P.E. de Josselin de Jong
Encyclopedia
Professor Patrick Edward de Josselin de Jong (July 8, 1922 – January 1, 1999) was a professor of cultural anthropology
at the University of Leiden for over 30 years, and department chair from 1957 through 1987. His research specialization was on the Minangkabau in West Sumatra
.
Patrick was considered a foremost general anthropologist in the tradition set by the Leiden University where he headed the Cultural Anthropology chair, and who inherited his anthropological skills from his equally illustrious uncle J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong
, with his dominant field of interest centered on Indonesia
. He was also a regional specialist, particularly in western Indonesia with structuralism
as his main subject of interest. Structural anthropology originated at the University of Leiden during the 1920s and 1930s.
His bibliography
lists 208 titles, including reprints and translations. He was decorated with the “Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw” in April 1986 by the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. He was also decorated for his war-time activities as “Verzetsherdenkingskruis” award. He retired in 1987 as Professor in Cultural Anthropology and became a Professor Emeritus thereafter. He was honoured in a farewell symposium where he gave his concluding lecture titled “The Sacred Ruler in Indonesia” in Dutch.
in 1922. His father (a Dutch
) was a former naval officer and was with the foreign service. His mother was Scottish
.
Patrick and his mother moved to the Netherlands when he was aged six in 1928, receiving his secondary education at Stedelijk Gymnasium Leiden
. Under his father's influence, he enrolled in 1940 in a course in Indonesian Languages at Leiden University to prepare for a career as a linguist
with the Dutch East Indies
civil service
.
He was the nephew of structural anthropologist
J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong
who coined the concept of the field of ethnological study in his second inaugural lecture (1935). The Leiden tradition was set by J.P.B. with the concept of Field of Ethnological Study; the focus being on the structural core of Indonesian societies. His successor continued and expanded this line of research (comparative structuralism).
Patrick and J.P.B. regularly attended the evening meetings of the student society W.D.O. Peter Suzuki was his assistant. Patrick occupied the room of his uncle in the University. J.P.B. had also gifted Patrick with his personal toga or professional gown. J.P.B. had used this gown as a symbolic rite on 20 occasions while conferring doctorates on his students.
During the Second World War, Patrick was a member of the Dutch resistance
.
. He worked in the Islam Department in the section that studied Muslim peoples, especially those who lived in Indonesia. He left this position in 1953 to accept a post as lecturer in Singapore.
From 1957, Patrick Edward de Josselin de Jong was involved with teaching two major subjects at Leiden University: cultural anthropology in general, and cultural anthropology of South-East Asia and the South Seas, in particular. Patrick differed from his mentor and uncle, J.P.B., in two main aspects namely: “firstly his view is much more cognitive (stressing the idea principles), and secondly, his view is transformational".
In January 1957, Patrick was appointed to Professor of Cultural Anthropology
at the Leiden University, his uncle having retired in September 1956. He was chair of the department until 1987. After his appointment as Professor, Patrick preferred to denote the Leiden school as “Leidse richting” (a Dutch word) which he considered an appropriate usage to the comparative and structural study under the well known Leiden Tradition approach to the field of anthropological study not exclusive to Indonesia.
Patrick's work at the university covered the third phase of the study of cultural anthropology at Leiden University. The first phase involved P.J. Veth, G.A. Wilken, J.J.M. de Groot, and A.W. Nieuwenhuis; J.P.B Josselin de Jong and W.H. Rassers were in the second phase (from 1920 on); the third phase started with the appointment of P.E. de Josselin de Jong. In his inaugural lecture of 1957, Patrick termed his period as a turning point in the history of this study in the University. While the second phase was influenced by the work of Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, as well as of Franz Boas and R.H. Lowie, the third phase was under the influence of Claude Levi-Strauss (from 1949 on).
His bibliography lists 208 titles (including reprints and translations), nine books, and edited works, seven in English, one in Dutch and one in Bahasa Indonesia. He published 55 reviews, 136 articles, 3 comments, and also wrote articles with others, including 111 less substantial articles, translations and reprints. He classified his diverse publications under regional and non-regional (South East Asia), popular scientific and pure scientific works.
