Rodney Needham
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{more citations needed|date=February 2019}}
{{Anthropology}}
Rodney Needham (15 May 1923 – 4 December 2006 in Oxford) 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.{{cite news |last1=Barnes |first1=RH |title=Rodney Needham |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/jan/16/guardianobituaries.obituaries1 |access-date=18 February 2019 |work=The Guardian |date=16 January 2007}}{{cite news |title=Rodney Needham |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1536732/Rodney-Needham.html |access-date=18 February 2019 |work=The Telegraph |date=13 December 2006}} The couple would collaborate on several works, including an English translation of Robert Hertz's Death and the Right Hand.{{Cite book|title=The modern anthropology of South-East Asia : an introduction|last=King, Victor T.|date=2003|publisher=RoutledgeCurzon|isbn=0415297516|pages=126|oclc=50252070}}{{cite book|editor1-last=Levens|editor1-first=R.G.C.|title=Merton College Register 1900–1964|date=1964|publisher=Basil Blackwell|location=Oxford|page=393}}
His fieldwork was with the Penan of Borneo (1951-2) and the Siwang of Malaysia (1953-5). His doctoral thesis on the Penan was accepted in 1953.{{Cite web|url=https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:dd458d68-50ab-4cd3-be39-5a70c4df7bee|title=ORA Thesis: "The social organisation of the Penan"|website=ora.ox.ac.uk|publisher=Oxford Research Archive|language=en|access-date=2017-03-23}} 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, 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, 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, {{ISBN|0-8020-2365-7}}
- 1981 [http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft6c6006tn/?&query=&brand=ucpress Circumstantial deliveries], Berkeley: University of California Press, {{ISBN|0-585-28111-4}}
- 1983 Against the tranquility of axioms
- 1983 Sumba and the slave trade
- 1985 Exemplars, Berkeley: University of California Press, {{ISBN|0-520-05200-5}}
- 1987 Counterpoints
- 1987 Mamboru, history and structure in a domain of Northwestern Sumba
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [https://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1126855 Filmed in Canberra in 1979 by Timothy Asch, in conversation with James J. Fox.]
- Obituaries:
- [https://www.theguardian.com/obituaries/story/0,,1991060,00.html The Guardian]
- [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1536732/Rodney-Needham.html The Telegraph]
- [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/rodney-needham-428191.html The Independent]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20070221050148/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1403456.ece The Times]
- [https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:dd458d68-50ab-4cd3-be39-5a70c4df7bee Full text of doctoral thesis, "The social organisation of the Penan"] via Oxford Research Archive
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Needham, Rodney}}
Category:English anthropologists
Category:British social anthropologists
Category:Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences fellows
Category:Alumni of Merton College, Oxford
{{UK-scientist-stub}}
{{anthropologist-stub}}