Robert Harry Lowie (born '; June 12, 1883 – September 21, 1957) was an

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

n-born

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

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 ...

. An expert on

Indigenous peoples of the Americas In the Americas, Indigenous peoples comprise the two continents' pre-Columbian inhabitants, as well as the ethnic groups that identify with them in the 15th century, as well as the ethnic groups that identify with the pre-Columbian population of ...

, he was instrumental in the development of modern anthropology and has been described as "one of the key figures in the history of anthropology".

Early life and education

Lowie was born and spent the first ten years of his life in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe#Before World War I, Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military ...

, but came to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

in 1893. He studied at the College of the City of New York, where in 1896 he met and befriended

Paul Radin Paul Radin (April 2, 1883 – February 21, 1959) was an American cultural anthropologist and folklorist of the early twentieth century specializing in Native American languages and cultures. The noted legal scholar Max Radin was his older brothe ...

while taking a BA in Classical Philology in 1901. After a short stint as a teacher, he began studying chemistry at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, but soon switched to anthropology under the tutelage of

Franz Boas Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and ethnomusicologist. He was a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the mov ...

Livingston Farrand Livingston Farrand (June 14, 1867 – November 8, 1939) was an American physician, anthropologist, psychologist, public health advocate and academic administrator. He was president of Cornell University and the University of Colorado. Earl ...

and

Clark Wissler Clark David Wissler (September 18, 1870 – August 25, 1947) was an American anthropologist, ethnologist, and archaeologist. Early life Clark David Wissler was born in Cambridge City, Indiana on September 18, 1870 to Sylvania (née Needler) and ...

. Influenced by Wissler, Lowie began his first fieldwork on the

Lemhi Reservation The Lemhi Reservation was a United States Indian Reservation for the Lemhi Shoshone from 1875 to 1907. During almost all this time their main chief was Tendoy. The group of about 700 that the reservation was formed for in 1875 also included Shee ...

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain states, Mountain West subregions of the Western United States. It borders Montana and Wyoming to the east, Nevada and Utah to the south, and Washington (state), ...

with the Northern Shoshone in 1906. He graduated (Ph.D.) in 1908. with a dissertation titled ""The Test-Theme in North American Mythology".

Career

In 1909, he became assistant curator to Clark Wissler at the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 21 interconn ...

, New York. During his time there, Lowie became a specialist in American Indians, being active in field research, particularly in several excursions to the

Great Plains The Great Plains is a broad expanse of plain, flatland in North America. The region stretches east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland. They are the western part of the Interior Plains, which include th ...

. This work led in particular to his identification with the Crow Indians. In 1917, he became assistant professor at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. From 1925 until his retirement in 1950, he was professor of anthropology at Berkeley, where, along with

Alfred Louis Kroeber Alfred Louis Kroeber ( ; June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the fir ...

, he was a central figure in anthropological scholarship. Lowie undertook several expeditions to the

, where he conducted

ethnographic Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. It explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining ...

fieldwork Field research, field studies, or fieldwork is the collection of raw data outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting. The approaches and methods used in field research vary across disciplines. For example, biologists who conduct f ...

at the

Absarokee Absarokee is a census-designated place (CDP) in Stillwater County, Montana, United States, approximately south of Columbus on Highway 78. It is named after the Crow Indians who formerly inhabited the land. The population was 1,000 at the 202 ...

(Crow, 1907, 1910–1916, 1931),

Arikaree The Arikara ( ), also known as Sahnish,
''Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.'' (Retrieved Sep 29, 2011) ...

Hidatsa The Hidatsa ( ) are a Siouan people. They are enrolled in the federally recognized Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Their language is related to that of the Crow, and they are sometimes considered a pa ...

Mandan The Mandan () are a Native American tribe of the Great Plains who have lived for centuries primarily in what is now North Dakota. They are enrolled in the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation. About half of the Mandan still ...

and

Shoshone The Shoshone or Shoshoni ( or ), also known by the endonym Newe, are an Native Americans in the United States, Indigenous people of the United States with four large cultural/linguistic divisions: * Eastern Shoshone: Wyoming * Northern Shoshon ...

(1906, 1912–1916). Shorter research expeditions led him to the southwestern United States, the

Great Basin The Great Basin () is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds, those with no outlets to the ocean, in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja Californi ...

and to

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

where he was inspired by

Curt Nimuendajú Curt Unckel Nimuendajú (born Curt Unckel; 18 April 1883 – 10 December 1945) was a German-Brazilian people, Brazilian ethnologist, anthropologist, and writer. His works are fundamental for the understanding of the religion and cosmology of some ...

. The focus of some of Lowie's work was

salvage ethnography Salvage ethnography is the recording of the practices and folklore of cultures threatened with extinction, including as a result of modernization and assimilation. It is generally associated with the American anthropologist Franz Boas; he and his ...

, the rapid collection of data from cultures close to extinction.

Ruth Benedict Ruth Fulton Benedict (June 5, 1887 – September 17, 1948) was an American anthropologist and folklorist. She was born in New York City, attended Vassar College, and graduated in 1909. After studying anthropology at the New School of Social ...

and Robert Lowie were each commissioned by the

United States Office of War Information The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a United States government agency created during World War II. The OWI operated from June 1942 until September 1945. Through radio broadcasts, newspapers, posters, photographs, films and other ...

