Fortes, Meyer, 1906–83, British anthropologist, b. Britstown, South Africa, grad. Univ. of Cape Town (M.A., 1926) and the Univ. of London (Ph.D., 1930). From 1946 to 1950 he was a reader in social anthropology at Oxford, and from 1950 to 1973 he was William Wyse professor of social anthropology at Cambridge. An ethnologist, he specialized in African social structures. Among his writings are Oedipus and Job in West African Religion (1959), Kinship and the Social Order (1969), Time and Social Structure and Other Essays (1970), and Rules and the Emergence of Society (1983).
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