J. D. Unwin

Unwin was born on December 6, 1895, in Haverhill, Suffolk. He was educated at Shewsbury School. His enrolment at Oriel College, Oxford was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. He served in the Northamptonshire Regiment and the Tank Corps, where he was twice wounded and awarded the Military Cross. After the war, he spent some years in Abyssinia.{{Cite journal |date=8 August 1936 |title=Obituary – J.D. Unwin |url=https://www.nature.com/articles/138234b0.pdf |journal=Nature |volume=138 |issue=3484 |page=234|doi=10.1038/138234b0 }}

In 1933, Unwin received his PhD in anthropology at Peterhouse, Cambridge. His thesis was titled "Sexual Regulations and Cultural Behaviour". He expanded on his research in his 1934 book Sex and Culture.

Unwin also conducted research work for the Home Office on the imprisonment of debtors, publishing "Imprisonment for Debt" in 1935. His expertise in social conditions and problems led to his appointment as head of Cambridge House, a social settlement in South London.

Unwin died in August 1936, at the age of 40, following an unsuccessful medical operation.

In Sex and Culture (1934), Unwin studied 80 primitive tribes and six known civilizations through 5,000 years of history. He claimed there was a positive correlation between the cultural achievement of a people and the sexual restraint they observe.{{Cite book |last=Unwin |first=Joseph Daniel |url=http://archive.org/details/b20442580 |title=Sex and Culture |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1934 |publication-place=London: Humphrey Milford |page=412 |language=en |quote=Any human society is free to choose either to display great energy or to enjoy sexual freedom; the evidence is that it cannot do both for more than one generation.}} Aldous Huxley described Sex and Culture as "a work of the highest importance" in his literature.{{Cite book |title= Ends and Means |last=Huxley |first= Aldous |publisher=Chatto & Windus |year=1946 |location=London |pages= 311–2 |chapter=Ethics |chapter-url= https://archive.org/stream/endsandmeans035237mbp#page/n320/mode/2up}}

According to Unwin, after a nation becomes prosperous, it becomes increasingly liberal concerning sexual morality. It thus loses its cohesion, impetus, and purpose, which he claims is irrevocable.{{Cite journal |last=Unwin |first=J. D. |year=1927 |title=Monogamy as a Condition of Social Energy |journal=The Hibbert Journal |volume=25 |pages=662}}

Unwin also stated, "In the past, too, the greatest energy has been displayed only by those societies which have reduced their sexual opportunity to a minimum by the adoption of absolute monogamy [...]. In every case the women and children were reduced to the level of legal nonentities, sometimes also to the level of chattels, always to the level of mere appendages of the male estate. Eventually they were freed from their disadvantages, but at the same time the sexual opportunity of the society was extended. Sexual desires could then be satisfied in a direct or perverted manner [...]. So the energy of the society decreased, and then disappeared." He further notes, "No society has yet succeeded in regulating the relations between the sexes in such a way as to enable sexual opportunity to remain at a minimum for an extended period." And thus, all societies have collapsed. His hope for the future is that, "by placing the sexes on a level of complete legal equality, and then by altering its economic and social organization in such a way as to render it both possible and tolerable for sexual opportunity to remain at a minimum for an extended period," a society may flourish.{{Cite book |last=Unwin |first=Joseph Daniel |url=http://archive.org/details/b20442580 |title=Sex and Culture |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1934 |publication-place=London: Humphrey Milford |page=431-2 |language=en}}

• Sexual Regulations and Human Behaviour. London: Williams & Norgate, 1933.
• Sex and Culture. London: Oxford University Press, 1934.
• The Scandal of Imprisonment for Debt. London: Simpkin Marshall, 1935.
• Sexual Regulations and Cultural Behaviour. London: Oxford University Press, 1935.
• Sex Compatibility in Marriage. New York: Rensselaer, 1939.
• [http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015049770160;view=1up;seq=9 Hopousia: Or, The Sexual and Economic Foundations of a New Society,] with an introduction by Aldous Huxley. New York: Oskar Piest, 1940.
• Our Economic Problems and Their Solution (An Extract from "Hopousia.") London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1944.

• "Monogamy as a Condition of Social Energy," The Hibbert Journal, Vol. XXV, 1927.
• "The Classificatory System of Relationship," Man, Vol. XXIX, Sep., 1929.
• "Kinship," Man, Vol. XXX, Apr., 1930.
• "Reply to Dr. Morant's 'Cultural Anthropology and Statistics'," Man, Vol. XXXV, Mar., 1935.

• Dark Rapture: The Sex-life of the African Negro, with an Introduction by J. D. Unwin. New York: Walden Publication, 1939.

• Sex and Culture, 1934 book by J. D. Unwin
• Ethnology
• Anthropology

{{Reflist}}

• Firth, Raymond (1936). "Sex and Culture," Africa, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 126–129.
• Morant, G. M. (1935). "Cultural Anthropology and Statistics; A One-Sided Review of 'Sex and Culture'," Man, Vol. 35, pp. 34–39.
• {{cite news|last1=Yancey|first1=Philip|title=The Lost Sex Study|url=http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1994/december12/4te080.html|accessdate=September 23, 2017|work=Christianity Today|date=December 12, 1994|language=en}}

• [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v138/n3484/abs/138234b0.html Obituary]
• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Joseph Daniel Unwin}}
• [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Search/Home?lookfor=%22Unwin,%20Joseph%20Daniel,%201895-1936.%22&type=author&inst= Works by J. D. Unwin], at Hathi Trust
• [http://www.therai.org.uk/archives-and-manuscripts/manuscript-contents/0157-unwin-joseph-daniel-ms-157/ Unwin, Joseph Daniel]
• [https://archive.org/details/b20442580 Sex and Culture]

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Category:1895 births

Category:1936 deaths

Category:20th-century British anthropologists

Category:Academics of the University of Cambridge

Category:Academics of the University of Oxford

Category:British ethnologists

Category:British male feminists

Category:English feminists

Category:Recipients of the Military Cross

Category:British social anthropologists

Category:Theorists on Western civilization