Raymond Firth

Sir Raymond William Firth (born March 25, 1901 - died February 22, 2002) was a New Zealand ethnologist, a pioneer of economic anthropology who used the formalist approach, especially in context of his study of Maori people. He was one of the leading figures of the methodological individualist movement at the London School of Economy.

Life

Raymond Firth was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1901, the son of Wesley and Marie Firth. Already as a boy he became acquainted with Maori culture, and had learned Maori language. He received basic education at Auckland Grammar School, and then went on to Auckland University College, where he graduated in economics in 1921. He completed his M.A. there in 1922, with the thesis The Kauri Gum Industry, and in 1923 received a diploma in social science. In 1924 he went to London to begin his doctoral research at the London School of Economics (LSE). He started to work on the thesis of “frozen meat industry in New Zealand”.

However, after a chance meeting with the eminent social anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, Firth decided to study anthropology. In his studies he managed to combine both fields of economics and anthropology, with Pacific ethnography. During this period he started to work as research assistant to Sir James G. Frazer, author of The Golden Bough. Firth received his Ph.D. in 1927 with doctoral thesis (published in 1929) Primitive Economics of the New Zealand Māori.

In 1928 he visited for the first time Tikopia, the southernmost of the Solomon Islands, to study the Polynesian culture of the local people. With this Firth started his long-lasting relationship with around 1300 people who lived on this remote island, the work which resulted in ten books and numerous articles written over many years. The first of these, We the Tikopia: A Sociological Study of Kinship in Primitive Polynesia (1936) still serves as valuable source of information to students on Polynesian culture.

In 1930 Firth started teaching at the University of Sydney. After 18 months, however, he returned to the London School of Economics where he was appointed a lecturer in 1933, and a Reader in 1935. He married Rosemary Firth (née Upcott) in 1936, and had one son, Hugh, born in 1946.

In 1937, after the departure of Alfred Radcliffe-Brown from the University of Chicago, Firth took over his position as visiting professor. He also succeeded Radcliffe-Brown as acting editor of the journal Oceania, and as acting director of the Anthropology Research Committee of the Australian National Research Committee.

In the same time he started a fieldwork in Kelantan and Terengganu in Malaya in 1939-1940. When the Second World War broke out, Firth joined British naval intelligence, where he wrote and edited the four volumes of the Naval Intelligence Division Geographical Handbook Series, about the Pacific Islands. During this period Firth lived in Cambridge, where the LSE had its wartime home.

In 1944 Firth succeeded Malinowski as Professor of Social Anthropology at LSE, remaining at the School for the next 24 years. He visited Tikopia several more times, but due to his many other duties remained mainly in London.

Firth retired from active work in 1968, but continued to lecture and write. He took up a year's appointment as Professor of Pacific Anthropology at the University of Hawaii, and served as a visiting professor at British Columbia (1969), Cornell (1970), Chicago (1970-1), the Graduate School of the City University of New York (1971) and UC Davis (1974). He was knighted in 1973, and received the first Leverhulme Medal for a scholar of international distinction in 2002.

Firth continued with the research and was still publishing articles in his late nineties. He died in London a few weeks before his 101st birthday (his father had lived to 104).

Work

Firth spent almost his whole life studying the Maori culture. However, unlike other anthropologists who merely recorded observable facts, like settlements or rituals, Firth wanted to discover the meaning behind those external manifestations. He recorded values of the people studied, and the complex relationships within their society. In this sense he was the real pioneer of social anthropology, which in his time was still greatly undeveloped. At the time when British anthropology, under the leadership of Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard, was dominated by their structural functionalism, Firth continued Malinowski's functionalist program, focusing on the role of culture in people’s lives. He was particularly interested in the role of social institutions - family, kinship, religious, and economical organizations.

In his book from 1929 Primitive Economics of the New Zealand Maori, he analyzed the Maori system of land ownership and the principles of their economy. This was the first work ever written to discuss the basics of Maori economy in its relationship with their culture. It also criticized colonization and the expropriation of Maori land. From the stand of the approach to anthropology, Firth was a true pioneer of economic anthropology. He believed that neoclassical principles of economy, like maximization of utility or scarcity of means, are universal and could be applied to primitive societies. His approach is regarded as belonging to formalist model of economic anthropology.

Firth also spent many years on the island of Tikopia, a tiny volcanic island between Fiji and Solomon’s archipelago. By the time of his arrival, the island was practically untouched by outside people, and as such was especially valuable for anthropological study. Total of around 1300 people lived there. Firth first gathered material and compiled the first dictionary of the Tikopian language, which was quite similar to Maori. He then analyzed their family system, described in his book We, The Tikopia (1936); economy system, in Primitive Polynesian Economy (1939); values and beliefs, in The Work Of The Gods In Tikopia (1940) and social structure, in Social Change In Tikopia (1959) as well as History And Traditions Of Tikopia (1961).

