Blackwell Reference Online

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Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown and Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) are generally considered to be the “founding fathers” of British social anthropology. Born into a poor family in Sparkbrook, Birmingham, Radcliffe-Brown attended King Edward's School and worked in a library in Birmingham before being awarded a scholarship for Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1902. At Cambridge Radcliffe-Brown, whose interest in the social sciences was allegedly stimulated by his acquaintance with H. Ellis and P. Kropotkin, took his undergraduate work in Mental and Moral Science. Toward the end of his formal education he turned to anthropology, studying with, among others, W. H. R. Rivers, A. C. Haddon, and C. S. Myers, all veterans of the famous Torres Straits Expedition (cf. Kuper 1989 : 36–49; Stocking 1996 : 306). In 1906, after one year of preparation, Radcliffe-Brown went to do fieldwork among the Andaman Islanders, who in the evolutionist framework were supposed to be among the “lowest” peoples on earth. Upon his return in 1908, Radcliffe-Brown became a fellow at Trinity College and, as he wrote in a letter to M. Mauss in 1912, found himself “in complete agreement with the view of sociology put forward in the Année sociologique ” as well as being “the first person to expound … [Durkheim's] views in England.” Between 1910 and 1912 he conducted further ethnographic research in Western Australia. ... log in or subscribe to read full text