H. IAN HOGBIN
1904-1989

Ian Hogbin . . . belongs to anthropology's heroic age. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown recruited him while Hogbin was an undergraduate at Sydney University, and sent him on his first field research. Bronislaw Malinowski guided him during the writing of his dissertation at the London School of Economics. He is also a member of that brilliant between-the-wars generation-- including Raymond Firth, Reo Fortune, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Hortense Powdermaker and Douglas Oliver--who pioneered modern field research in the insular South Pacific. Like many other anthropologists during World War II, he served as an adviser to the armed forces, bringing expertise and commitment to the problems of indigenous populations overtaken by the upheaval. A Reader at Sydney University after the war, he inspired a new generation of anthropologists with his enthusiasm for field work and the absolute importance of writing in clear, simple English.

Hogbin would, however, be remarkable in any period for the extent of his field research and the volume of his writings. He has worked in no fewer than five Pacific communities and published nine books.

He began his anthropological career in 1927, briefly visiting Rennell Island and then Ontong Java. By the outbreak of war in the Pacific, he had completed studies in Malaita, Guadalcanal, and Wogeo. Travelling extensively in the Solomons and Papua New Guinea during the war, he made a final study of Busama during the late 1940s. In the years that followed, he was caught up with teaching and writing; but after his retirement in 1969 he made several visits to Papua New Guinea as external examiner at the new university. This brought him into contact with students from Wogeo and Busama who were the children and grandchildren of his old informants. He subsequently returned as an invited guest to the villages where he had once come unbidden.

The findings of this research were published in a steady flow of monographs and articles, beginning in 1930. The study of Ontong Java, written first as his doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics, was published in 1934 as Law and Order in Polynesia. The Malaita monograph, Experiments in Civilization, followed in 1939. Transformation Scene, which describes the effects of the war on Busama, appeared in 1951, and Social Change (the Josiah Mason Lectures) in 1958. Kinship and Marriage in a New Guinea Village (again Busama) was published in 1963 and A Guadalcanal Society in the following year. The Island of Menstruating Men, a path-breaking exploration of gender in Wogeo appeared in 1970, and The Leaders and the Led--also about Wogeo-- in 1978. Hogbin is the author of some forty-nine articles--many of them in Oceania, beginning with the first volume--and a now rare collection of photographic studies, Peoples of the South Pacific, dated 1945-1946.

After the appearance of his last monograph, Ian's friends were hoping that he would commit to writing the stories and recollections with which he had so often entertained them over the dinner table. Regrettably other commitments and perhaps a degree of reticence prevented him undertaking the task until he found himself physically unable to write.

At last, in 1985, he agreed that I should record a series of interviews with him. These have now been transcribed and edited, and will shortly appear as an Oceania monograph entitled Conversations with Ian Hogbin.

Apart from details about Hogbin's childhood and non-professional interests, Conversations includes his reminiscences of Radcliffe- Brown, Malinowski and other noted anthropologists, accounts of his fieldwork and experiences in Papua New Guinea during the war, and his reflections on the intermediate and long term fate of ethnographic works such as his own.

Anthropology in Oceania: Essays Presented to Ian Hogbin, edited by L. R. Hiatt and C. Jayawardena (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1971) provides abibliography of Hogbin's published work, except for his final monograph.

Here we list only the books:

Law and Order in Polynesia. London: Christophers (1934) and Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String Press (1961).

Experiments in Civilization: The Effects of European Culture on a Native Community in the Solomon Islands. London: Routledge (1939, 1969).

Peoples of the Southwest Pacific. New York: John Day (1945-46).

Transformation Scene. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (1951).

Social Change. London: Watts (1958) and Melbourne: Melbourne University Press (1970).

Kinship and Marriage in a New Guinea Village. London: Athlone (1963).

A Guadalcanal Society: the Kaoka Speakers. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston (1964).

The Island of Menstruating Men. Scranton, Penn.: Chandler (1970).

The Leaders and the Led: Social Control in Wogeo, New Guinea. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press (1978).

J. R. Beckett, University of Sydney (Summer 1989 Newsletter)