GLUCKMAN (Herman), MAX

GLUCKMAN (Herman ), MAX (1911–1975), social anthropologist. Born and educated in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Rhodes scholar to Oxford, 1934, he was assistant anthropologist to the Rhodes Livingston Institute in North Rhodesia (now Zambia) from 1939 to 1941 and its director from 1941 to 1947. In 1947 he was appointed lecturer in social anthropology at Oxford and in 1949 professor of social anthropology at the University of Manchester. He did field research in Zululand from 1936 to 1938; in Barotseland from 1939 to 1941; Tonga in North Rhodesia in 1944; and Lamba in 1946. Gluckman became an expert on African societies, the political systems of tribal society, and more generally political anthropology. His Custom and Conflict in Africa (1955) paid special attention to cultural change and the significance of conflict, which he regarded as a basic element in society. He was chairman of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the British Commonwealth from 1962 to 1966. He wrote Administrative Organization of the Barotse Native Authorities (1943), Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa (1954), Custom and Conflict in Africa (1955), Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa (1963), Politics, Law, and Ritual in Tribal Society (1965), and The Ideas in Barotse Jurisprudence (1965). Gluckman died in Jerusalem, where he was a visiting scholar at the Hebrew University.

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[Ephraim Fischoff]