J. D. Unwin


Joseph Daniel Unwin MC was an English ethnologist and social anthropologist at Oxford University and Cambridge University.

Contributions to anthropology

In Sex and Culture, Unwin studied 80 primitive tribes and 6 known civilizations through 5,000 years of history and claimed there was a positive correlation between the cultural achievement of a people and the sexual restraint they observe. Aldous Huxley described Sex and Culture as "a work of the highest importance".
According to Unwin, after a nation becomes prosperous it becomes increasingly liberal with regard to sexual morality and as a result loses its cohesion, its impetus and its purpose. The effect, says the author, is irrevocable. Unwin also claimed that legal equality between women and men was a necessary prerequisite to absolute monogamy.

Works