Murdock, George Peter (1897–1985)

US cultural anthropologist. Working out of the mainstream of the Boasian tradition of his time, he initiated the cross-cultural survey, later known as ‘human relations area files’, as an instrument of anthropological generalization. His best-known work, Social Structure (1949), focused on family and kinship organization over a wide range of societies.

Murdock was born in Meriden, Connecticut. He studied at Yale and taught there (1928–60) and at the University of Pittsburgh (1960–71).