Karl Heider (born January 21, 1935) is an
American visual
anthropologist.
Life and education
Heider was born in
Northampton, Massachusetts. Heider is the son of psychologists
Fritz
Fritz originated as a German nickname for Friedrich, or Frederick (''Der Alte Fritz'', and ''Stary Fryc'' were common nicknames for King Frederick II of Prussia and Frederick III, German Emperor) as well as for similar names including Fridolin a ...
and Grace (née Moore) Heider. He had two brothers; John and Stephan.
After spending two years at
Williams College
Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a colonist from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was kill ...
, Heider transferred to
Harvard College
Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...
where he earned his B.A. in anthropology. Heider then spent a year touring Asia on a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship provided by Harvard. Returning to Harvard in 1958, Heider went on to earn an M.A. in 1959 and Ph.D. in 1966.
He was married to the
psychologist Eleanor Rosch
Eleanor Rosch (once known as Eleanor Rosch Heider;"Natural Categories", Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 4, No. 3, (May 1973), p. 328. born 1938) is an American psychologist. She is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, s ...
with whom he studied the
Dani people. The couple divorced in the late 1970s.
Career
Heider's work ranged from
psychological anthropology to
visual anthropology
Visual anthropology is a subfield of social anthropology that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media. More recently it has been used by historians of science a ...
.
It has included going into the West Papua region in the 1960s and 1990s, as well as producing works on ethnographic film making and writing on Indonesian cinema.
Filmography
* ''Tikal'' (1961)
* ''Dani Sweet Potatoes'' (1974)
* ''Dani Houses'' (1974)
See also
*
Visual anthropology
Visual anthropology is a subfield of social anthropology that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media. More recently it has been used by historians of science a ...
* ''
Seeing Anthropology'' written by Karl G. Heider
*
Rashomon effect
The Rashomon effect is a storytelling and writing method in cinema in which an event is given contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved, thereby providing different perspectives and points of view of the same inciden ...
External links
Interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 30th June 2007 (video)
Notes
1935 births
Williams College alumni
Harvard College alumni
Living people
American anthropologists
{{US-anthropologist-stub