In his long and distinguished career, Patrick de Josselin de Jong continued the structural anthropology of his predecessor, invigorating it with Levi-Straussian ideas on structural transformations within Fields of Anthropological Study. His career contribution was succinctly hailed with the words “continuation and innovation,” which view was upheld by his senior colleague G.W. Locher who stated that “he is the independent continuator of the Leiden tradition; critical and creative”.
In January 1961, he was made an honorary member of Royal Asiatic Society
. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
(RAI), and a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
.
De Josselin de Jong died in Oegstgeest
, Netherlands
in 1999.
Cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans, collecting data about the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities. Anthropologists use a variety of methods, including participant observation,...
at the University of Leiden for over 30 years, and department chair from 1957 through 1987. His research specialization was on the Minangkabau in West Sumatra
West Sumatra
West Sumatra is a province of Indonesia. It lies on the west coast of the island Sumatra. It borders the provinces of North Sumatra to the north, Riau and Jambi to the east, and Bengkulu to the southeast. It includes the Mentawai Islands off the coast...
.
Patrick was considered a foremost general anthropologist in the tradition set by the Leiden University where he headed the Cultural Anthropology chair, and who inherited his anthropological skills from his equally illustrious uncle J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong
J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong
Jan Petrus Benjamin de Josselin de Jong was a founding father of modern Dutch anthropology and of structural anthropology at Leiden University. In his early career, he was a museum curator. His area of specialty was American and Indonesian ethnography...
, with his dominant field of interest centered on Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
. He was also a regional specialist, particularly in western Indonesia with structuralism
Structural anthropology
Structural anthropology is based on Claude Lévi-Strauss' idea that people think about the world in terms of binary opposites—such as high and low, inside and outside, person and animal, life and death—and that every culture can be understood in terms of these opposites...
as his main subject of interest. Structural anthropology originated at the University of Leiden during the 1920s and 1930s.
His bibliography
Bibliography
Bibliography , as a practice, is the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology...
lists 208 titles, including reprints and translations. He was decorated with the “Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw” in April 1986 by the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. He was also decorated for his war-time activities as “Verzetsherdenkingskruis” award. He retired in 1987 as Professor in Cultural Anthropology and became a Professor Emeritus thereafter. He was honoured in a farewell symposium where he gave his concluding lecture titled “The Sacred Ruler in Indonesia” in Dutch.
Early years
Patrick was born in BeijingBeijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
in 1922. His father (a Dutch
Dutch people
The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...
) was a former naval officer and was with the foreign service. His mother was Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
.
Patrick and his mother moved to the Netherlands when he was aged six in 1928, receiving his secondary education at Stedelijk Gymnasium Leiden
Stedelijk Gymnasium Leiden
Stedelijk Gymnasium Leiden is a gymnasium in the Netherlands. Located in Leiden, it is one of the oldest schools in the Netherlands. Its history dates back to the Middle Ages...
. Under his father's influence, he enrolled in 1940 in a course in Indonesian Languages at Leiden University to prepare for a career as a linguist
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
with the Dutch East Indies
Dutch East Indies
The Dutch East Indies was a Dutch colony that became modern Indonesia following World War II. It was formed from the nationalised colonies of the Dutch East India Company, which came under the administration of the Netherlands government in 1800....
civil service
Civil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....
.
He was the nephew of structural anthropologist
Structural anthropology
Structural anthropology is based on Claude Lévi-Strauss' idea that people think about the world in terms of binary opposites—such as high and low, inside and outside, person and animal, life and death—and that every culture can be understood in terms of these opposites...
J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong
J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong
Jan Petrus Benjamin de Josselin de Jong was a founding father of modern Dutch anthropology and of structural anthropology at Leiden University. In his early career, he was a museum curator. His area of specialty was American and Indonesian ethnography...
who coined the concept of the field of ethnological study in his second inaugural lecture (1935). The Leiden tradition was set by J.P.B. with the concept of Field of Ethnological Study; the focus being on the structural core of Indonesian societies. His successor continued and expanded this line of research (comparative structuralism).
Patrick and J.P.B. regularly attended the evening meetings of the student society W.D.O. Peter Suzuki was his assistant. Patrick occupied the room of his uncle in the University. J.P.B. had also gifted Patrick with his personal toga or professional gown. J.P.B. had used this gown as a symbolic rite on 20 occasions while conferring doctorates on his students.
