Arthur Maurice Hocart - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Arthur Maurice Hocart was an anthropologist best known for his eccentric and often far-seeing works on Polynesia

Polynesia

Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...

, Melanesia

Melanesia

Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania extending from the western end of the Pacific Ocean to the Arafura Sea, and eastward to Fiji. The region comprises most of the islands immediately north and northeast of Australia...

and Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

About the Man

Hocart's family had resided for several hundred years in Guernsey

Guernsey

Guernsey, officially the Bailiwick of Guernsey is a British Crown dependency in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.The Bailiwick, as a governing entity, embraces not only all 10 parishes on the Island of Guernsey, but also the islands of Herm, Jethou, Burhou, and Lihou and their islet...

(one of the Channel Islands

Channel Islands

The Channel Islands are an archipelago of British Crown Dependencies in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two separate bailiwicks: the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey...

between France and England) but are traceable to Domrémy-la-Pucelle

Domrémy-la-Pucelle

Domrémy-la-Pucelle is a commune in the Vosges department in Lorraine in northeastern France.The village, originally named Domrémy, is the birthplace of Joan of Arc. It has since been renamed Domrémy-la-Pucelle after Joan's nickname, la Pucelle d'Orléans .-Geography:Domrémy is positioned along the...

, birthplace of Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc

Saint Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" , is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the...

. Both his father, James and grandfather, also James, were Protestant

Protestantism

Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...

missionaries in Switzerland, France and Belgium. Although Arthur was born in Etterbeek, near Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

, he maintained his British nationality, as did the rest of his family. This juxtaposition between the English and Francophone worlds captures not only Hocart's education, but his status as an outsider to British academia whose work often seemed to predict developments in French anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

such as structuralism

Structuralism

Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...

From England to the South Seas

After attending school at Elizabeth College, Guernsey

Elizabeth College, Guernsey

Elizabeth College is an independent school in the town of St Peter Port, Guernsey, founded in 1563 under the orders of Queen Elizabeth I.- History :...

, Hocart matriculated at Exeter College

Exeter College, Oxford

Exeter College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England and the fourth oldest college of the University. The main entrance is on the east side of Turl Street...

, Oxford in 1902. He graduated with honors in "Greats

Literae Humaniores

Literae Humaniores is the name given to an undergraduate course focused on Classics at Oxford and some other universities.The Latin name means literally "more humane letters", but is perhaps better rendered as "Advanced Studies", since humaniores has the sense of "more refined" or "more learned",...

", a degree combining Latin, Greek, ancient history, and philosophy. After his graduation in 1906 he spent two years studying psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

and phenomenology at the University of Berlin. With this broad and idiosyncratic training in hand, he was picked by W.H.R. Rivers to accompany him on the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to the Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands is a sovereign state in Oceania, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands. It covers a land mass of . The capital, Honiara, is located on the island of Guadalcanal...

in 1908. Their ethnographic work on 'Eddystone Island' (today known by its local name of Simbo) and in nearby Roviana, stands as one of the first modern anthropological field projects, and was the inspiration behind sections of Pat Barker

Pat Barker

Pat Barker CBE, FRSL is an English writer and novelist. She has won many awards for her fiction, which centres around themes of memory, trauma, survival and recovery. Her work is described as direct, blunt and plainspoken.-Personal life:...

's novel The Ghost Road
The Ghost Road
The Ghost Road is a novel by Pat Barker, first published in 1995 and winner of the Booker Prize. It is the third volume of a trilogy that follows the fortunes of shell-shocked British army officers towards the end of the First World War...

. Some of the data from the expedition appeared in Rivers' History of Melanesian Society in 1914, but most of their work did not make it into print until 1922, when Hocart began to publish a series of articles describing the core material. Immediately after his fieldwork in the Solomon Islands, Hocart travelled further east to Fiji

Fiji

Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...

, where he became the headmaster of Lakeba School, on the island of Lakeba

Lakeba

Lakeba is an island in Fiji's Southern Lau Archipelago; the provincial capital of Lau is located here. The island is the tenth largest in Fiji, with a land area of nearly 60 square kilometers. It is fertile and well watered, and encircled by a 29-kilometer road. Its closest neighbors are Aiwa...

in the Lau archipelago

Lau Islands

The Lau Islands of Fiji are situated in the southern Pacific Ocean, just east of the Koro Sea. Of this chain of about one hundred islands and islets, about thirty are inhabited...

