Alfred Kroeber | |
|---|---|
 Kroeber in 1920 | |
| Born | Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-06-11)June 11, 1876 Hoboken, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | October 5, 1960(1960-10-05) (aged 84) Paris, France |
| Spouses | |
| Awards | Viking Fund Medal (1946) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Columbia University |
| Thesis | Decorative symbolism of the Arapaho |
| Doctoral advisor | Franz Boas |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Anthropology |
| Sub-discipline | Cultural anthropology |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
| Doctoral students | Cora Du Bois,Margaret Lantis,Katharine Luomala,Laura Maud Thompson,Charles F. Voegelin, |
| Influenced | H. Stuart Hughes[1] |
Alfred Louis Kroeber (/ˈkroʊbər/KROH-bər; June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an Americancultural anthropologist. He received his PhD underFranz Boas atColumbia University in 1901, the first doctorate inanthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first professor appointed to the Department of Anthropology at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.[3] He played an integral role in the early days of itsMuseum of Anthropology, where he served as director from 1909 through 1947.[4] Kroeber provided detailed information aboutIshi, the last surviving member of theYahi people, whom he studied over a period of years. He was the father of the authorUrsula K. Le Guin.
Kroeber was born inHoboken, New Jersey, to parents of German Protestant origin. His mother, Johanna Mueller, was an American of German descent; his father, Florenz Friederick Martin Kroeber, came to the United States from Germany at the age of ten, with his parents and family, and became an importer of French clocks as his wife's father, Nicholas Mueller.[5] The family belonged to a German-American milieu that was upper middle-class, classical and rationalistic, and schooled in the German intellectual tradition.[6][7]
Alfred's family moved into New York City when Alfred was quite young, and he was tutored and attended private schools there. He had three younger siblings and all had scholarly interests. The family was bilingual, speaking German at home, and Kroeber also began to studyLatin andGreek in school, beginning a lifelong interest in languages.[2] He attendedColumbia College at the age of 16, joining thePhilolexian Society and earning an BA in English in 1896 and an MA in Romantic drama in 1897. Changing fields to the new one ofanthropology, he received his PhD underFranz Boas atColumbia University in 1901,[8] basing his 28-page dissertation on decorative symbolism on his field work among theArapaho. It was the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia.
Kroeber spent most of his career in California, primarily at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. He was both a professor of Anthropology and the Director of what was then the University of California Museum of Anthropology (now thePhoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology). The anthropology department's headquarters building at the University of California was named Kroeber Hall in his honor, before being unnamed January 26, 2021, in order to "help Berkeley recognize a challenging part of our history, while better supporting the diversity of today's academic community."[9] He was associated with Berkeley until his retirement in 1946. He died inParis on October 5, 1960.[10]
Kroeber married Henriette Rothschild in 1906. She contractedtuberculosis and died in 1913, after several years of illness.[2]
In 1926 he married again, toTheodora Kracaw Brown, a widow who had been a student in one of his graduate seminars.[2] They had two children:Karl Kroeber, a literary critic, and the science fiction writerUrsula Kroeber Le Guin. In addition, Alfred adopted Theodora's sons by her first marriage, Ted andClifton Brown, who both took his surname.
In 2003, Clifton and Karl Kroeber published a book of essays onIshi's story, which they co-edited, called,Ishi in Three Centuries.[11] This is the first scholarly book on Ishi to contain essays by Native American writers and academics.
After her husband's death, Theodora Kroeber wrote a biography of him, titledAlfred Kroeber: A Personal Configuration. It was published by theUniversity of California Press in 1970.David G. Mandelbaum, a cultural anthropologist and former colleague of Alfred,[12] stated that this biography was just as important a work from an anthropologist's perspective asIshi in Two Worlds.[13]
Although he is known primarily as acultural anthropologist, he did significant work inarchaeology andanthropological linguistics, and he contributed to anthropology by making connections between archaeology and culture. He conducted excavations inNew Mexico,Mexico, andPeru. In Peru he helped found theInstitute for Andean Studies (IAS) with the Peruvian anthropologistJulio C. Tello and other major scholars.
Kroeber and his students did important work collecting cultural data on western tribes ofNative Americans. The work done in preserving information about Californian tribes appeared inHandbook of the Indians of California (1925). In that book, Kroeber first described a pattern in Californian groups where a social unit was smaller and less hierarchically organized than atribe,[14][15] which was elaborated upon inThe Patwin and their Neighbors[16] in which Kroeber first coined the term "tribelet" to describe this level of organization. Kroeber is credited with developing the concepts ofculture area, cultural configuration (Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North America, 1939), andcultural fatigue (Anthropology, 1963).
Kroeber influenced many of his contemporaries in his views as a cultural historian. During his lifetime, he was known as the "Dean of American Anthropologists". Kroeber andRoland B. Dixon were very influential in the genetic classification ofNative American languages in North America, being responsible for theoretical groupings such asPenutian andHokan, based on common languages.
He is noted for working withIshi, who was claimed to be the last CaliforniaYahi Indian. (Ishi may have been of mixed ethnic heritage, with a father from theWintun,Maidu orNomlaki tribes.)[17] His second wife,Theodora Kracaw Kroeber, wrote a well-known biography of Ishi,Ishi in Two Worlds. Kroeber's relationship with Ishi was the subject of a film,The Last of His Tribe (1992), starringJon Voight as Kroeber andGraham Greene as Ishi.[18][19]
Kroeber's textbook,Anthropology (1923, 1948), was widely used for many years. In the late 1940s, it was one of ten books required as reading for all students during their first year atColumbia University. His book,Configurations of Cultural Growth (1944), had a lasting impact on social scientific research ongenius andgreatness; Kroeber believed that genius arose out of culture at particular times, rather than holding to "the great man" theory.[20]
Kroeber's childhood friend Carl Alsberg described him as a "good listener" and able "to be objective, to see the other point of view, to penetrate behind another person's behavior to his underlying thought [...] These traits indicate a sincerity and simplicity of character that primitive peoples sense at once and to which they respond by giving their confidence."[21]
From 1920 to 1923 Kroeber conducted an active practice as a lay psychoanalyst, with an office in San Francisco.[21]
Kroeber served early on as the plaintiffs' director of research inIndians of California v. the United States, a land claim case.[22]Omer Stewart of the University of Colorado served as associate director.Ralph Beals of the University of California, Los Angeles, served as director of research for the federal government in the case. Both men were former students of Kroeber.[23] Kroeber's impact on theIndian Claims Commission may well have established the way expert witnesses presented testimony before the tribunal.[24] Several of his former students also served as expert witnesses; for instance, Stewart directed the plaintiff research for theUte and for theShoshone peoples.[25]
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