ethnology

Colin Turnbull and the Forest People

23. November 2017 Tabea Tietz

On November 23, 1924, British-American anthropologist Colin Turnbull was born. Turnbull came to public attention with the popular books The Forest People on the Mbuti Pygmies of Zaire and The Mountain People on the Ik people of Uganda, and one of the first anthropologists to work in the field of ethnomusicology. Early Years Colin Turnbull was born in the London borough of Harrow. His parents were Helen Dorothy Wellesley Chapman (1894-1977) and John Rutherford…

biology

Clark Wissler and the Normative Aspect of Culture

18. September 2017 Harald Sack

On September 18, 1870, American anthropologist Clark David Wissler was born. Wissler devised the age-area concept which held that the age of cultural traits could be found by correlating the diffusion of those traits throughout their associated area. He was the first anthropologist to perceive the normative aspect of culture, to define it as learned behavior, and to describe it as a complex of ideas, all characteristics of culture that are today…