Social Anthropology at Cambridge

Abstract

DR. JOHN HENRY HUTTON, of St. John's College, Cambridge, who is to succeed Prof. T. C. Hodson, was educated at Chigwell School, and Worcester College, Oxford. Dr. Hutton was appointed lecturer in the Faculty of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge last year, on his retirement from the Indian Civil Service. He entered the Service in 1909, serving under the Government of Assam, and being awarded the honour of C.I.E. in 1920. In addition to his administrative duties, Dr. Hutton was responsible as honorary director for the ethnographic survey of the tribes of Assam, and himself produced two volumes, one on the Angami Nagas (1921) and one on the Sema Nagas (1929) in the series of monographs on the Naga tribes published under the auspices of the Assam Government. Dr. Hutton's abilities as an anthropologist and as an organizer of survey work in anthropology and demography were recognized when he was seconded from the service of the Assam Government to take charge of the Census of India, 1931. As superintendent of the Census, he wrote an introductory study of the ethnic problem involved in the composition of the population of India, summing up and analysing the evidence which has accrued since the publication of Sir H. H. Risley's Census of 1901 and calling for modification in the views then put forward. Reference was made to Dr. Hutton's work in NATURE of September 5, 1936, p. 394. Mr. Gregory Bateson, of St. John's College, Cambridge, has been elected to the William Wyse studentship in social anthropology in the University of Cambridge for a period of three years. Mr. Bateson is the author of the recently published work “Naven” (see NATURE of March 13, p. 454) in which he gives an account of some of his observations among the latmul tribes in an expedition to the Sepik River, New Guinea, in 1933, and elaborates an extension of the ‘functional’ method in sociological investigation.