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Robert Harry Lowie (bornRobert Heinrich Löwe; June 12, 1883 – September 21, 1957) was anAustrian-bornAmericananthropologist. An expert onIndigenous peoples of the Americas, he was instrumental in the development of modern anthropology and has been described as "one of the key figures in the history of anthropology".[1]
Lowie was born and spent the first ten years of his life inVienna,Austria-Hungary, but came to theUnited States in 1893.[2] He studied at theCollege of the City of New York, where in 1896 he met and befriendedPaul Radin while taking aBA in Classical Philology in 1901.[3] After a short stint as a teacher, he began studying chemistry atColumbia University, but soon switched to anthropology under the tutelage ofFranz Boas,Livingston Farrand andClark Wissler.[2] Influenced by Wissler, Lowie began his first fieldwork on theLemhi Reservation inIdaho with the Northern Shoshone in 1906.[4] He graduated (Ph.D.) in 1908. with a dissertation titled ""The Test-Theme in North American Mythology".[2]
In 1909, he became assistant curator to Clark Wissler at theAmerican Museum of Natural History, New York. During his time there, Lowie became a specialist in American Indians, being active in field research, particularly in several excursions to theGreat Plains. This work led in particular to his identification with the Crow Indians.[4] In 1917, he became assistant professor at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.[1] From 1925 until his retirement in 1950, he was professor of anthropology at Berkeley, where, along withAlfred Louis Kroeber, he was a central figure in anthropological scholarship.[4]
Lowie undertook several expeditions to theGreat Plains, where he conductedethnographicfieldwork at theAbsarokee (Crow, 1907, 1910–1916, 1931),Arikaree,Hidatsa,Mandan andShoshone (1906, 1912–1916).[5] Shorter research expeditions led him to the southwestern United States, theGreat Basin and toSouth America where he was inspired byCurt Nimuendajú. The focus of some of Lowie's work wassalvage ethnography, the rapid collection of data from cultures close to extinction.[6]
Ruth Benedict and Robert Lowie were each commissioned by theUnited States Office of War Information, duringWorld War II, to write a piece about an enemy. Unlike Benedict'sChrysanthemum and the Sword in which she describes the culture of Japan without ever having set foot in Japan, Lowie could at least draw on his recollections from the German-speaking world of his childhood. In his bookThe German People: A Social Portrait to 1914, Lowie took a cautious approach and stressed his ignorance of what was going on in his country of origin at this time.[7] Once the war ended, Lowie made several short trips to Germany.
Together withAlfred Kroeber, Lowie was one of the first generation of students of Franz Boas. His theoretical orientation was within theBoasian mainstream of anthropological thought, emphasizingcultural relativism and opposed to thecultural evolutionism of theVictorian era.[2] Like many prominent anthropologists at the time, including Boas, his scholarship originated in the school ofGerman idealism andromanticism espoused by earlier thinkers such asKant,Georg Hegel andJohann Gottfried Herder. Lowie, somewhat stronger than his mentor Boas, emphasized historical components and the element of variability in his works. For him,cultures were not finished constructs, but always changing and he stressed the idea that cultures could interact.
In 1919, Lowie publishedprimitive society, which"criticized the hypothetical reconstruction of the stages of the evolution of civilization as postulated byLewis H. Morgan".[2] The book has been seen as a key text in the promotion of theories of social organization in anthropology, being praised byAlfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown andBronislaw Malinowski.[2] It was also the work that inspiredClaude Levi-Strauss to move his intellectual interest from philosophy to anthropology.[8]
Lowie influenced the discipline ofsocial anthropology through his use of a system to distinguishkinship relationships: he identified four main systems, which differed based on the names of the relatives of the first ascending generation, i.e. the parent generation.[6] HisClassification Scheme was slightly modified byGeorge P. Murdock by dividing one of Lowie's four systems into a further three types.[9]
Lowie was given honorary membership of a number of societies such as the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, the Instituto do Cerara in Brazil, the American Philosophical Society and the New York Academy of Science.[1]
Lowie twice served as editor of theAmerican Anthropologist. He also served as chairman of the Division of Anthropology and Psychology of the National Research Council.[1]
Lowie was president of theAmerican Folklore Society from 1916 to 1917.[10] He was elected to theNational Academy of Sciences in 1931.[1]
His principal works include:
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