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1934-2024
Donald E. Brown was born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 1934. Following elementary and high school education in Sioux Falls, he moved to Los Angeles near relatives, and took a summer job at North American Aviation (NAA). He began to take courses at El Camino Community College that were related to his job at NAA, such as geometry, college algebra, and physics. In 1956 he was drafted into the US Army and was given a clerical job. After army service, in 1959, Brown returned to El Camino and declared anthropology as his major. He transferred to UCLA to continue his anthropology courses with M. G. Smith and Hilda Kuper as his advisors. Following his BA and MA degrees in anthropology from UCLA, he was admitted to Cornell’s PhD program, where he began to take courses in the internationally recognized Southeast Asian program. One of his classmates was Carrie Chu, who was from Hong Kong and was studying anthropology and Southeast Asian history. Don and Carrie dated and eventually married in 1965. They were married 59 years and have a daughter, Mina, and a son, Barry.
By the middle of his second year at Cornell with anthropologist Victor Turner as his major advisor, Don was encouraged by the faculty to do research in Brunei. After six months of archival work in London, Don and Carrie headed for Brunei for 16 months of fieldwork. Brown’s dissertation of 1970 was based on an ethnohistory of the Brunei Sultanate. He focused on the details of the hierarchical features of Brunei’s social structure and how it was changing over the years. This research piqued his interest in comparative historiography that led to a later book Hierarchy, History, and Human Nature: The Social Origins of Historical Consciousness (1988). This volume was based on an extensive cross-cultural analysis of historiography demonstrating that some historical traditions were more ‘objective’ or valid than others.
In 1969, Brown took a position at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He taught many courses including one on the anthropology of Southeast Asia. Based on this course, he authored a book, Principles of Social Structure: Southeast Asia (1976). Don was a mentor, colleague, friend, and advisor to many students and scholars across different disciplines. He chaired the department for several years.
Eventually, Don became interested in researching human universals, leading to his well-known book Human Universals (1991) that was translated into many languages. Following in the footsteps of Wilhelm von Humboldt, Adolf Bastian, and George P. Murdock, Brown highlighted many fundamental commonalities and cross-cultural universals throughout the world. The book included a discussion of how most contemporary anthropologists have focused on cultural differences and tended to neglect or criticize any empirical studies of shared human universals and commonalities. In one imaginative chapter, Brown creates a group of people he refers to as the “Universal People,” who have all the traits of any people in any society throughout the world. The Universal People have a language with complex grammar to communicate and think abstractly; kinship terms and categories to distinguish relatives and age groupings; gender terms for male and female; facial expressions to show basic emotions; a concept of the self as subject and object; tools, shelter, and fire; patterns for childbirth and training; families and political groupings; conflict; etiquette; morality, religious beliefs, and worldviews; and dance, music, art, and other aesthetic standards.
One of Don’s hobbies was growing orchids. The photo below shows Don and Carrie with what was determined officially as the world’s largest orchid (dendrobium speciosum), which was 10 feet in diameter and produced over 200,000 flowers.
(Ray Scupin, Lindenwood University)