and 52 (Berkeley, 1978), pp. 61–65. Perry, who rather astoundingly does not refer to the passage from Srinivas cited above, bases his argument on purely circumstantial evidence.

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  38. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “Marriage and Descent in North Australia”, Man 10 32 (1910). Further discussion of the subject occurs in articles by Mathews and Radcliffe-Brown in the 1912 volume of Man.

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  39. Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to “The Secretary of the Anthropological Board” dated 4 Nov. 1909, Haddon Collection, Envelope 8.

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  40. Haddon Collection, Envelope 12013.

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  41. Grant Watson, op. cit. (note 21), p. 84.

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  42. Ibid., pp. 84, 85.

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  43. Undated letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Daisy Bates beginning “Mr Marett has handed to me a letter which you wrote to him on the subject of an ethnological expedition to West Australia”, J. S. Battye Library of West Australian History, Perth.

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  44. Ibid.

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  45. Elizabeth Salter, Daisy Bates (New York, 1972), p. 135.

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  46. Undated letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Daisy Bates beginning “I shall be unable to sail from England until July 28th… ”, J. S. Battye Library of West Australian History, Perth.

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  47. Ibid.

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  48. For an interesting discussion of this article and Radcliffe-Brown’s use of it see J. G. Peristiany, “Durkheim’s Letter to Radcliffe-Brown”, in K. H. Wolff, Emile Durkheim 1858–1917 (Ohio, 1960), pp. 317–324.

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  49. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “Three Tribes of Western Australia”, J. Roy. Anthrop. Inst. 43, 193–194 (1913).

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  50. Radcliffe-Brown, op. cit. (note 34).

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  51. Radcliffe-Brown, op. cit. (note 37).

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  52. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “Australian Social Organization”, Am. Anthrop. NS 49, 153 (1947).

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  53. Radcliffe-Brown, op. cit. (note 37).

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  54. The West Australian, 10 Sept. 1910. (Clipping in Haddon Collection, Envelope 8.)

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  55. My account of the 1910–1912 West Australian expedition is based mainly on the relevant chapters in E. L. Grant Watson’s autobiography, op. cit. (note 21). A further eyewitness description of the expedition is given in Daisy Bates, The Passing of the Aborigines. A Lifetime Spent Among the Natives of Australia (London, 1938), Chapter IX. Secondary accounts, which like mine are based mainly upon Watson, are given in Salter, op. cit. (note 36); Rodney Needham, Remarks and Inventions. Skeptical Essays About Kinship (London, 1974); and Adam Kuper, Anthropologists and Anthropology: The British School 1922–1972 (London, 1973).

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  56. Grant Watson, op. cit. (note 21), pp. 105, 106.

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  57. Bates, op. cit. (note 46), p. 95. Grant Watson, op. cit. (note 21), p. 109.

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  58. Ibid., p. 110.

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  59. Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to [The Chief Protector of Aborigines?] dated 3 Oct. 1910, J. S. Battye Library of West Australian History, Perth.

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  60. Grant Watson, op. cit. (note 21), p. 112.

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  61. E. L. Grant Watson, Where Bonds Are Loosed (New York, 1918), pp. 31, 32. In But to What Purpose (p. 113), Grant Watson describes this book, his first novel, as depicting the situation on Bernier Island “with little deviation from the actual events”.

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  62. Grant Watson, op. cit. (note 21), p. 113.

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  63. Ibid., p. 114.

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  64. Bates, op. cit. (note 46), p. 101.

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  65. Grant Watson, op. cit. (note 21), p. 113.

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  66. Ibid.

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  67. Ibid., p. 85.

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  68. Ibid., pp. 115, 116.

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  69. Salter, op. cit. (note 36), p. 145.

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  70. Radcliffe-Brown, op. cit. (note 40), p. 146.

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  71. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “Beliefs Concerning Childbirth in Some Australian Tribes”, Man 12, 96 (1912).

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  72. Letter from Daisy Bates to Rev. John Mathew. Quoted in Salter, op. cit. (note 36), p. 147.

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  73. Grant Watson, op. cit. (note 21), p. 105.

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  74. Salter, op. cit. (note 36), p. 176.

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  75. Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Mauss dated 6 Aug. 1912, in possession of Raymond Aron. Quoted in Steven Lukes, Émile Durkheim. His Life and Works (London, 1973), pp. 527, 528.

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  76. See Radcliffe-Brown, op. cit. (note 40).

