Lifeway is a term used in the disciplines of
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
,
sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...
and
archeology, particularly in North America.
History
Literature
From the mid 19th century, the word was used with the meaning 'way through life' or 'way of life'.
It appears, for example, in literary contexts in the stories of
Clara Lee and
Rose Porter,
in the verse of
Frank L. Stanton,
and in editor and politician
Edgar Howard's opinion pieces on other political figures.
Anthropology and archeology
Dr
Arthur C. Parker
Arthur Caswell Parker (April 5, 1881 – January 1, 1955) was an American archaeologist, historian, folklorist, museologist and noted authority on Native American culture. Of Seneca and Scots-English descent, he was director of the Ro ...
, American archaeologist of
Seneca and Scots-English descent, was one of the earliest to use the term in reference to
Native American ways of life, saying in an article published by the
Binghamton Press
The ''Press & Sun-Bulletin'' is a daily newspaper serving the area around Binghamton, New York. It was formed by the 1985 merger of ''The Evening Press'' (which was known as ''The Binghamton Press'' prior to 1960) and ''The Sun-Bulletin''. I ...
in 1930, "Our key to the future is locked in the life-ways of our Indian predecessors".
Use of the term in anthropology was established with the publication of
Morris Edward Opler
Morris Edward Opler (May 3, 1907 – May 13, 1996), American anthropologist and advocate of Japanese American civil rights, was born in Buffalo, New York. He was the brother of Marvin Opler, an anthropologist and social psychiatrist.
Morris Op ...
's 1941 study ''An Apache Life-Way: The Economic, Social, and Religious Institutions of the Chiricahua Indians''.
Recent explanations of the term in the field of Native American and other Indigenous studies "suggest the close interaction of worldview and economy in small-scale societies".
The word 'lifeway' "emphasizes the road of life as indigenous people see it. Such a perspective can be associated with the concept "worldview," a distinct way of thinking about the cosmos and of evaluating life's actions in terms of those views",
and focuses on "an interpretive effort to express indigenous understandings of human-earth relations as an interactive and pervasive context that outsiders might label religion."
Sociology
The field of sociology also adopted the word 'lifeway', with one sociologist explaining that "the definition of status differences and the conceptualization of lifeway patterns ... reflect the central significant of economic referents;" "each lifeway pattern would appear .. as a linked values system
hich... would exhibit customs, sanctions, habits, and meanings".
Urban as well as rural lifeways could be analysed and described (for example, a 1950 thesis on ''A Sociological Analysis of the Chicago Skid Row Lifeway'').
See also
*
Lifestyle
*
Folkways
References
Anthropology
Cultural anthropology
Sociological terminology
Urban economics
Anthropological linguistics
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