Thurnwald, Richard (1869–1954)

Richard Thurnwald, an understudied AustrianGerman anthropologist and sociologist, was known for his comparative studies of social institutions. He was a pioneer in every sense of the word: the first German language ethnologist to do serious fieldwork (in German New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and neighboring areas in Melanesia and Micronesia) and the first to collect a great number of artifacts from this area.

Thurnwald did path-breaking ethnographical, folkloristic, economic, anthropological, and linguistic research. Although he was, in theoretical terms, a functionalist, he paid more attention to history than did Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942). Thurnwald viewed social anthropology from a paradigm that suggested studying social institutions comparatively to better understand their differences and how these differences discerned the essential function of each institution. By making comparisons of functional social structures, he established sequences of historical development.

Thurnwald's views on social anthropology grew out of his intimate knowledge of various societies, gained during field expeditions to the Solomon Islands and Micronesia (1906–1909 and 1932), New Guinea (1912–1915), and East Africa (1930). During the first Melanesian expedition, he concentrated on South Bougainville (the Buins) and the Bismarck Archipelago (Baining and New Ireland). Although his main job was to collect objects and make sound and visual recordings, he took a more personal interest in the effects of colonization. The protectorate was developing a plantation policy based on the distribution of land to settlers and on some forced enlistment of labor. Thurnwald condemned the perverse effects of the latter.

Among his earlier ethnographic works is Bánaro Society (1916), dealing with kinship and social organization in a New Guinea tribe. Although he taught briefly at several prominent U.S. universities, his principal post after 1924 was at the University of Berlin, where he taught anthropology and sociology. In 1925, he founded, and for many years edited, the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Soziologie (Journal of Popular Psychology and Sociology), later retitled Sociologus. He also edited journals of anthropology and comparative law.

Thurnwald explored the interrelation of technology with social structure and economy. One of his most fruitful concepts, superstratification, dealt with changes resulting from the introduction of a new group to form the lowest stratum of a society. That concept led him into studies of feudalism; the early development of kingship, cities, and states; and Western colonial expansion. His works include Die menschliche Gesellschaft in ihren ethnosoziologischen Grundlagen (Human Society in its Ethnosociological Foundations, five volumes, 1931–1935), Economics in Primitive Communities (1932), Black and White in East Africa (1935), and [Page 1484]Aufbau und Sinn der Völkerwissenschaft (Structure and Meaning of Popular Knowledge, 1948).