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  77. Letter from Durkheim to Radcliffe-Brown dated 9 Nov. 1913. Reproduced in Peristiany, op. cit. (note 39), pp. 317, 318. The original had been preserved by Radcliffe-Brown in his annotated copy of Durkheim’s Le Suicide. In fact Durkheim never did “carry out a new study of the facts”, because the First World War, which disrupted and almost destroyed the Durkheimian school of sociology, was to break out in less than a year, and Durkheim himself was to die before the hostilities had run their course.

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  78. Letter from Durkheim to Radcliffe-Brown dated 12 Jan. 1914. From Radcliffe-Brown’s papers at the Oxford Univeristy Institute of Social Anthropology. Quoted in Lukes, op. cit. (note 66) p. 528 n.

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  79. In other places, however, when Radcliffe-Brown considers the book as presenting a generalized theoretical position, he evaluates it in a much more favourable light. See for example his 1945 article “Religion and Society”, reprinted in Radcliffe-Brown,Structure and Function in Primitive Society (New York, 1965), pp. 153–177.

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  80. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “The Sociological Theory of Totemism”, originally 1929, reprinted in Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (New York, 1965), p. 124 ff. See also Radcliffe-Brown, “The Methods of Ethnology and Social Anthropology”, original 1923, reprinted in M. N. Srinivas (ed.), Method in Social Anthropology (Chicago, 1958), pp. 20, 21. See also undated letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Rivers beginning “If the point is of interest to you… ”, Haddon Collection, Envelope 12027.

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  81. See for example Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory (New York, 1968), p. 515 ff.

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  82. The passages in question, which are discussed and quoted in the immediately ensuing text, come from the following two sources: Undated latter from Radcliffe-Brown to Rivers beginning “Many thanks for your criticisms on the proofs… ”, Haddon Collection, Envelope 12058. Undated letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Rivers beginning “I am very sorry to hear that you are laid up in hospital… ”, Haddon Collection, Envelope 12062.

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  83. B. Freire-Marreco and J. L. Myres (eds.), Notes and Queries on Anthropology (4th edn., London, 1912), p. 143.

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  84. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “The Study of Kinship Systems” (1941). Reprinted in Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (Free Press paperback, 1965), p. 51.

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  85. Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Rivers dated 18 Oct. 1913, Haddon Collection, Envelope 12039.

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  86. Undated letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Rivers beginning “Many thanks for your criticisms on the proofs… ”, Haddon Collection, Envelope 12058.

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  87. Ibid.

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  88. Unattached fragment by Rivers beginning “Social Organization is so fundamental… ”, Haddon Collection, Envelope 12027.

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  89. Undated letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Rivers beginning “Many thanks for your paper. With the greater part of it I most heartily agree”. Haddon Collection, Envelope 12027.

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  90. Undated letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Rivers beginning “Many thanks for your letter. I am sorry that my notes on Totemism… ”, Haddon Collection, Envelope 12062.

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  91. Undated letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Rivers beginning “I should have greatly liked to have a talk with Mauss… ”, Haddon Collection, Envelope 12027.

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  92. Ibid.

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  93. Undated letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Rivers beginning “There is a good deal more in Siebert’s paper… ”, Haddon Collection, Envelope 12027. See also Radcliffe- Brown, “Notes on Totemism in Eastern Australia”, J. Roy. Anthrop. Inst. 59, 411 ff (1929).

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  94. Undated letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Rivers beginning, “If the point is of interest to you… ”, Haddon Collection, Envelope 12027.

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  95. Radcliffe-Brown, op. cit. (note 81). Emphasis in original.

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  96. Radcliffe-Brown, op. cit. (note 10), p. 393.

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  97. Ibid., pp. 245, 257, 309, 232–234.

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  98. Ibid., pp. 397, 167, 304.

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  99. Ibid., p. 250.

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  100. For a secondary source which uses this article to argue that Radcliffe-Brown’s concept of function is heavily derivative upon that of Durkheim, see Harry Alpert, Émile Durkheim and his Sociology (New York, 1961), pp. 104–108.

