J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong | |
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![]() J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong
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Born | 13 March 1886 Leiden |
Died | 15 November 1964 Zeist |
(aged 78)
Nationality | Dutch |
Known for | founding modern Dutch anthropology and Dutch structural anthropology |
Jan Petrus Benjamin de Josselin de Jong (13 March 1886 – 15 November 1964) was a founding father of modern Dutch anthropology and of structural anthropology at Leiden University. In his early career, he was a museum curator. His area of specialty was American and Indonesian ethnography. He held two anthropology chairs at Leiden University, the first a chair in general ethnology (1922–1935); the second a chair in general ethnology and Indonesian ethnography (1935–1956). His nephew, Patrick Edward de Josselin de Jong succeeded him on the second chair in 1957.
In 1928, he held an important lecture on "The Natchez Social System' in New York City and in Leiden, his students founded the Ethnological Debating Society W.D.O.
In 1952, he gave a commentary on Claude Lévi-Strauss's theory of kinship and highlighted the significance of double descent or bilinealism in explaining some of the features of affinal arrangements which Dutch ethnologists had previously researched in Indonesian related subjects.
Jan Petrus Benjamin de Josselin de Jong, after an industrious career as Professor of Cultural Anthropology in the Leiden University, retired in 1956. He died in 1964.
Jan Petrus Benjamin de Josselin de Jong (also known as "J.P.B.") was Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Leiden University. His work at the university covered the second phase of the study in the Leiden University from 1920 onwards; the first phase involved P.J. Veth, G.A. Wilken, J.J.M. de Groot, and A.W. Nieuwenhuis. While the first phase was influenced by cultural geography and social evolutionism, the second phase was influenced by the work of Émile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, as well as of Franz Boas and R.H. Lowie.
The Leiden tradition was set by J.P.B. in his second inaugural lecture (1935) with the concept of Ethnological Field of Study; its focus being the structural core of Indonesian societies. According to him, four elements constitute this structural core: circulating connubium, double unilineality, dual symbolic classification, and resilience from foreign cultural influences.