Firth wrote extensively on the traditional religious thoughts and practices of Tikopians. When he first visited Tikopia, the 1300 inhabitants were still mostly non-Christian, although some attempts of conversion have been made earlier by Christian missionaries. Firth recorded many religious practices, and grew rather fond of them. He later witnessed when Christian missionaries arrived, and wrote on the effect churches had on local people. He became particularly critical of proselytizing, seeing it as a form of pressure to give up an own identity. He said:

”...what justification can be found for this steady pressure to break down the customs of a people against whom the main charge is that their gods are different from ours?” (We, the Tikopia, p.50).

During that time Firth grew bitter toward religion. Brought up a Methodist and teaching Sunday School in his youth, Firth steadily drifted away from Christianity. By the middle of his life his worldview turned completely toward humanistic rationalism. In his book Social Change in Tikopia (1958) he recorded the final days of Tikopian conversion to Christianity.

By the end of his career Firth’s work became more theoretical. He wrote on general principles of anthropology. He was known as one of leading proponents of methodological individualist movement at the London School of Economy. Firth emphasized the role of an individual in a bigger “whole”, and explained complex social forms in terms of individual people’s actions.

Legacy

During his lifetime Firth was one of the greatest experts on Maori culture. His work among Maori, and especially Tikopians, became the groundwork for all later study of Polynesian culture. The essays he wrote back in 30s served for decades as the valuable source of information for college students in anthropology.

Firth was professor to such names as Ernest Gellner, Terence Morris and Percy Cohen, who later become distinguished leaders in sociology. He developed the branch of economical anthropology, which uses economical principles to explain the dynamics within and between different cultures.

Publications

• Firth, Raymond W. 1925. The Korekore Pa. Journal of the Polynesian Society, 34: 1–18
• Firth, Raymond W. 1925. The Māori Carver. Journal of the Polynesian Society, 34: 277–291
• Firth, Raymond W. 1929. The Primitive Economics of the New Zealand Maori. London: George Routledge and Sons
• Firth, Raymond W. 1938. Human Types: An Introduction to Social Anthropology Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd
• Firth, Raymond W. 1954. Social Organization and Social Change. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 84: 1–20
• Firth, Raymond W. 1955. Some Principles of Social Organization. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 85: 1–18
• Firth, Raymond W. (Ed.) 1957. Man and Culture: An Evaluation of the Work of Malinowski. Routledge Kegan & Paul. ISBN 0710013760
• Firth, Raymond W. 1967. Themes in Economic Anthropology: A General Comment. In Raymond Firth (Ed.) Themes in Economic Anthropology (pp.1–28). London: Tavistock. ISBN 0422727709
• Firth, Raymond W. 1967. Tikopia Ritual and Belief. Beacon Press
• Firth, Raymond W. 1967 (original published in 1940). The Work of the Gods in Tikopia. Berg Publishers. ISBN 0485195011
• Firth, Raymond W. 1969 (original published in 1964). Essays on Social Organization and Values. London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology. Berg Publishers. ISBN 185973894X
• Firth, Raymond W. 1970. Rank and religion in Tikopia;: A study in Polynesian paganism and conversion to Christianity. Beacon Press. ISBN 0807046663
• Firth, Raymond W. 1973. Symbols: Public and Private. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801407605
• Firth, Raymond W. 1975. An Appraisal of Modern Social Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 4: 1–25
• Firth, Raymond W. 2000 (original published in 1951). Elements of Social Organization. Beacon Press. ISBN 0807046752
• Firth, Raymond W. 2001. The Creative Contribution of Indigenous People to Their Ethnography. Journal of the Polynesian Society 110(3): 241–245
• Firth, Raymond W. 2004 (original published in 1939). Primitive Polynesian Economy. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415330173
• Firth, Raymond W. 2004 (original published in 1936). We the Tikopia: A Sociological Study of Kinship in Primitive Polynesia. Routledge. ISBN 0415330203
• Firth, Raymond W. 2005 (original published in 1996). Religion: A Humanist Interpretation. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0415128978

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• BookRags.com Raymond Firth. Retrieved on December 20, 2006
• Feinberg, R, & Watson-Gegeo K (Eds.) 1996. Leadership and Change in the Western Pacific: Essays Presented to Sir Raymond Firth on Occasion of his 90th Birthday. Berg Publishers. ISBN 1845200365
• Freedman, Maurice. (Ed.) 1967. Social Organization: Essays Presented to Raymond Firth Chicago: Aldine Pub
• Parkin, David 1988. An interview with Raymond Firth. Current Anthropology 29(2): 327-341
• Watson-Gegeo, K, & Seaton, Lee S. (Eds) 1978. Adaptation and Symbolism: Essays on Social Organization Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii. ISBN 0824805593

External links

• Interviews with “Ancestors” – An interview from 1983 with Raymond Firth (18 minute video)

• Sir Raymond Firth’s brilliant century - Article on Firth's time at LSE by Peter Loizos

• Biography of Raymond Firth – Biography on University of Hawaii website

• Sir Raymond Firth - The Guardian obituary

• Professor Sir Raymond Firth - Daily Telegraph obituary

• Obituary: Sir Raymond Firth 1901-2002 - Oceania obituary

• Raymond Firth – Obituary - The Australian Journal of Anthropology obituary

• Obituaries - American Anthropologist obituary

• A Short History of Economic Anthropology – A paper by Chris Hann and Keith Hart

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