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  101. Another possible reason why Radcliffe-Brown hitched his wagon to Durkheim at this time might be concerned with the intellectual climate at the University of Chicago. As George Stocking has pointed out in his booklet Anthropology at Chicago: Tradition, Discipline, Department (University of Chicago, 1979), p. 29:

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  102. Debate on the nature of social science was part of the crackling intellectual milieu at the University in the mid-1930s. President Hutchins’ neo-Thomist protégé Mortimer Adler, who was causing some to worry that students might convert to Catholicism, argued that “systematic social science” must be grounded in the categories of Aristotelian psychology. In response, Radcliffe-Brown gave a valedictory seminar in the spring of 1937, in which he defended the possibility of a “theoretical natural science of society” which “was in no sense a psychology”.

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  103. The fact that Durkheim had taken an avowedly anti-psychological line may therefore have provided Radcliffe-Brown with a further motive for wishing to claim intellectual ancestry from the French sociologist.

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  104. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (New York, 1965), pp. 164–166. Radcliffe-Brown had outlined some of these necessary revisions and corrections to Durkheim’s thesis in his 1929 article on “The Sociological Theory of Totemism”. See ibid., p. 123 ff.

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  105. Radcliffe-Brown to Rivers, op. cit. (note 84).

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  106. Radcliffe-Brown, op. cit. (note 81).

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  107. Radcliffe-Brown, op. cit. (note 82).

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  108. Peristiany, op. cit. (note 39), p. 319.

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  109. Radcliffe-Brown, op. cit. (note 40), p. 154. Strictly speaking Radcliffe-Brown’s “genealogical tables” are not genealogies in Rivers’s sense, since they do not include proper names.

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  110. Ibid., p. 151.

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  111. Ibid., p. 190.

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  112. Ibid., p. 191.

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  113. Letter from N. W. Thomas to Rivers dated 14 Apr. 1916, Haddon Collection, Envelope 12022.

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  114. Rodney Needham, “Surmise, Discovery and Rhetoric”. In Needham, op. cit. (note 46). Whilst the subject under consideration is that of priority, I should mention that, although there is no disputing Needham’s priority in publishing his sceptical attack on Radcliffe-Brown’s claim to having “discovered the Kariera system”, I did not in fact derive my own very similar views on this matter from Needham. On the contrary, I had arrived independently at these views before Derek Freeman drew my attention to Needham’s account late in 1974.

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  115. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “The Social Organization of Australian Tribes”, Oceania 1 p. 46, n. 5 (1930).

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  116. A spirited but I think unconvincing rejoinder to Needham’s attack on Radcliffe-Brown is given in Fred Eggan’s “Aboriginal Sins”, The Times Literary Supplement (13 Dec. 1974), pp. 1402, 1403. Eggan argues that, in speaking of “the Kariera system”, Radcliffe-Brown was not referring, as Needham assumes, simply to the four sections and their associated marriage regulations. On the contrary, writes Eggan, Radcliffe-Brown considered that the Kariera system included many other social phenomena as well, including “the local groupings, the residence patterns, the division of labour, the totemic cults, and the nature of the tribal integration”. Now it is true that Radcliffe-Brown regarded kinship systems as fulfilling many more social functions than just the regulation of marriage. Howeve, the fact remains that, in claiming to have made his “discovery”, Radcliffe-Brown strongly implies that the entity which he allegedly discovered is nothing more nor less than the Kariera method of regulating marriage. In the penultimate paragraph before the citation of the footnote in which the claim is made, the topic under discussion is marriage regulation. And immediately after citing the footnote, the text states that the Kariera system is “based on” cross-cousin marriage.

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  117. A second point made by Eggan is that, if Needham had bothered to look up the verb “to discover” in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary “he would have learnt that the meaning he provides is numbered eight in a list of ten; and that to uncover, or expose to view, or make known, or exhibit, or explore are all possible or acceptable meanings”. However, Eggan conveniently neglects to discuss the context in which Radcliffe-Brown uses the word. For Radcliffe-Brown claims that his “discovery” was made as the result of a “search”, which had been inspired by a previous “surmise” that such a system “might” exist somewhere within an area comprising over a million square miles. This context makes it clear that, whatever the possible meanings of “discover”, the meaning provided by Needham is far and away the most appropriate one for the usage in question.

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  118. Eggan concludes his rejoinder with some uncharitably simplistic inferences about Needham’s motive for attacking Radcliffe-Brown. According to Eggan, Needham has long borne Radcliffe-Brown a grudge as the result of an incident which occurred in the King’s Arms Hotel at Oxford about a quarter of a century before. On this occasion, Radcliffe-Brown treated the young Needham’s knowledge of Chinese calligraphy with disdain. These events, on Eggan’s account, “led to detailed investigations of Radcliffe-Brown’s discoveries and pronouncements, which called into question his status as a scholar and as a person”. “It seems clear”, concludes Eggan, “that the events in the King’s Arms have powerfully influenced [Needham’s] behaviour and scholarly judgement”.

