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of the Histories of Anthropology

Lord Raglan (1885-1964), aka Fitzroy Richard Somerset, fourth Baron of Raglan, was a British amateur anthropologist who became president of the Royal Anthropological Institute in the 1950s, challenging the division between the academy and the popularization of the discipline. Alongside his counter-current theoretical inclinations, mixing (hyper)diffusionism and (neo-)Frazerian ritualism, he can be considered as a protostructuralist, interested in the symbolic logic of cosmological themes. Author of books such as The Hero (1936), How Came Civilization? (1939), The Origins of Religion (1949), Lord Raglan brings a dissonant note to the history of the discipline.

Keywords: Folklore | Social and cultural anthropology | Ethnology | Diffusionism | Military | 20th century | United Kingdom | North Sudan/South Sudan | Religion | Cultural diffusion and migrations | Rituals | Cosmologies | Incest | Classical and oriental antiquity | The Folklore Society | The Royal Anthropological Institute | A. M. Hocart

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