author
J. J. (James Jasper) Atkinson
d. 1899
An observer of colonial life and social custom, he is remembered for ideas that were published after his death in Social Origins and Primal Law. His surviving work links practical interests in public affairs with an early, speculative attempt to explain the origins of human society.
1 Audiobook
Social Origins and Primal Law
by Andrew Lang, J. J. (James Jasper) Atkinson
About the author
Born in India to Scottish parents, James Jasper Atkinson was educated at Loretto School and later spent many years in New Caledonia. Andrew Lang, who edited and introduced Atkinson's work after his death, said that local customs and long residence there helped shape his thinking about kinship, marriage rules, and early social organization.
Atkinson is associated above all with Primal Law, a work incorporated into the 1903 volume Social Origins and Primal Law. The book presents his attempt to explain how early human societies may have developed rules around family life, authority, and exogamy. Although the work belongs to an older era of anthropology, it remains of interest as a window into late 19th-century debates about the beginnings of human culture.
Library records also identify him as the author of Our Railways and How They Are Managed; or, A Sequel to the Royal Commission Report on Railways (1881), showing that his writing was not limited to anthropology. He died in 1899.