. At the same time, he maintained a research affiliation with Oxford and traveled widely through western Polynesia, conducting research in Fiji, Rotuma

Rotuma

Rotuma is a Fijian dependency, consisting of Rotuma Island and nearby islets. The island group is home to a small but unique indigenous ethnic group which constitutes a recognizable minority within the population of Fiji, known as "Rotumans"...

, Wallis Island

Wallis and Futuna

Wallis and Futuna, officially the Territory of the Wallis and Futuna Islands , is a Polynesian French island territory in the South Pacific between Tuvalu to the northwest, Rotuma of Fiji to the west, the main part of Fiji to the southwest, Tonga to the southeast,...

, Samoa

Samoa

Samoa , officially the Independent State of Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa is a country encompassing the western part of the Samoan Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. It became independent from New Zealand in 1962. The two main islands of Samoa are Upolu and one of the biggest islands in...

, and Tonga

Tonga

Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga , is a state and an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, comprising 176 islands scattered over of ocean in the South Pacific...

. The result was roughly six years of ethnographic fieldwork that formed the basis for Hocart's reputation today as one of the most important early ethnographers of Oceania

Oceania

Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...

A Military man in Ceylon

In 1914 Hocart returned to Oxford to pursue postgraduate studies in anthropology, a position that also included some teaching. However, World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

interrupted his progress and he spent the next four years in France, in army intelligence. In 1919 he mustered out of the army having reached the rank of captain. Hocart then began what was to be a long exile from British academia to a series of posts in the British Empire

British Empire

The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...

. After a year-long study of Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

, Tamil

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

, Pāli

Páli

- External links :* *...

, and Sinhalese he moved to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

) to become the Archaeological Commissioner of Ceylon, where he oversaw the excavation and preservation of monumental architecture and other archaeological sites. With experience of the ancient Mediterranean, Polynesia and Melanesia, and South Asia now under his belt Hocart began publishing widely comparative studies on many topics, including that of Kingship. In 1925 Hocart suffered a bout of severe dysentery

Dysentery

Dysentery is an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the faeces with fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal.There are differences between dysentery and normal bloody diarrhoea...

and returned to England to recover. By the late 1920s his poor health and politics within the colonial bureaucracy made Ceylon seem a poorer and poorer choice for him. He once again attempted (and failed) to obtain a position at Cambridge before finally retiring to England in 1929 on a pension.

London to Cairo

Beginning in 1931 Hocart served for three years as an Honorary Lecturer in Ethnology at University College London

University College London

University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...

which allowed him to give classes occasionally. He applied to Cambridge once more - this time for the chair in social anthropology - but was again unsuccessful. In 1934 he moved to Cairo

Cairo

Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

where he served as the Professor of Sociology, the only academic position he held in his life. Poor health dogged him and he died in 1939 after contracting an infection in the course of research in Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

A career admired

Hocart's professional career took place at a time when British anthropologists were moving from an emphasis on diffusion

Diffusion

Molecular diffusion, often called simply diffusion, is the thermal motion of all particles at temperatures above absolute zero. The rate of this movement is a function of temperature, viscosity of the fluid and the size of the particles...

and historical reconstruction to a more 'scientific' form of functionalism

Structural functionalism

Structural functionalism is a broad perspective in sociology and anthropology which sets out to interpret society as a structure with interrelated parts. Functionalism addresses society as a whole in terms of the function of its constituent elements; namely norms, customs, traditions and institutions...

. Hocart's broad training and willingness to explore a wide variety of approaches produced work that was often poorly received by colleagues who repudiated past work in order to legitimize anthropology as a hard science. Interest in his work was revived in the 1960s when authors such as Lord Raglan, Rodney Needham

Rodney Needham

Rodney Needham was one of the leading British social anthropologists.Born as Rodney Phillip Needham Green, Needham changed his name in 1947,the same year he married Claudia Brysz....

, and Louis Dumont

Louis Dumont (anthropologist)

Louis Dumont was a French anthropologist. He was an associate professor at Oxford University during the 1950s, and director at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris...

returned to Hocart's work as a source of theoretical inspiration. Today he is remembered for his ethnography of the Pacific and as an author whose work presaged the advent of structuralism