C. G. SeligmanBorn 24 Dec 1873; died 19 Sep 1940 at age 66.C(harles) G(abriel) Seligman was a pioneer in British anthropology who conducted significant field research in Melanesia, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and, most importantly, the Nilotic Sudan. After his education as a physician he went with the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Straits (1898-9). Subsequently, his interests turned from medical research towards anthropology, and revisited New Guinea (1904) to distinguish the characteristic racial, cultural, and social traits of the peoples of the region. In the 1920's, he pioneered a psychoanalytic approach: studying cross-cultural similarity of dreams. He concluded that the psychology of the unconscious could provide an approach to some basic anthropological problems. |
