エドマンド・リーチ
エドマンド・リーチ
エドマンド・ロナルド・リーチ(Edmund Ronald Leach, 1910年11月7日 - 1989年1月6日)は、イギリスの人類学者。クルド人について調査した後、イギリス軍の軍人として第二次世界大戦で抗日運動に参加し日本軍に対してゲリラ戦を展開した[1]。
人類のタブーに着目し、近親相姦のタブー(インセスト・タブー)を食のタブーと関連させて捉えようと試みた。
邦訳
- 『レヴィ=ストロース』吉田禎吾訳 新潮社 1971 現代の思想家 のちちくま学芸文庫
- 『人類学再考』青木保,井上兼行訳 思索社 1974
- 『神話としての創世記』江河徹訳 紀伊国屋書店 1980 文化人類学叢書 のちちくま学芸文庫
- 『文化とコミュニケーション 構造人類学入門』青木保,宮坂敬造訳 紀伊国屋書店 1981 文化人類学叢書
- 『聖書の構造分析』D.Alan Aycock 共著 鈴木聡訳 紀伊国屋書店 1984 文化人類学叢書
- 『社会人類学案内』長島信弘訳 岩波書店 1985 のち同時代ライブラリー
- 『高地ビルマの政治体系』エドモンド・R.リーチ著 関本照夫訳 弘文堂 1987
出典
- ^ 池田光穂 (2004年). “エドマンド・ロナルド・リーチ”. 大阪大学コミュニケーションデザイン・センター. 2011年9月4日閲覧。
Edmund Leach
Sir Edmund Ronald Leach | |
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Born | 7 November 1910 Sidmouth, England |
Died | 6 January 1989 (aged 78) Cambridge, England |
Nationality | British |
Fields | social anthropology |
Institutions | Burma Army London School of Economics Cambridge University |
Alma mater | Cambridge University |
Doctoral advisor | Bronisław Malinowski Raymond Firth |
Doctoral students | Fredrik Barth |
Known for | Ethnographic work in Sarawak and Burma Theories of social structure and cultural change Kinship as ideal systems Disagreement with French structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss[1] |
Influences | Claude Lévi-Strauss |
Notable awards | Provost of King's College (1966–1979) Chairman of Association of Social Anthropologists (1966–1970) President of the Royal Anthropological Institute (1971–1975) President of British Humanist Association (1970) Knighted (1973) Trustee of the British Museum (1975–1980)[2] |
Part of a series on |
Political and legal anthropology |
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Social and cultural anthropology |
Sir Edmund Ronald Leach (7 November 1910 – 6 January 1989) was a British social anthropologist.
Personal and academic life
Leach was born in Sidmouth, Devon, the youngest of three children and the son of William Edmund Leach and Mildred Brierley. His father owned and was manager of a sugar plantation in northern Argentina. Leach was educated at Marlborough and Clare College, Cambridge where he graduated with honours in Engineering in 1932.
After leaving Cambridge University Leach took a four-year contract in 1933 with Butterfield and Swire in China. He found out after his contract expired that he did not like the business atmosphere and never again was going to sit on an office stool. On his way home he stopped and spent some time among the Yami of Botel Tobago, an island off the coast of Formosa. Here he took ethnographic notes and made drawings of the Yami.
Back in London Raymond Firth introduced him to Bronisław Malinowski. Leach went to Iraq to study the Kurds, but he abandoned this and went back to London. He wrote: "I’ve got an enormous amount of ability at almost anything, yet so far I’ve made absolutely no use of it… I seem to be a highly organized piece of mental apparatus for which nobody else has any use" (D.N.B. 258). In 1939 he was going to study the Kachin Hills of Burma, but World War II intervened. Leach then joined the Burma Army, where he achieved the rank of Major.
In 1940 Leach married Celia Joyce who was then a painter and later published poetry and two novels. They had a daughter in 1941 and a son in 1946. After he left the Army in 1946, he became a lecturer in social anthropology at the London School of Economics. In 1947 he received a Ph.D. in anthropology at the London School of Economics. In 1953, he became a lecturer at Cambridge University, later being promoted to reader, and in 1972 receiving a personal Chair. He was elected provost of King's College, Cambridge in 1966 and retired in 1979; President of the Royal Anthropological Institute (1971–1975); a Fellow of the British Academy (from 1972) and was knighted in 1975.
His first book was Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954); it challenged the theories of social structure and cultural change. Throughout, Leach was "fiercely critical of generalisations from one society to a narrative about 'politics' in so-called 'primitive societies'".[3] His second work was Pul Eliya, a Village in Ceylon (1961), where he directed his attention to theories of kinship as ideal systems. Leach applied his analysis of kinship to his disagreement with French structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss introducing his work into British social anthropology. His book Lévi-Strauss was translated into six languages and ran three editions. His turn of phrase produced memorable quotes, such as this on Lévi-Strauss:
"The outstanding characteristic of [Lévi-Strauss's writing], whether in French or English, is that it is difficult to understand; his sociological theories combine baffling complexity with overwhelming erudition. Some readers even suspect that they are being treated to a confidence trick".[4]
Leach's work on Lévi-Strauss is often relied on by other authors. For example, in Richard Wrangham's (2009) book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, he relies on Leach in describing Lévi-Strauss's analysis of cooking in relation to human culture.[5]
Bibliography
- Political systems of highland Burma: a study of Kachin social structure (Harvard University Press, 1954)
- Rethinking anthropology (Robert Cunningham and Sons Ltd., 1961)
- Pul Eliya: a village in Ceylon (Cambridge University Press, 1961)
- A runaway world? (London: BBC, 1968)
- Genesis as myth and other essays (Jonathan Cape, 1969)
- Lévi-Strauss (Fontana Books, 1970)
- Claude Lévi-Strauss (Viking Press, 1970)
- Culture and communication: the logic by which symbols are connected (Cambridge University Press, 1976)
- Social anthropology (Oxford University Press, 1982)
- The essential Edmund Leach (Yale University Press, 2001, 2 vols.)
Literature
- Tambiah, Stanley J., Edmund Leach: An Anthropological Life (2002). Cambridge University Press.
- "Leach, Edmund Ronald" Contemporary Authors Vol. 127, Gale Research Inc. 1989.
- "Leach, Sir Edmund Ronald" Dictionary of National Biography 1986–1990. Oxford University Press 1996.
- "Leach, Edmund Ronald" International Dictionary of Anthropologists. Garland Publishing 1991.
- Leach, Edmund R. Glimpses of the Unmentionable in the History of British Social Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 13. 1984.
References
- Meiser, Heather (2007) "Edmund Ronald Leach 1910-1989" E-Museum @ Minnesota State University webpage" Accessed 6 May 2010
- Tambiah, Stanley J (2002) "Edmund Leach: an Anthropological life" Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Accessed 6 May 2010
- Laurie, Timothy (2012), "Epistemology as Politics and the Double-Bind of Border Thinking: Lévi-Strauss, Deleuze and Guattari, Mignolo", Portal: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 9 (2): 1–20
- Leach, Edmund (1974), Claude Levi-Strauss (Revised ed.), New York: Viking Press, p. 3
- Wrangham, Richard (2009), Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, New York: Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-01362-7
External links
- Biography at Minnesota State University website
- Interview of Edmund Leach by Frank Kermode in 1982 (film)
- Chapter 1 of Tambiah, Stanley (2002) "Edmund Leach: An Anthropological Life" Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Accessed 5 May 2010
- King's College, Cambridge Repository: Papers of Edmund Ronald Leach Accessed 5 May 2010
- The Reith Lectures - Edmund Leach: A Runaway World: 1967