Richard J. Needham

Richard J. Needham (1925–2006) was a British social anthropologist associated with the University of Oxford. He is known for influential work on kinship, systems of classification, and symbolic analysis within social anthropology. Needham edited *Rethinking Kinship and Marriage* (1971), a widely cited collection that helped reshape debates about kinship theory, and he authored *Right and Left: Essays on Dual Symbolic Classification* (1973), examining symbolic oppositions and their cultural meanings. Across his scholarship, he emphasized careful comparative analysis and the conceptual structures through which societies organize relationships and ideas.