The genealogical method was invented by W.H. R. Rivers (1864—1922) during the Torres Straits Expedition of 1898-99. He described it most fully in .Notes and Queries on Anthropology (1912), after which it became standard procedure in social anthropology. Its primary purpose, as Rivers saw it, was to improve the analysis of social organization, i.e. the concrete actuality of interpersonal relations and living arrangements. The method required extensive interviewing of named individuals in order to: (1) collect vital statistics among a non-literate population, and (2) record their pedigrees, which reflected rights and responsibilities relating primarily to descent, succession, and inheritance.
The method was used, along with censuses and settlement plans, in field research for classical monographs on the Todas (Rivers), Tallensi (Meyer Fortes), Tikopia (Raymond Firth), Ndembu (Victor Turner) and Sinhalas (Edmund Leach) among others. Robin Fox added a further dimension to the method by showing that, because a genealogy is a cultural form, care has to be taken that names are elicited in accordance with local practice. Fox’s Irish islanders began not with a named individual (an ego) but with ancestors.Anthony Good (1984) added further procedural refinements to ensure that no patrilineal bias affects the use of the genealogical method.
The value of the genealogical method extends beyond the specialized realm of kinship studies yet it has been neglected by anthropologists who do not work in kin-structured societies. Thus it provided the foundation of a kind of structural demography in anthropology as advocated by Levi-Strauss. This aims at a mathematical expression of the relationship between the functioning and durability of social structure and the actual size of population. It is based on accumulation of individualized demographic and social data and the charting of pedigrees, mapping residences and household surveys.
The genealogical method has been used in modern urban anthropology where it is often combined with ego-centred network analysis. It has also been foundational in studies of the migration of ethnic groups to the United States. Most striking has been its application in medical anthropology. Thus, for example, among certain groups of New Guinea highlanders the disease kuru was proved not to be hereditary, as first thought, but associated with the spread of cannibalism throughout their territory. Anthropologists have also used the genealogical method in AIDS research in Africa. Indeed, the nature and problems encountered in these two cases eerily echo Rivers’s concerns when he first confronted Melanesian depopulation and inexplicable illnesses at the turn of the twentieth century, the setting in which he first began to develop the genealogical method.
