Cyril Belshaw

Cyril Shirley Belshaw (born December 3, 1921 in New Zealand^[2]) is an anthropologist, and was professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) from 1953 until his retirement in 1987. He was also the long-time editor of the journal Current Anthropology and served in a number of editorial positions. He was President of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences and of its world Congress in Canada in 1984, and was largely responsible fore its reformation. He is Honorary Life Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Pacific Science Association and the Association for the Social Anthropology of Oceania. He has worked with the Canadian social Science Research Council and the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, the International Social Science Council and the International Council for Philosophy and the Humanities. In the early sixties he was Director of the Institute for United Nations Fellows in Vancouver and was appointed by UN ECOSOC to a team reporting on the effectiveness of international aid in Thailand. He has attended several meetings in Africa concerned with the viability of African publications. In 2005 he was named World Utopian Champion by SOC.Stockholm and next yest published Choosing our Destiny: creating the Utopian world in the 21st Century.

He is the author of many articles and his other books include Changing Melanesia: the social economics of culture contact, The Great Village: the social welfare of Hanuabada, an urban community in Papua, Under the Ivi Tree: Society and Development in rural Fiji, Towers Besieged, the dilemma of the creative university, Traditional Exchange and Modern Markets, The Sorcerer's Apprentice: an anthropology of public policy. He has travelled widely to meet colleagues in all continents. In 2009 he published his autobiography in three volumes: Remuera: Memories of a New Zealand Boy between the Wars; Bumps on a Long Road Volumes I and II distributed at www.Lulu.com. Several of his books have been reprinted recently. In 2009 he extended his enterprise Webzines of Vancouver from digital publishing to print and plans to republish his out of print books, noteworthy Ph.D. theses, and old classics of anthropology, during 2010.^[3][4]

Some of Belshaw's key works

Changing Melanesia: the social economics of culture contact

The Great Village: the social welfare of Hanuabada, an urban community in Papua

Under the Ivi Tree: Society and Development in rural Fiji

Towers Besieged, the dilemma of the creative university

(1965) Traditional Exchange and Modern Markets. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

(1976) The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: an Anthropology of Public Policy. New York.

References