Ward H. Goodenough is a U.S. Anthropologist, who has made contributions to kinship studies, linguistic anthropology

Linguistic anthropology

Linguistic anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology that originated from the endeavor to document endangered languages, and has grown over the past 100 years to encompass almost any aspect of language structure and...

, cross-cultural studies

Cross-cultural studies

Cross-cultural studies, sometimes called Holocultural Studies, is a specialization in anthropology and sister sciences that uses field data from many societies to examine the scope of human behavior and test hypotheses about human behavior and culture. Cross-cultural studies is the third form of...

, and cognitive anthropology

Cognitive anthropology

Cognitive anthropology is an approach within cultural anthropology in which scholars seek to explain patterns of shared knowledge, cultural innovation, and transmission over time and space using the methods and theories of the cognitive sciences often through close collaboration with historians,...

. Born May 30, 1919, in Cambridge Massachusetts, he attended Groton School

Groton School

Groton School is a private, Episcopal, college preparatory boarding school located in Groton, Massachusetts, U.S. It enrolls approximately 375 boys and girls, from the eighth through twelfth grades...

 in Groton Massachusetts. He then earned a B.A.

Bachelor of Arts

A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 in 1940 from Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

, majoring in Scandinavian languages and literature. That year he enrolled in graduate school at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

, but his studies were interrupted by World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. Serving as a noncommissioned officer in the United States Army

United States Army

The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...

 from November 1941 to December 1945, Goodenough earned his Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in Anthropology in 1949.

At Yale, Goodenough was a student of George Peter Murdock, who supervised his dissertation. Goodenough worked with Murdock as a Research Assistant on the Cross-Cultural Survey in 1940, and then did fieldwork on Truk with Murdock for seven months in 1947. Goodenough's later fieldwork was also in 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...

, both in Micronesia

Micronesia

Micronesia is a subregion of Oceania, comprising thousands of small islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It is distinct from Melanesia to the south, and Polynesia to the east. The Philippines lie to the west, and Indonesia to the southwest....

 (Kiribati

Kiribati

Kiribati , officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island nation located in the central tropical Pacific Ocean. The permanent population exceeds just over 100,000 , and is composed of 32 atolls and one raised coral island, dispersed over 3.5 million square kilometres, straddling the...

), and in 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...

 (Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...

). An expert on Trukese kinship, his best known work is the development of a method for applying componential analysis

Componential analysis

Componential analysis, also called feature analysis or contrast analysis, refers to the description of the meaning of words through structured sets of semantic features, which are given as “present”, “absent” or “indifferent with reference to feature”. The method thus departs from the principle of...

 to the study of kinship terminology

Kinship terminology

Kinship terminology refers to the various systems used in languages to refer to the persons to whom an individual is related through kinship. Different societies classify kinship relations differently and therefore use different systems of kinship terminology - for example some languages...

, and his disagreements with David M. Schneider

David M. Schneider

David Murray Schneider was an American cultural anthropologist, best known for his studies of kinship and as a major proponent of the symbolic anthropology approach to cultural anthropology. He received his B.S. in 1940 and his M.S. from Cornell University in 1941...

 about the value of formal analyses of Kinship terminology. He also developed Ralph Linton

Ralph Linton

Ralph Linton was a respected American anthropologist of the mid-twentieth century, particularly remembered for his texts The Study of Man and The Tree of Culture...

's Status/Role theory, also applying a structural componential analysis.

From 1948 to 1949, Goodenough held a teaching position in Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

University of Wisconsin–Madison

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

. He moved to the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

 in 1949, where he remained until his retirement in 1989, serving as the department chair from 1976 to 1982. Goodenough has also held visiting positions at Cornell University, Swarthmore College, Bryn Mawr College, University of Hawaii, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Yale University, Colorado College, the University of Rochester, and at St. Patrick’s College in Ireland. In 1971 he was elected member of the Anthropology section of the National Academy of Sciences

United States National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

.

Selected publications

• 1951. Property, Kin and Community on Truk. Yale University Publications in Anthropology, No. 46.
• 1955. "A Problem in Malayo-Polynesian Social Organization." American Anthropologist 57:71-83.
• 1956. "Residence Rules." Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 12:22-37.
• 1956. "Componential Analysis and the Study of Meaning." Language 32(1):195-216.
• 1957. "Oceana and the Problem of Controls in the Study of Cultural and Human Evolution." Journal of the Polynesian Society 66:146-155.
• 1957. "Cultural anthropology and linguistics". In: Garvin, Paul L. (Hg.): Report of the Seventh Annual Round table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Study. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, Monograph Series on Language and Linguistics No. 9. P. 167–173
• 1964. (Editor) Explorations in Cultural Anthropology: Essays in Honor of George Peter Murdock. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.
• 1965. "Yankee Kinship Terminology: A Problem in Componential Analysis." In E.A. Hammel, ed., Formal Semantic Analysis, pp259–297. Special Publication, American Anthropologist, vol. 67, no. 5, pt. 2.
• 1963. Cooperation in Change: An Anthropological Approach to Community Development. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
• 1970. Description and Comparison in Cultural Anthropology. Chicago: Aldine.
• 1971. Culture Language and Society. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Modular Publications, No. 7.
• 2002. Under Heaven’s Brow: Pre-Christian Religious Tradition in Chuuk. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 246. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
• 2003. "In Pursuit of Culture." Annual Review of Anthropology 32:1-12.