Fred R. Eggan
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Frederick Russell Eggan (September 12, 1906, in
Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is the List of municipalities in Washington, most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the List of Unit ...
– May 7, 1991) was an American
anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...
best known for his innovative application of the principles of British
social anthropology Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In t ...
to the study of Native American tribes. He was the favorite student of the British social anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown during Radcliffe-Brown's years at the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
. His fieldwork was among
Pueblo Pueblo refers to the settlements of the Pueblo peoples, Native American tribes in the Southwestern United States, currently in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. The permanent communities, including some of the oldest continually occupied settlement ...
peoples in the southwestern U.S. Eggan later taught at Chicago himself. His students there included
Sol Tax Sol Tax (30 October 1907 – 4 January 1995) was an American anthropologist. He is best known for creating action anthropology and his studies of the Meskwaki, or Fox Indians, for "action-anthropological" research titled the Fox Project, and for fo ...
. His best known works include his edited volume ''Social Anthropology of North American Tribes'' (1937) and ''The American Indian'' (1966). His wife, Dorothy Way Eggan (1901–1965), whom he married in 1939, was also an anthropologist.


Introduction

Frederick Eggan was a North American anthropologist in the 20th century and part of the anthropology department at the University of Chicago. He is a world-renowned social anthropologist, most famous for his works in the Southwest involving the Hopi Indians and many of the social changes that take place within the Western Pueblos. Ernest L. Schusky claims Fred Eggan is a founder of modern American anthropoly's eclectic approach, which combines the functionalism of Radcliffe-Brown with the historical approach of Franz Boas. In a paper titled “Among the Anthropologist,” Eggan answers a question posed by Margaret Mead: “Shouldn’t we all be branches of one human science?” Eggan states that anthropology should center on man and his works, while providing a spectrum of specialized fields which interlock with those of the social and behavioral sciences.


Background

Frederick Eggan was born in Seattle, Washington, on September 12, 1906, to Alfred Eggan and Olive Smith. Eggan earned his master's degree in psychology with a minor in anthropology from the University of Chicago in the early 20th century. He received his PhD in anthropology from the same university several years later with a doctoral thesis entitled “Social Organization of the Western Pueblos” analyzing the social organization of Pueblo Indians in the Southwest. Fred was an active member in the discipline of anthropology at a critical time when new technologies and methods were being invented for archeological purposes. He mentions these innovations in his paper on “Social Anthropology and the Method of Controlled Comparison.” He speaks of the new aids to anthropological research such as radiocarbon dating, genetics, and the experimental method which are just a few of the many rapid technological advances that had taken place to aid the discipline in this time. Eggan married Dorothy Way in 1938; she was also an anthropologist of the Hopi. Fred died in his house in Santa Fe, New Mexico from heart failure on May 7, 1991; he was 84.


Employment history

Fred Eggan served as chairman at the University of Chicago of the department of anthropology; he was also president of the American Anthropological Association. He was also employed as a professor of psychology, sociology, and history at Wentworth Junior College and Military Academy in Missouri before he obtained his PhD. Eggan also worked as a research assistant to Radcliffe-Brown at the University of Chicago, researching the social organization of Native American tribes. During his time teaching at the University of Chicago, Frederick held several positions. He was employed as an assistant professor (1940–1942), an associate professor (1942–1948), and professor (1948–1963). Fred retired from teaching in 1974. He addressed the connection between anthropology and the educational system in the following terms “Anthropology and education should have close working relations. Educators are occupied by the task of keeping the operations going, particularly in this period of changing models, and have little time or opportunity to step outside their educational institutions and them as a system in the society as a whole. He was also the director of the Philippine Studies Program at the University of Chicago. Eggan also held a prominent position for the Philippine government during World War II as chief of research.


Awards and honors

Frederick Eggan was president of the American Anthropological Association from 1953 to 1954. He was also awarded the Weatherhead Resident Scholar in 1979 by the School for Advanced Research for his work entitled “The Great Basic Background of Hopi Culture History. He also received the Viking Fund medal in 1956. Towards the end of Frederick Eggan’s career in the 1960s, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as to the National Academy of Sciences.


Key field work

Frederick Eggan has participated in several field studies at many different locations. Some of these sites include: Santa Fe where he lived with the Hopi Indians for a summer (1932), Mississippi and Oklahoma where his research was focused on primarily the Choctaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians (1933), and the Northern Philippines where he studied social changes in the
Ifugao Ifugao, officially the Province of Ifugao (; ), is a landlocked province of the Philippines in the Cordillera Administrative Region in Luzon. Its capital is Lagawe and it borders Benguet to the west, Mountain Province to the north, Isabela t ...
, Bontok, Tinguian, and Ilocano Indians (1934–1935).


