Reo Franklin Fortune (27 March 1903 – 25 November 1979) was a New Zealand-born
social anthropologist. Originally trained as a psychologist, Fortune was a student of some of the major theorists of British and American social anthropology including
Alfred Cort Haddon,
Bronislaw Malinowski and
Alfred Radcliffe-Brown.[1] He lived an international life, holding various academic and government positions: in China, at Lingnan University from 1937 to 1939; in Toledo, Ohio, USA from 1940 to 1941; at the
University of Toronto, from 1941 to 1943; in Burma, as government anthropologist, from 1946 to 1947;[1] and finally, at
Cambridge University in the United Kingdom from 1947 to 1971, as lecturer in social anthropology specialising in
Melanesian language and culture.[2]
He was first married to
Margaret Mead in 1928, with whom he undertook field studies in
New Guinea from 1931 to 1933.[3] They divorced in 1936. Fortune subsequently married Eileen Pope, also a New Zealander, in 1937.[4]
Fortune provided significant insights into the consequences of
matrilateral and patrilateral cross-cousin marriage in advance of work by
Claude Levi-Strauss. He is also known for his contribution to mathematics with his study of
Fortunate numbers in
number theory.[5]
The 2014 novel Euphoria by
Lily King is a fictionalized account of the relationships between Fortune, Mead and
Gregory Bateson in pre-WWII New Guinea.[6]
1932, Omaha Secret Societies. Columbia University Press.
1933, A note on some forms of kinship structure. Oceania, 4(1), 1–9.
1935, Manus Religion, An ethnological study of the Manus natives of the Admiralty Islands. American Philosophical Press.
1942, Arapesh. American Ethnological Society Publication 19; 237 pages.
Photographs
Many of the easily accessible images of Fortune include his one-time wife Margaret Mead, who was known for her interest in photography as an ethnographic method.[7]
The National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa) holds a large collection of family and fieldwork photos of Reo and Eileen Fortune's lives in China, North America, and England.[8]
In 1959 and again in 1970–71, Fortune revisited Dobu, the island community he made famous in his 1932 book, The Sorcerers of Dobu.[9]
References
^
abThomas, Caroline (2009) "Rediscovering Reo: Reflections on the life and anthropological career of Reo Franklin Fortune," Pacific Studies, vol. 32, nos. 2/3; June–Sept
^Gray, Geoffrey "Being honest to my science: Reo Fortune and JHP Murray, 1927–1930", The Australian Journal of Anthropology, vol. 10 (1), 1999, pp. 56–76
Abrahams, R. and H. Wardle. 2002. "Fortune's Last Theorem", Cambridge Anthropology 23:1, 60–2
Bashkow, Ira and Lise M. Dobrin. 2013. "Reo Fortune." In R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms (eds.), Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopedia, pp. 272–274. Sage Publications.