Robert Redfield And The Development Of American Anthropology

Relying upon close readings of virtually all of his published and unpublished writings as well as extensive interviews with former colleagues and students, Robert Redfield and the Development of American Anthropology traces the development of Robert Redfield's ideas regarding social change and the role of social science in American society. Clifford Wilcox's exploration of Redfield's pioneering efforts to develop an empirically based model of the transformation of village societies into towns and cities is intended to recapture the questions that drove early development of modernization theory. Reconsideration of these debates will enrich contemporary thinking regarding the history of American anthropology and international development

Robert Redfield is remembered today primarily as an anthropologist, but during his lifetime Redfield's cross-disciplinary activity reflected a strong interest in infusing anthropological practice with sociological theory. Like a handful of other anthropologists, including A.R. Radcliffe-Brown and Bronislaw Malinowski, who shared his interests during the 1920s through 1930s, his works came to define a new subfield known as social anthropology.Redfield was distinct in being one of the first Americans to devote himself seriously to social anthropology, a field dominated initially by British scholars. He spent his career at the University of Chicago, and his anthropology bore the distinct mark of sociology as developed and practiced at that institution. Indeed, Redfield played a major role in defining what has been called the second Chicago school of sociology. This volume brings together Redfield's most important contributions to social anthropology.During the 1920s, sociology and anthropology constituted a single department at the University of Chicago. Although most students concentrated on sociology or anthropology, Redfield chose to pursue both fields with equal intensity. He adopted as his central interest the leading problematic of the 1920s: the study of social change. Chicago School sociologists approached social change by examining zones of rapid transition within the city, for example, areas populated by recently-arrived immigrants, with the goal of elucidating general principles or dynamics of social transition.Redfield's work can be seen as falling into three distinct theoretical categories: (1) the study of social change or modernization; (2) peasant studies; and (3), the comparative study of civilizations. Drawing from articles, book excerpts, and unpublished papers and letters, this work presents Redfield's central contributions in each of these areas. Seen as a whole, this volume traces Redfield's seminal contributions to the early development of mo

The first fifty years of the twentieth century were a time of ferment in American anthropology. American ethnographic work evolved from the "salvage" work of professionals affiliated with museums who undertook to document with artifacts and testimony the threatened traditional way of life among the Native American tribes, to the establishment of anthropology as a science, represented in university departments, that sought to describe the "ethnographic present" of isolated primitive peoples, often in distant parts of the world. By the beginning of the 1950s, cultural anthropology discovered the peasant. Robert Redfield, himself a leading figure in this paradigm shift, challenged anthropology's focus on a static model of the isolated primitive community, pointing out the dynamic nature of the "little communities" he studied in Mesoamerica. These were not isolated communities, but rather local, traditional cultures located well within the sphere of a complex urban culture. In order to distinguish the "great tradition" deriving from urban centers from the "little tradition" of a more primitive culture, Redfield believed anthropology needed to refer to other disciplines, such as theology, philosophy, economics, and sociology. In other words, anthropology had to develop from the collection of material artifacts to a concern with the immaterial realm of values and ideas. This collection of essays and previously unpublished papers, The Ethnographic Moment, tells the story of a remarkable chapter in Redfield's pioneering efforts on what was then an anthropological frontier. The present volume covers the years from 1952 to 1958, the last of Redfield's life. It focuses solely on his study of peasant communities. At the core of the book is his correspondence with the philosopher-humanist F. G. Friedmann, who played an important role in Redfield's conceptualization of the complex urban-rural continuum that characterizes the peasant's world. The volume also includes an autobiographical introduction by Friedmann that illuminates both his own writings and the humanistic background that motivated his study of peasantry.

In American Anthropology and Company, linguist and sociologist Stephen O. Murray explores the connections between anthropology, linguistics, sociology, psychology, and history, in broad-ranging essays on the history of anthropology and allied disciplines. On subjects ranging from Native American linguistics to the pitfalls of American, Latin American, and East Asian fieldwork, among other topics, American Anthropology and Company presents the views of a historian of anthropology interested in the theoretical and institutional connections between disciplines that have always been in conversation with anthropology. Recurring characters include Edward Sapir, Alfred Kroeber, Robert Redfield, W. I. and Dorothy Thomas, and William Ogburn. While histories of anthropology rarely cross disciplinary boundaries, Murray moves in essay after essay toward an examination of the institutions, theories, and social networks of scholars as never before, maintaining a healthy skepticism toward anthropologists' views of their own methods and theories.

Touches on Arunta and Pitjandadjara world view and ethics.

This volume combines two classic works of anthropology. The Little Community draws on the author's own notable studies of the villages of Tepoztlan and Chan Kom to explore the means by which scientists try to understand human communities. It contains, wrote Margaret Mead, "the essence of Robert Redfield's multifaceted contributions to the place of community studies in social science." Peasant Society and Culture outlines a speculative foundation for the emergence of anthropology from the study of isolated primitive tribes.