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  119. As a counterbalance to Eggan’s article, I would like to refer the reader to Frederick G. G. Rose’s Classification of Kin, Age Structure and Marriage Amongst the Groote Eylandt Aborigines (Berlin, 1960), pp. 4–5, 160–165. Rose, who himself carried out extensive fieldwork among the Australian Aborigines, reveals himself to be extremely sceptical about the worth of Radcliffe-Brown’s Australian results, and of the claims made about how these results were obtained. It is also worth noting that in An Anatomy of Kinship (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1963), p. 95, Harrison White refers to the clarity of Radcliffe-Brown’s presentation of the Kariera system as being “suspiciously perfect”.

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  120. A. R. Brown, “The Relationship System of the Dieri Tribe”, Man 14 33 (1914).

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  121. A. R. Brown, “Notes on the Social Organization of Australian Tribes, Part I” J. Roy. Anthrop. Inst. 48 245, 246 (1918). W. H. R. Rivers, The History of Melanesian Society Vol. I (Cambridge, 1914), p. 17.

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  122. W. H. R. Rivers, Referee’s report dated 8 Mar. 1922, R.A.I. Archives, A9, Supplement.

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  123. W. H. R. Rivers, Social Organization (London, 1926), p. 195 ff.

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  124. Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Haddon dated 13 Mar. 1920, Haddon Collection, Envelope 8.

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  125. Letter from Haddon to the Rt. Hon. Lt. Gen. J. C. Smuts, L.L.D., Pretoria, Haddon Collection, Envelope 8. The same envelope also contains a letter by Haddon recommending Radcliffe-Brown for the position of Ethnologist in the Museum of Pretoria.

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  126. Quoted in Firth, op. cit. (note 1), p. 293.

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  127. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “The Mother’s Brother in South Africa”, original 1924, reprinted in Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (New York, 1965).

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  128. Letter from Winnie Hoernle to Haddon dated 3 Feb. 1926, Haddon Collection, Envelope 9.

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  129. Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Haddon dated 22 Oct. 1923, Haddon Collection, Envelope 8.

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  130. See, for example: (a) Undated letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Rivers beginning “In explaining the Dieri system of social organization… ”, Haddon Collection, Envelope 12027.

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  131. (b) Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Haddon dated 27 June 1921, Haddon Collection, Envelope 4.

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  132. (c) Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Haddon dated 12 Nov. 1921, Haddon Collection, Envelope 4.

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  133. (d) Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Rivers dated 20 Feb. 1922, Haddon Collection, Envelope 12081.

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  134. (e) Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Haddon dated 6 Mar. 1922, Haddon Collection, Envelope 4.

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  135. (f) Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Haddon dated 18 Dec. 1922, Haddon Collection, Envelope 4.

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  136. Only at the beginning of his 1918 article (Radcliffe-Brown, op. cit. note 107, p. 222) does Radcliffe-Brown exhibit any lack of resolution in his ultimate goal of producing a major work on Australian social organization.

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  137. Copy of a “Report to the Vice-Chancellor by the Advisory Committee on the Selection of a Professor of Anthropology in the University of Sydney”, Cambridge, 14 Sept. 1925, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, 401D “University of Sydney, Anthropology, 1924–26”.

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  138. Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to E. E. Day of the Rockefeller Foundation dated 3 Oct. 1932, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, 410D “Australian National Research Council 1932”.

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  139. Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Haddon dated 9 May 1927, Haddon Collection, Envelope 25.

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  140. G. Elliot Smith, “The Problem of Totemism”, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “The Sociological Theory of Totemism”, Proceedings of the Fourth Pacific Science Congress (Java, 1929).

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  141. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “Historical and Functional Interpretations of Culture in Relation to the Practical Application of Anthropology to Native Peoples” (Abstract), Proceedings of the Fourth Pacific Science Congress (Java, 1929).

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  142. Copy of letter from Elliot Smith to Stanley M. Bruce dated 13 Oct. 1932, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, 410D “Australian National Research Council 1932”. Bruce, a former Prime Minister of Australia, was at this time “Minister Without Portfolio” for the Australian Government in London.

