Strangers Abroad - Everything is relatives: William Halse Rivers (1864-1922)

"William Rivers, trained as a doctor, administered psychological tests to the islanders of the Torres Straits north of Australia and discovered the importance of relatives in their society. His work as a psychologist and medical researcher enabled him to bring something new to anthropology: a scientific approach. His field study with a hill tribe in southern India, the Todas, ultimately set the trend for anthropologists to go and visit the cultures in which they were interested, rather than staying at home and theorizing.

In the 1980s, Bruce Dakowski and Andre Singer collaborated on a series of video documentary portraits intended to introduce six founders of "social anthropology." The project was sponsored and supported by the Royal Anthropological Institute. The six selected "pioneers" were Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer (1860-1929), William Rivers (1864-1922), Franz Boas (1858-1942), Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973), and Margaret Mead (1901-1978)."