JEWS IN ANTHROPOLOGY
THIS WEBPAGE IS PART OF THE JINFO.ORG WEBSITE.

Jews played a significant role in the founding and subsequent development of modern anthropology.  Two of its four principal founders, according to Jerry Moore, in his study Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists,1 were Émile Durkheim and Franz Boas.  Of the twenty-one major theorists profiled by Moore, six were, or are Jews.  Similarly, Jews are the subjects of about thirty percent of the forty-two biographical entries contained in The Dictionary of Anthropology,2 edited by Thomas Barfield.  Two of the five major biographical articles in the Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology,3 edited by Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer, deal with the work of Boas and Claude Lévi-Strauss.  Listed below are the names of prominent Jewish anthropologists and of other Jewish scholars who have contributed to the development of anthropology.  See also Jews in Sociology and Jews in Linguistics.

SHORT LIST LONG LIST
 NOTES
1. Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists, by Jerry D. Moore (Rowman and Littlefield, New York and Oxford, 1997).
2. The Dictionary of Anthropology, edited by Thomas Barfield ( Blackwell, Malden, MA and Oxford, 1997).
3. Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, edited by Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer ( Routledge, London and New York, 1996).
4. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.
5. See The Dark Side of Humanity: The Work of Robert Hertz and its Legacy, by Robert Parkin (Harwood, Amsterdam, 1996, p.1).
 6. Brother of Second City  founder Bernie Sahlins; see http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/jws/oralhistories2.cfm?trg6=S and the fifth paragraph from the bottom of  http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/021010/pricklypress.shtml.
Copyright © 2004-2008 JINFO.ORG. All rights reserved.