Rodney Needham – författare

This volume scrutinizes the questions of conceptualization, method and history in the fields of kinship, social anthropology and structuralism. It puts forward a radical revision of the conventional approaches and criteria. Exploring analysis and method in the disparity between relative age and kinship categories as means of social classification, the book makes theoretical readjustments, largely inspired by the precepts of Wittgenstein.Originally published in 1971.

This volume is concerned with two of the fundamental topics of social anthropology, kinship and marriage, approached from a variety of viewpoints by an international group of contributors of diverse experience and background.The wide range of subjects examined includes: Incest, epistemology, linguistics, prescriptive alliance and methodology.Fieldwork from the following countries is drawn on: Burma, Sri Lanka, New Guinea, Australia, Africa and South America.

This volume is concerned with two of the fundamental topics of social anthropology, kinship and marriage, approached from a variety of viewpoints by an international group of contributors of diverse experience and background.The wide range of subjects examined includes: Incest, epistemology, linguistics, prescriptive alliance and methodology.Fieldwork from the following countries is drawn on: Burma, Sri Lanka, New Guinea, Australia, Africa and South America.

This simulating book gathers five lectures that ask questions of the broadest general intellectual interest: What is religion? Do other peoples have the same emotional states as we do? Why do humans make use of body imagery? In Circumstantial Deliveries, Rodney Needham shows that the comparative study of societies may furnish the answers.  Circumstantial Deliveries challenges the methodology and substance of many conventional ideas about human nature and calls for more radical and comparative analyses. For instance, the author discredits the notion that to primitive peoples the colors red, white, and black symbolize blood, semen, and feces, respectively, arguing that an extensive comparative study of primitive societies discovered no such relationship.  These essays sound a common theme: "If a deeper appreciation of the value of life can be had from reading Crime and Punishment, or if a more acute assessment of the springs of action can be acquired from Hamlet, then in principle it should be conceded that like benefits may be derived from a sympathetic observation of other men engaged in their daily affairs."This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

This simulating book gathers five lectures that ask questions of the broadest general intellectual interest: What is religion? Do other peoples have the same emotional states as we do? Why do humans make use of body imagery? In Circumstantial Deliveries, Rodney Needham shows that the comparative study of societies may furnish the answers.  Circumstantial Deliveries challenges the methodology and substance of many conventional ideas about human nature and calls for more radical and comparative analyses. For instance, the author discredits the notion that to primitive peoples the colors red, white, and black symbolize blood, semen, and feces, respectively, arguing that an extensive comparative study of primitive societies discovered no such relationship.  These essays sound a common theme: "If a deeper appreciation of the value of life can be had from reading Crime and Punishment, or if a more acute assessment of the springs of action can be acquired from Hamlet, then in principle it should be conceded that like benefits may be derived from a sympathetic observation of other men engaged in their daily affairs."This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.

The reconnaissances of this book are ventures in the deep analysis of the unconscious as testified to by world ethnography. The topics examined are the image of the half-man, the operation of analogical classification, and ideas about sovereign powers to which men conceive themselves as subject. In each case, analysis brings out remarkable uniformities on a global scale. These cultural similarities are not correlated with particular social forms or linguistic traditions, and in their characteristics features they are not the products of deliberate cogitation or creative invention. The formal attributes they share are that they are premised on binary opposition and symmetry. The argument is that, intrinsically, the social facts in question are spontaneous products of unconscious ‘cerebrational vectors,’ and that they are archetypes of human experience.The three studies included in the volume, originally delivered as lectures at the University of Toronto in 1978, form an important sequel to Needham’s previous book, Primordial Characters, and further develop certain of its analytical themes and substantive issues.

This volume scrutinizes the questions of conceptualization, method and history in the fields of kinship, social anthropology and structuralism. It puts forward a radical revision of the conventional approaches and criteria. Exploring analysis and method in the disparity between relative age and kinship categories as means of social classification, the book makes theoretical readjustments, largely inspired by the precepts of Wittgenstein.Originally published in 1971.

Hans Scharer was born at Wadenswil (near Zurich), Switzerland, in 1904. After his school years, he was trained for (Protestant) mis- sionary work at the Missionshaus in BiHe. For seven years, 1932-1939, he lived among the Ngaju in southern Borneo; first with the Ngaju- speaking people of the Katingan river area, later, for a shorter period. with those living along the Barito. He was granted European leave in 1939, and spent the years 1939-1944 studying Ethnology (as it then was called) under Professor J. P. B. de Josselin de Jong at Leiden University. He went home to Switzerland in 1944, but returned to Leiden in 1946 to complete his studies and defend his Ph. D. thesis on Die Gottesidee der N gadju Dajak in Sud-Borneo. It is this thesis which. published by E. J. Brill, Leiden, in 1946, is now being re-issued in English translation. Soon after, he left once more for the Ngaju territory, as Praeses of the Baseler Mission in south Borneo. He died there suddenly on December 10th, 1947, of blood-poisoning. These few biographical data are not merely of some slight historical interest: they help us to understand the man and his work.The present book is Scharer's only major work to have been published, and for Scharer himself it was, in a way, an experiment.