Cyril Belshaw

Cyril Shirley Belshaw (3 December 1921 – 20 November 2018) was a New Zealand-born Canadian Anthropologist and was professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) from 1953 until his retirement in 1987. Belshaw attended New Zealand's Victoria College where he received a M.A, prior to continuing his education at the London School of Economics where he received his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology. After finishing his education, Belshaw worked as a colonial administrator and economist in the South Pacific.

Following his research, Belshaw made the long travel to Canada where he began his career at the University of British Columbia. In 1979, he was accused in Switzerland of murdering his wife Betty Belshaw. At his trial, it was revealed that Belshaw was engaging in an affair with another married woman. He was acquitted by the all-male jury.

Career Cyril Belshaw had many academic interests including Anthropology of public policy, social organization, economic anthropology, international organizations, communication and completed extensive fieldwork in places such as New Guinea, Fiji and Northern BC. Prior to his death in 2018 Belshaw served as an editor for journals such as Current Anthropology and was an Honorary Life Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Pacific Science Association and the Association for the Social Anthropology of Oceania. Belshaw was also the President of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences and of its world Congress in Canada in 1984, and was largely responsible for its reformation. He has worked with the Canadian social Science Research Council and the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, the International Social Science Council and the International Council for Philosophy and the Humanities.

In 1954 Belshaw published Changing Melanesia: Social Economics of Culture Contact, which focused on work conducted in three different Melanesian territories Solomons, New Hebrides, and New Caledonia. He based it on a thesis presented in 1949 at the London University of Economics, reducing and revising it for publication. Changing Melanesia 's content includes partial field work in the course of military and administrative service and partial analysis of pre-existing literature, as well as a brief characterization of indigenous Melanesian patterns of economics. Research was conducted through the fellowship of the Australian University of Canberra and Belshaw's wife Betty connected with women of the community. Unlike his wife, Belshaw did not learn the language and relied on the help of English speaking informants such as Ranu Nihara and Osineru Dickson. Research data was obtained through discussions in homes, tea- parties, and normal village activities. Belshaw published a three volume autobiography in 2009 and during the same year, extended Webzines of Vancouver from digital publishing to print.

In 2005 he was named World Utopian Champion by SOC.Stockholm and in the following year, published Choosing our Destiny: creating the Utopian world in the 21st Century.

He died in November 2018, shortly before his 97th birthday.

Publications

(1954) Changing Melanesia: the social economics of culture contact (1957) The Great Village: the social welfare of Hanuabada, an urban community in Papua (1964) Under the Ivi Tree: Society and Development in rural Fiji (1974) Towers Besieged, the dilemma of the creative university (1965) Traditional Exchange and Modern Markets (1976) The Sorcerer's Apprentice: an Anthropology of Public Policy. (2015) Just Do It! Manifesto for the New Age

Personal life Belshaw was born on 3 December 1921 in Waddington, New Zealand. He attended University College from 1940 - 1942.

Murder trial In January 1979 Belshaw reported that his wife Betty Joy Belshaw had gone missing while the two were in Paris, France. Betty had been conducting research on Katherine Mansfield and Belshaw stated that the two had last seen each other when they separated at a Metro station. Her body was discovered two months later by a Swiss road crew near a ski resort in Crans-Montana, where the two had been on sabbatical shortly prior to her disappearance. although he publicly criticized the episode for purportedly not being unequivocal enough about his innocence.

Belshaw's colleagues and friends Raymond Firth and Rosemary Firth were at first supportive of him, but gradually came to question his innocence.