Alfred Radcliffe-Brown

Alfred Radcliffe-Brown
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown
Born	Alfred Reginald Brown 17 January 1881 Birmingham
Died	24 October 1955 (1955-10-25) (aged 74) London
Nationality	United Kingdom
Fields	Social anthropology
Influences	Émile Durkheim
Influenced	Claude Lévi-Strauss, Karl Polanyi

Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (born Alfred Reginald Brown; 17 January 1881 – 24 October 1955) was an English social anthropologist who developed the theory of structural functionalism and coadaptation.

Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown was born Alfred Reginald Brown in Sparkbrook, Birmingham, England, the second son of Alfred Brown (d.1886), a manufacturer's clerk, and his wife Hannah (née Radcliffe). He later changed his last name, by deed poll, to Radcliffe-Brown. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and Trinity College, Cambridge (B.A., 1905; M.A., 1909), graduating with first-class honours in the moral sciences tripos. While still a student he earned the nickname "Anarchy Brown" for his close interest in the writings of the anarcho-communist and scientist Peter Kropotkin.

He studied psychology under W. H. R. Rivers who, with A. C. Haddon, led him toward social anthropology. Under the latter's influence he travelled to the Andaman Islands (1906–1908) and Western Australia (1910–1912, with biologist and writer E. L. Grant Watson and Daisy Bates) to conduct fieldwork into the workings of the societies there, serving as the inspiration for his later books The Andaman Islanders (1922) and The Social Organization of Australian Tribes (1930). However at the 1914 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in Melbourne he was accused by Bates of plagiarising her work.

In 1916 he became a director of education in Tonga, and in 1920 moved to Cape Town to become professor of social anthropology, founding the School of African Life. Further university appointments were University of Cape Town (1920–25), University of Sydney (1925–31) and University of Chicago (1931–37). Among his most prominent students during his years at the University of Chicago was Sol Tax and Fred Eggan. After these various far-flung appointments, he finally returned to England in 1937 to take up an appointment to the first chair in social anthropology at Oxford in 1937, a post he held until his retirement in 1946. He died in London in 1955.