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  143. Letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Dr Mason of the Rockefeller Foundation dated 17 Nov. 1930, Rockefeller Foundation Archives, 410 D “Australian National Research Council 1930”.

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  144. Elkin, op. cit. (note 25), pp. 249, 250.

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  145. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Social Organization of Australian Tribes (Oceania Monograph No. 1, Melbourne, 1931), p. 221. C.f. Needham, op. cit. (note 46), p. 153.

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  146. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “A System of Notation for Relationships”, Man 30 93 (1930).

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  147. Rodney Needham, Rethinking Kinship and Marriage (London, 1971), pp. xxii—xxv.

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  148. Ibid., p. xxviii.

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  149. Letter from Spencer to Haddon dated 15 Oct. 1921, Haddon Collection, Envelope 4. 130 Undated letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Rivers beginning “I am very sorry to hear that you are laid up in hospital… ”, Haddon Collection, Envelope 12062.

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  150. Undated letter from Radcliffe-Brown to Rivers beginning “I am glad that you are pleased with the M.S. which you kindly returned to me… ”, Haddon Collection, Envelope 12027.

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  151. See, for example, Radcliffe-Brown, “The Comparative Method in Social Anthropology”, J. Roy. Anthrop. Inst. 81 (1951).

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  152. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, A Natural Science of Society (Glencoe, 1957), pp. 32, 33.

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  153. C. Lévi-Strauss, Totemism (Boston, 1963), pp. 83–91.

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  154. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, manuscript notebook E5 on Australian social organization, Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney.

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  155. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “The Comparative Method in Social Anthropology”, J. Roy. Anthrop. Inst. 81 (1951).

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  156. A. Goldenweiser, Anthropology (New York, 1937), pp. 338–350.

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  157. Elliot Smith, op. cit. (note 122).

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  158. Meyer Fortes, Kinship and the Social Order (Chicago, 1969), p. 45.

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  159. Fred Eggan, “Lewis H. Morgan in Kinship Perspective”, in G. E. Dole and R. L. Carneiro (eds.), Essays in the Science of Culture (New York, 1960), p. 185. Actually it should be mentioned that Morgan’s Systems of Consanguinity… (Washington, 1870), p. 158, does contain a promising but very brief passage on the social functions of the mother’s brother.

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  160. Radcliffe-Brown, op. cit. (note 75), p. 51.

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  161. W. H. R. Rivers, “The Father’s Sister in Oceania”, Folklore 21 55 (1910). For a discussion by Rivers of the social functions of the mother’s brother, see his “Survival in Sociology”, Sociological Review 6,293–305 (1913).

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  162. Radcliffe-Brown, op. cit. (note 113), p. 18.

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  163. Ibid., p. 19.

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  164. Ibid., p. 20.

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  165. Ibid.

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  166. Ibid., p. 24.

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  167. Freire-Marreco and Myres, op. cit. (note 74), pp. 153, 154.

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  168. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “A Further Note on Joking Relationships” (1949), reprinted in Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (Free Press paperback, 1965), p. 106.

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  169. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, “On Joking Relationships” (1940), reprinted in ibid., p. 92.

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  170. Ibid., p. 90.

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  171. Another possible influence upon Radcliffe-Brown might be Lewis Henry Morgan. Meyer Fortes, who now owns what used to be Radcliffe-Brown’s personal copy of Morgan’s Ancient Society, claims in Kinship and the Social Order (Chicago, 1969), p. 5, that “one need only turn the pages and note the passages he [Radcliffe-Brown] marked to realize how closely he had read it and how he had penetrated to what was fundamental in Morgan’s work”. My attempts to pursue this matter further (whilst doing research at Cambridge during the summer of 1972) were not helped by the fact that, when I politely requested permission to look at the aforesaid copy of Morgan’s book, my request was greeted with the bluntest of refusals. And since my own investigations of the fairly extensive correspondence which has survived from the period when Radcliffe-Brown’s theoretical position was taking shape reveal little to suggest that Morgan’s work provided a consequential part of Radcliffe Brown’s intellectual ancestry, I have given little credence to the hypothesis of Morganian influence.

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  172. This way of expressing the matter was suggested to me by a paper on “Professionalization and the History of Australian Biology”, which was read by Lyndsay Farrall at the University of New South Wales on 12 June 1980.

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    Ian Langham

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© 1981 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland

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Langham, I. (1981). Radcliffe-Brown. In: The Building of British Social Anthropology. Studies in the History of Modern Science, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8464-6_7

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