Meyer Fortes
| Meyer Fortes MA PhD | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Born | 1906 | ||||||
| Died | 1983 | ||||||
| Residence |
4 Millman Street, WC1 [A63] c/o Barclays Bank (Dominion and Colonial), Accra, Gold Coast, W. Africa [1933] c/o Barclays Bank (Dominion and Colonial), Kumasi, Gold Coast, W. Africa [1935] Wyndal, Gidley Hill, Horspath, Oxford [1937] Dept. of Social Anthropology, 1 Jowett Walk, Oxford [census] Institute of Social Anthropology, Museum House, South Parks Road, Oxford [1949] | ||||||
| Occupation | anthropologist | ||||||
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Contents
Notes
Office Notes
RAI Council 1939-40 Member
RAI Council 1940-41 Member
RAI Council 1941-42 Member
RAI Council 1946-47 Member
RAI Council 1947-48 Hon. Editor
RAI Council 1948-49 Hon. Editor
RAI Council 1949-50 Hon. Editor
RAI Council 1950-51 Hon. Editor
RAI Council 1951-52 Hon. Editor
RAI Council 1952-53 Hon. Editor
RAI Council 1954-55 Member
RAI Council 1955-56 Member
RAI Council 1957-58 Member
RAI Council 1958-59 Vice President
RAI Council 1959-60 Vice President
RAI Council 1960-61 Vice President
RAI Council 1961-62 Member
RAI Council 1962-63 Member
RAI Council 1965-66 President
RAI Council 1966-67 President
House Notes
1932.10.25 proposed by C.G. Seligman, seconded by R.M. Fleming
1937 Wellcome medal. Marriage law among the Tallensi
1947 Rivers Memorial Medal
1977 HML Sacrifice, or was your fieldwork really necessary?
1983.03.14 memorial service in King's College Chapel, Cambridge ... Prof. Goody is assisting us with final work on ‘The Emergence of Society’, Prof. Fortes’s last work which we are to publish as a posthumous Occasional Paper.
1983.06.29 death noted
Notes From Elsewhere
Meyer Fortes (April 25, 1906 – January 27, 1983) was a South African-born anthropologist, best known for his work among the Tallensi and Ashanti in Ghana.
Originally trained in psychology, Fortes employed the notion of the "person" into his structural-functional analyses of kinship, the family, and ancestor worship setting a standard for studies on African social organization. His famous book, Oedipus and Job in West African Religion (1959), fused his two interests and set a standard for comparative ethnology. He also wrote extensively on issues of the first born, kingship, and divination.
Fortes received his anthropological training from Charles Gabriel Seligman at the London School of Economics. Fortes also trained with Bronisław Malinowski and Raymond Firth. Along with contemporaries A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Sir Edmund Leach, Audrey Richards, and Lucy Mair, Fortes held strong functionalist views that insisted upon empirical evidence in order to generate analyses of society. His volume with E. E. Evans-Pritchard, African Political Systems (1940) established the principles of segmentation and balanced opposition, which were to become the hallmarks of African political anthropology. Despite his work in Francophone West Africa, Fortes' work on political systems was influential to other British anthropologists, especially Max Gluckman and played a role in shaping what became known as the Manchester school of social anthropology, which emphasized the problems of working in colonial Central Africa.
Fortes spent much of his career as a Reader at the University of Cambridge and was the William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology there from 1950-1973.
In 1963, Fortes delivered the inaugural Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture at the University of Rochester, considered by many to be the most important annual lecture series in the field of Anthropology.[1]
Publications
External Publications
1940. African Political Systems (editor, with E. E. Evans-Pritchard). London and New York: International African Institute.
1945. The Dynamics of Clanship among the Tallensi.
1949. The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi. 1959. Oedipus and Job in West African Religion.
1969. Kinship and the Social Order.
1970. Time and Social Structure.
1970. Social Structure (editor).
1983. Rules and the Emergence of Society.
House Publications
Jan. 14 1936 read Ritual festivals and tribal cohesions in the hinterland of the Gold Coast illustrated by lantern slides
Communal fishing and fishing magic in the northern territories of the Gold Coast 1937
The Emergence of Society
Related Material Details
RAI Material
census
MS 189:1937 wellcome