During the Second World War, Patrick was a member of the Dutch resistance
Dutch resistance
Dutch resistance to the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War II can be mainly characterized by its prominent non-violence, summitting in over 300,000 people in hiding in the autumn of 1944, tended to by some 60,000 to 200,000 illegal landlords and caretakers and tolerated knowingly...
.
Career
Patrick began his first job in 1949 at the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden as assistant-curatorCurator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
. He worked in the Islam Department in the section that studied Muslim peoples, especially those who lived in Indonesia. He left this position in 1953 to accept a post as lecturer in Singapore.
From 1957, Patrick Edward de Josselin de Jong was involved with teaching two major subjects at Leiden University: cultural anthropology in general, and cultural anthropology of South-East Asia and the South Seas, in particular. Patrick differed from his mentor and uncle, J.P.B., in two main aspects namely: “firstly his view is much more cognitive (stressing the idea principles), and secondly, his view is transformational".
In January 1957, Patrick was appointed to Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans, collecting data about the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities. Anthropologists use a variety of methods, including participant observation,...
at the Leiden University, his uncle having retired in September 1956. He was chair of the department until 1987. After his appointment as Professor, Patrick preferred to denote the Leiden school as “Leidse richting” (a Dutch word) which he considered an appropriate usage to the comparative and structural study under the well known Leiden Tradition approach to the field of anthropological study not exclusive to Indonesia.
Patrick's work at the university covered the third phase of the study of cultural anthropology at Leiden University. The first phase involved P.J. Veth, G.A. Wilken, J.J.M. de Groot, and A.W. Nieuwenhuis; J.P.B Josselin de Jong and W.H. Rassers were in the second phase (from 1920 on); the third phase started with the appointment of P.E. de Josselin de Jong. In his inaugural lecture of 1957, Patrick termed his period as a turning point in the history of this study in the University. While the second phase was influenced by the work of Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, as well as of Franz Boas and R.H. Lowie, the third phase was under the influence of Claude Levi-Strauss (from 1949 on).
His bibliography lists 208 titles (including reprints and translations), nine books, and edited works, seven in English, one in Dutch and one in Bahasa Indonesia. He published 55 reviews, 136 articles, 3 comments, and also wrote articles with others, including 111 less substantial articles, translations and reprints. He classified his diverse publications under regional and non-regional (South East Asia), popular scientific and pure scientific works.
Ideas
The principles adopted by Patrick have been classified under four headings namely, Kinship, Insular South-East Asia, Political Myths and Cultural anthropology, which are not considered “mutually exclusive” but do overlap. Gingrich and Fox (2002) state that J.P.B. identified four elements that constitute a structural core within the field of ethnological study, including circulating connubium, double unilineality, dual symbolic classification, and resilience from foreign cultural influences.In his long and distinguished career, Patrick de Josselin de Jong continued the structural anthropology of his predecessor, invigorating it with Levi-Straussian ideas on structural transformations within Fields of Anthropological Study. His career contribution was succinctly hailed with the words “continuation and innovation,” which view was upheld by his senior colleague G.W. Locher who stated that “he is the independent continuator of the Leiden tradition; critical and creative”.
Professional organizations
On May 22, 1947, he gave his first speech at the Ethnological Society W.D.O.In January 1961, he was made an honorary member of Royal Asiatic Society
Royal Asiatic Society
The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland was established, according to its Royal Charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia." From its incorporation the Society...
. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is the world's longest established anthropological organization, with a global membership. Since 1843, it has been at the forefront of new developments in anthropology and new means of communicating them to a broad audience...
(RAI), and a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences is an organisation dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands...
.
Personal life
In 1986, he received a knighthood in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.De Josselin de Jong died in Oegstgeest
Oegstgeest
Oegstgeest is a town and municipality in the province of South Holland in the western Netherlands. Its population was 22,576 in 2008.-Location :...
, Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
in 1999.
Partial works
- (1951), Minangkabau and Negri Sembilan: Socio-political structure in Indonesia
- (1957), Some directions in contemporary cultural anthropology
- (1987), Generalization in cultural anthropology