RAI Research Seminar
Tuesday 24 June 2025, 4.00-6.00pm BST
This is a hybrid event.
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The Origins Of Human Social Nature:
Westermarckian Sociology and Social Anthropology
Dr Otto Pipatti
Edward Westermarck (1862–1939) was one of the most renowned sociologists and social anthropologists of his time. He left behind a significant scientific legacy, which has endured to the present day largely in only one area of research—incest avoidance and the incest taboo.
In his presentation, Dr Otto Pipatti examines the unifying features of Westermarck’s work, drawing on his book The Origins of Human Social Nature: Westermarckian Sociology and Social Anthropology (2024, Palgrave Macmillan). He covers Westermarck’s studies on morality, family and marriage, and religion and magic. Westermarck investigated the origins of these phenomena, by which he meant their causes–especially emotional ones. These causes remain ever-present in human societies because they are tied to what humans are as biological, psychological, and social beings. Furthermore, Westermarck systematically linked the phenomena he studied to emotional tendencies that humans share with other animals. Pipatti also explores how Westermarck’s theoretical approach was transmitted to his disciples in Finland and at the London School of Economics.
In addition to his sociological contributions, Westermarck played a formative role in the early development of ethnographic fieldwork, Westermarck and his students were among the first to conduct vernacular-based ethnographic fieldwork between the late 1890s and the 1910s, with Bronislaw Malinowski being one of them. Pipatti examines how Westermarck contributed to establishing the methodological foundations of ethnographic fieldwork and how his students adapted his teachings to meet their own research needs in New Guinea, Amazonia, Siberia, the Trobriands, and Palestine.
More information about the book:
Bio
Dr Otto Pipatti is a researcher in sociology and social anthropology at the University of Helsinki, with both historical and contemporary interests in evolutionary and biosocial approaches to human behaviour. His doctoral thesis, Edward Westermarck’s Moral and Social Theory, was completed in 2017 and published by Routledge in 2019. Pipatti was a visiting researcher at the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) in 2022–2023. He is currently working on Westermarck’s intellectual biography.
