Meyer Fortes was a British social anthropologist who was trained in the early 20th Century by Charles G. Seligman (trained Malinowski), Bronislaw Malinowski, and Raymond Firth; he later worked with A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, and Max Gluckman. He was originally trained in psychology and his interests in psychology can be observed in all of his later works on ancestor worship. He was a structural-functionalist and an Africanist who was primarily interested in family and kinship. He worked among the Tallensi and Ashanti in Africa and his major contributions were in lineage theory, studies of religion and ancestor worship. According to Edmund Leach, in the development of a field methodology that was premised on the application of anthropological theory to actual observations made in field studies. His work set the standard for all subsequent studies of African social organization. He chaired the Anthropology Department of Cambridge University, England, from 1950 to 1973.
His major works include: African Political Systems (1940, with Evans-Pritchard); The Dynamics of Clanship among the Tallensi (1945); The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi (1959); Oedipus and Job in West African Religion (1959); Kinship and the Social Order (1969); Time and Social Structure (1970); and Social Structure (1970, editor).
Hatch, Elvin; 1973 Theories of Man & Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hunter, D. E. & P. Whitten, eds.; 1976 Encyclopedia of Anthropology. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.
Kuper, Adam; 1983 Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School. London: Routledge.
Seymour-Smith, Charlotte; 1986 Dictionary of Anthropology. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co.
Written by: Sara K. Soeters