David Murray Schneider (November 11, 1918,

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

– October 30, 1995,

Santa Cruz, California Santa Cruz ( Spanish for "Holy Cross") is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, in Northern California. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 62,956. Situated on the northern edge of Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz is a po ...

) was an American

cultural anthropologist Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portman ...

, best known for his studies of kinship and as a major proponent of the symbolic anthropology approach to cultural anthropology.

Biography

He received his B.S. in 1940 and his M.S. from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

in 1941. He received his PhD in Social Anthropology from Harvard in 1949, based on fieldwork on the

Micronesia Micronesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of about 2,000 small islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: the Philippines to the west, Polynesia to the east, and ...

n island of

Yap Yap ( yap, Waqaab) traditionally refers to an island group located in the Caroline Islands of the western Pacific Ocean, a part of Yap State. The name "Yap" in recent years has come to also refer to the state within the Federated States of Micr ...

. After completing his graduate work, he first taught at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. In 1960, he accepted a position at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

, where he spent most of his career, teaching in Anthropology and the Committee on Human Development. He was Chairman of Anthropology from 1963 to 1966. While at Chicago, Schneider was director of the Kinship Project, a study supported by the National Science Foundation that looked at how middle-class families in the United States and Great Britain respond to their kinship relations. His findings challenged the common-sense assumption that kinship in Anglo-American cultures is primarily about recognizing biological relatedness. While a rhetoric of "blood" ties is an important conceptual structuring device in US and British kinship systems, cultural and social considerations are more important. The discoveries he demonstrated through a series of books, most famously ''American Kinship: a cultural account'', revolutionized and revitalized the study of kinship within anthropology, on the one hand, and contributed to the theoretical basis of

feminist anthropology Feminist anthropology is a four-field approach to anthropology (archeological, biological, cultural, linguistic) that seeks to transform research findings, anthropological hiring practices, and the scholarly production of knowledge, using insigh ...

, gender studies, and lesbian and gay studies, on the other. Schneider critiqued the so-called Western theories of kinship by accusing its supporters of being

ethnocentric Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—means to apply one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead o ...

. As a teacher, Schneider was also known for taking on and encouraging students studying nontraditional topics, and as a mentor to women and lesbian or gay graduate students, who often otherwise had difficulty finding mentors.Newton, Esther. (2000) ''Margaret Mead Made Me Gay: personal essays, public ideas''. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. p. 217 After retiring from Chicago in 1986, he joined the anthropology department at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...

, where he remained until his death in 1995.

Criticism

Notable students

* Raymond J. DeMallie *

Esther Newton Esther Newton (born 1940, New York City) is an American cultural anthropologist who did pioneering work on the ethnography of lesbian and gay communities in the United States. Career Newton studied history at the University of Michigan and receiv ...

, cultural anthropologist, gay and lesbian communities in U.S. * Bradd Shore, psychological anthropologist *

Roy Wagner Roy Wagner (October 2, 1938 – September 10, 2018) was an American cultural anthropologist who specialized in symbolic anthropology. Background Wagner received a B.A. in Medieval History from Harvard University (1961), and a Ph.D. in anthropol ...

Gary Witherspoon Gary J. Witherspoon (July 27, 1943-June 16, 2022) was a professor of Native American studies at the University of Washington. His area of expertise was the Navajo language and Navajo people, Navajo culture. Early life and education Born in 1943 ...

Select bibliography

*A Critique of the Study of Kinship *American Kinship : A Cultural Account *Matrilineal Kinship *Personality in Nature, Society, and Culture *Dialectics and Gender: Anthropological Approaches *History of Public Welfare in New York State: 1867–1940 *The Micronesians of Yap and Their Depopulation (1949) *1995. ''Schneider on Schneider: The Conversion of the Jews and Other Anthropological Stories by David Schneider, as told to Richard Handler''. Ed. Richard Handler. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. *1997. "The Power of Culture: Notes on Some Aspects of Gay and Lesbian Kinship in America Today." Cultural Anthropology 12 (2): 270-74.

References

External links