Leach, Edmund R.

views updated Jun 27 2018

Leach, Edmund R. (1910–89) An iconoclastic British social anthropologist, influential in introducing continental structuralist thought to the Anglo-Saxon world, as an antidote to the prevailing structural-functionalist orthodoxy. His major research was in the areas of political rhetoric, linguistic categories, kinship, myth and ritual, in works such as Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954), Rethinking Anthropology (1962), Genesis as Myth and Other Essays (1969), Levi-Strauss (1970), Culture and Communication (1976), and Social Anthropology (1982).

About this article

Edmund Ronald Leach

All Sources -
Updated Aug 24 2016 About encyclopedia.com content Print Topic