Savage Civilisation

<p>Tom Harrisson (1911-1976) was originally a new ornithologist, but since extending his stay as Oxford University’s ornithologist in the New Hebrides between 1933 and 1935, living with the V’enen Taut people (or the Big Nambas of Malekula as they were called when he was there), had come to regard himself as a bit of a ‘cannibal’ as he put it probably referring to his acquisition of a strong interest in human societies having started out as an ornithologist. His first work in this new mode was his impulsively compiled observations, poems, photographs and drawings made in Malekula into a freeform collage of ethnographic narrative. These appeared in 1937 as an extraordinary New Left Book Club book entitled Savage Civilisation, with chapter titles such as ‘View’; ‘Pioneers of £’; and ‘Coconut Moon’.[57] The book was regarded as a novel and pathbreaking study in geographic circles and earned Harrisson the Royal Geographical Society’s Cuthbert Peake award." - Mark Toogood, Modern observations: New ornithology and the science of ourselves, 1920-1940, Journal of Historical Geography 37(3):348-357, July 2011, pg 353-354 A free research pdf of this Journal of Historical Geography article is available here: <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232393289_Modern_observations_New_ornithology_and_the_science_of_ourselves_1920-1940">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232393289_Modern_observations_New_ornithology_and_the_science_of_ourselves_1920-1940</a></p>