Global Journal of Human Social Science, D: History, Archaeology and Anthroplogy, Volume 23 Issue 3

Pacific islands in Melanesia as well as in Polinesia. Hocart did not return to England until 1915, just in time to participate in the First World War, stationed in France, where he served as intelligence officer and reached the rank of captain. After the war Hocart spent some years in London trying to obtain a university position, in which he did not succeed, so he accepted a position as commissioner in what was then the British colony of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. His work in Sri Lanka began in 1921, but the first year was spent in India, studying Indian languages and linguistics, his activities in Sri Lanka continued until 1929, when problems with his health forced him to resign and once again return to England. He stayed in London a couple of years, doing odd jobs and once again trying to obtain a university position, and once again without success. Not until 1934 did he obtain a university position, when he inherited Evans-Pritchard´s job as professor of sociology in the Fouad II University in Cairo. After his death Hocart is having a kind of renaissance, partly due to the publication of some of his texts through the intervention of Lord Raglan and Rodney Needham. Gerald Camden Wheeler has no such luck, and is today almost as unknown as Gunnar Landtman. Diamond Jenness was born in New Zealand and studied in Oxford but, in spite of the fact that he did his first fieldwork in Melanesia, he became the most important anthropologist in Canada, principally working among inuits. An important element in the methodological revolution in 1922 was that the use of interpreters was abandoned, the anthropologists began to learn the language of their informants and communicate with them directly. Diamond Jeness did his fieldwork in 1911 and 1912 in the dÉntrecasteaux Islands, but he did not participate in this linguistic part of the methodological revolution, he cheated and did his fieldwork together with his brother in law, Andrew Ballantyne, a missionary who had been living in the islands for more than twenty years and knew the local language well. John Willoughby Layard is probably the most exotic of these ten anthropologists. He travelled to Australia in 1914, together with Rivers to participate in the same British scientific congress as Malinowski and Haddon, only in a different ship, and after the congress he went into the field in Melanesia, also with Rivers. He did his fieldwork of about a year in another small island and declared that never in his life had he been happier than during his fieldwork. Apart from being an anthropologist, Layard also studied psychoanalysis, following the ideas of Carl Gustav Jung, so his fieldwork took the form of a search for archetypes in the culture of his island. One of the reasons that Layard is forgotten today is probably that he never published the complete information of his fieldwork nor his memories, with the attractive title Memories of a Failure . It is quite evident that the last and most successful of these early anhropologists was Bronislaw Malinowski, who managed to shape the new anthropological canon in the version in which it is usually accepted. We can sum it up as follows: a detailed observation of the daily life of a group of human beings, minimum a year, using the language of these people with a high degree of empathy. Whereas Radcliffe- Brown in the first place studied the political aspects of the daily life, Malinowski is better known as economic anthropologist. In this context the presence and participation of these ten anthropologists in the development of the new anthropological canon is rarely mentioned, even if their fieldwork was carried out several years before that of Malinowski. And as Gunner Landtmen was on of these ten British anthropologists, it is the purpose of this text to present some features of his anthropology and his contribution to the development of this new canon and, in general, his contributions to the creation of a fieldwork tradition that is valid even today. To avoid misunderstandings, I would like to close this brief introduction assuring the reader that it is not my intention to minimize the importance of Malinowski as the creator of a new anthropology, I only want to set the record straight. He remains as talented as ever before, just less lonely. II. G unnar L andtman’s L ife and A nthropology Gunnar Landtman was a young Finnish student who came to London to study under the direction of Edward Westermarck in the London School of Economics. Landtman´s first publication saw the light in Finland, thanks to Edward Westermarck as well: “A series of publications, Acta Academica Aboensis, was initiated with the first volume carrying Westermarck´s text on “the Belief in Spirits in Marocco”, as well as four other ethnological texts by his former students Rafael Karsten, Gunnar Landtman y K. Rob. Wikman” (Lagerspetz & Suolinna, 2014: 35). “Landtman and Karsten had particularly close connections with the emerging British anthropology in the early 1920´s. They worked together at the British Library in 1903-04. Their plan was to go together to South America for filed research. However, at the suggestion of A. C. Haddon, Landtman chose instead to study the Kiwai Papuans, staying for two years in 1910-12. He subsequently stayed in Britain in 1912-13, 1925-6 and 1931, working especially with Haddon. Westermarck and Landtman were good Friends. Westermarck told Landtman he was distressed that Karsten rather than Landtman succeeded him to the chair he had left in Helsingfors. He was also godfather to one of Landtman´s children” (Lagerspetz & Suolinna, 2014: 48). Volume XXIII Issue III Version I 58 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 D © 2023 Global Journals Gunnar Landtman (1878-1940)