Research emphasis

Eggan’s research has been primarily focused on “Native American kinship and social systems”, making use of archeological, linguistic, and general ethnographic evidence. With his work in North America, Eggan attempted to create a theory to illuminate Boasian empiricism, which was a theory developed by Franz Boas that all knowledge was derived from sense-experience. Eggan's work in Santa Fe analyzed each Western Pueblo social structure and compared and contrasted them to the Eastern Pueblos. His most important contribution to archeology, and possibly anthropology in general, was his demonstrations how the variations currently observed in the Pueblo social structures are related to cultural adaptations to ecological niches. Eggan's time spent studying the Cheyenne and Arapaho served as a basis for one of his most famous works, “Social Anthropology and the Method of Controlled Comparison.” He demonstrated how it was possible for the Cheyenne to change from a predominantly agricultural based lineage type kinship system to a system that was predominantly nomadic involving a heavy dependence on hunting and gathering in bands to increase their efficiency. Eggan theorized from his extensive research that this was a result of being forced by other tribes onto the Plains out of their land, which was in present-day Minnesota. The result of Eggan's work in the Philippines can be found in his paper on “Cultural Drift and Social Change.” It is in this paper that he claims as one travels from the interior down to the coast, there are patterned series of changes in a definite direction in many important cultural institutions such as social, political, economic, and religious.


Selected papers

* *Ed. Social Anthropology of North American Tribes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. *The Cheyenne and Arapaho kinship systems. In Social Anthropology of North American Tribes, ed. F. Eggan, pp. 35–95. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. * * *The Hopi and the lineage principle. In Social Structure: Studies Presented to A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, ed. M. Fortes, pp. 121–144. Oxford: Clarendon Press. *Social Organization of the Western Pueblos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. *The ethnological cultures and their archaeological backgrounds. In Archaeology of the Eastern United States, ed. J. B. Griffin, pp. 35–45. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. * *Ed. Social Anthropology of North American Tribes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2nd edition. *Social anthropology: methods and results. In Social Anthropology of North American Tribes, ed. F. Eggan, pp. 485–551. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. * *With W. L. Warner. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, 1881–1955. Am. Anthropol. 58:544–547. *Glottochronology: a preliminary appraisal of the North American data. In Proceedings, 32nd International Congress of Americanists, pp. 645–653. Copenhagen: Munksgaard. *With R. H. Lowie. Kinship terminologies. Encyclopædia Britannica vol. 13, pp. 407–409. * *Alliance and descent in a western Pueblo society. In Process and Pattern in Culture, ed. R. Manners, pp. 175–184. Chicago: Aldine Press. *The American Indian: Perspectives for the Study of Social Change. Chicago: Aldine Press. *From history to myth: a Hopi example. In Studies in Southwestern Ethnolinguistics, ed. D. Hymes, pp. 33–53. The Hague: Mouton. *Lewis Henry Morgan's Systems: a reevaluation. In Kinship Studies in the Morgan Centennial Year, ed. P. Reining, pp. 1–16. Washington, D.C.: Anthropological Society of Washington. * *Pueblos: introduction. In Handbook of the North American Indians, Vol. 9: Southwest, ed. A. Ortiz, pp. 224–235. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. *With T. N. Pandey. Zuni history: 1850–1970. In Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 9: Southwest, ed. A. Ortiz, pp. 474–484. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. *Beyond the bicentennial: the future of the American Indian in the perspectives of the past. J. Anthropol. Res. 34:161–180. *Shoshone kinship structures and their significance for anthropological theory. J. Steward Anthropol. Soc. 11:165–193. *Comparative social organization. In Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 10: Southwest, ed. A. Ortiz, pp. 723–743. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. *


References


External links


Guide to the Fred Eggan Papers 1870-1991
at th
University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center
*http://www.nap.edu/readingroom.php?book=biomems *http://news.lib.uchicago.edu/blog/2009/08/28/fred-eggan-papers *http://sarweb.org/?resident_scholar_fred_eggan-p:resident_scholar_weatherhead_fellowship_recipients *http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/09/obituaries/fred-russell-eggan-is-dead-at-84-a-retired-anthropology-professor.html * *http://www.wennergren.org/history/other-programs/viking-fund-medal
National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir


{{DEFAULTSORT:Eggan, Fred 1906 births 1991 deaths University of Chicago alumni 20th-century American anthropologists Corresponding fellows of the British Academy