Ward Goodenough

Ward H. Goodenough ( /ˈɡʊdɨnaʊ/ guud-ə-nuf) is a U.S. Anthropologist, who has made contributions to kinship studies, linguistic anthropology, cross-cultural studies, and cognitive anthropology. Born May 30, 1919, in Cambridge Massachusetts, he attended Groton School in Groton Massachusetts. He then earned a B.A. in 1940 from Cornell University, majoring in Scandinavian languages and literature. That year he enrolled in graduate school at Yale University, but his studies were interrupted by World War II. Serving as a noncommissioned officer in the United States Army from November 1941 to December 1945, Goodenough earned his Ph.D. 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, both in Micronesia (Kiribati), and in Melanesia (Papua New Guinea). An expert on Trukese kinship, his best known work is the development of a method for applying componential analysis to the study of kinship terminology, and his disagreements with David M. Schneider about the value of formal analyses of Kinship terminology. He also developed Ralph Linton'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. He moved to the University of Pennsylvania 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.

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.

See also

• Bronislaw Malinowski Award

References

• Kimmell, Arwen. "Ward H. Goodenough". http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/theory_pages/goodenough.htm. Retrieved December 4, 2007.