, during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, to write a piece about an enemy. Unlike Benedict's ''Chrysanthemum and the Sword'' in which she describes the culture of Japan without ever having set foot in Japan, Lowie could at least draw on his recollections from the German-speaking world of his childhood. In his book ''The German People: A Social Portrait to 1914'', Lowie took a cautious approach and stressed his ignorance of what was going on in his country of origin at this time. Once the war ended, Lowie made several short trips to Germany.

Influences

Together with

Alfred Kroeber Alfred Louis Kroeber ( ; June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the fi ...

, Lowie was one of the first generation of students of Franz Boas. His theoretical orientation was within the Boasian mainstream of anthropological thought, emphasizing

cultural relativism Cultural relativism is the view that concepts and moral values must be understood in their own cultural context and not judged according to the standards of a different culture. It asserts the equal validity of all points of view and the relati ...

and opposed to the cultural evolutionism of the

Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Slightly different definitions are sometimes used. The era followed the ...

. Like many prominent anthropologists at the time, including Boas, his scholarship originated in the school of

German idealism German idealism is a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary ...

and

romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...

espoused by earlier thinkers such as

Kant Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, et ...

Georg Hegel Georg may refer to: * Georg (film), ''Georg'' (film), 1997 *Georg (musical), Estonian musical * Georg (given name) * Georg (surname) * , a Kriegsmarine coastal tanker * Spiders Georg, an Internet meme See also

* George (disambiguation) {{di ...

and

Johann Gottfried Herder Johann Gottfried von Herder ( ; ; 25 August 174418 December 1803) was a Prussian philosopher, theologian, pastor, poet, and literary critic. Herder is associated with the Age of Enlightenment, ''Sturm und Drang'', and Weimar Classicism. He wa ...

. Lowie, somewhat stronger than his mentor Boas, emphasized historical components and the element of variability in his works. For him,

culture Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...

s were not finished constructs, but always changing and he stressed the idea that cultures could interact. In 1919, Lowie published '' primitive society'', which ''"''criticized the hypothetical reconstruction of the stages of the evolution of civilization as postulated by

Lewis H. Morgan Lewis Henry Morgan (November 21, 1818 – December 17, 1881) was a pioneering American anthropologist and social theorist who worked as a railroad lawyer. He is best known for his work on kinship and social structure, his theories of social e ...

". The book has been seen as a key text in the promotion of theories of social organization in anthropology, being praised by

Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, FBA (born Alfred Reginald Brown; 17 January 1881 – 24 October 1955) was an English social anthropologist who helped further develop the theory of structural functionalism. He conducted fieldwork in the Andam ...

and Bronislaw Malinowski. It was also the work that inspired

Claude Levi-Strauss Claude may refer to: People and fictional characters * Claude (given name), a list of people and fictional characters * Claude (surname), a list of people * Claude Callegari (1962–2021), English Arsenal supporter * Claude Debussy (1862–1918), ...

to move his intellectual interest from philosophy to anthropology.

Kinship

Lowie influenced the discipline of

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 ...

through his use of a system to distinguish

kinship In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that ...

relationships: he identified four main systems, which differed based on the names of the relatives of the first ascending generation, i.e. the parent generation. His

Classification Scheme In information science and ontology, a classification scheme is an arrangement of classes or groups of classes. The activity of developing the schemes bears similarity to taxonomy, but with perhaps a more theoretical bent, as a single classifica ...

was slightly modified by George P. Murdock by dividing one of Lowie's four systems into a further three types.

Honours

Lowie was given honorary membership of a number of societies such as the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, the Instituto do Cerara in Brazil, the American Philosophical Society and the New York Academy of Science. Lowie twice served as editor of the ''

American Anthropologist ''American Anthropologist'' is the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an American organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 m ...

.'' He also served as chairman of the Division of Anthropology and Psychology of the National Research Council. Lowie was president of the

American Folklore Society The American Folklore Society (AFS) is the United States (US)-based professional association for folklorists, with members from the US, Canada, and around the world, which aims to encourage research, aid in disseminating that research, promote t ...

from 1916 to 1917. He was elected to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

in 1931.

Writings

His principal works include: * ''Societies of the Arikara Indians'' (1914) * ''Dances and Societies of the Plains Shoshones'' (1915) * ''Notes on the social Organization and Customs of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Crow Indians'' (1917) * ''Culture and Ethnology'' (1917) * ''Plains Indian Age Societies'' (1917) * ''Myths and Traditions of the Crow Indians'' (1918) * ''The Matrilineal Complex'' (1919) * ''Primitive Society'' (1919) * ''The religion of the Crow Indians'' (1922) * ''The Material Culture of the Crow Indians'' (1922) * ''Crow Indian Art'' (1922) * ''Psychology and Anthropology of Races'' (1923) * ''Primitive Religion'' (1924) * ''The Origin of the State'' (1927) * ''The Crow Indians'' (1935) * ''History of Ethnological Theory'' (1937) * ''The German People'' (1945) * ''Social Organization'' (1948) * ''Towards Understanding Germany'' (1954) * ''Robert H. Lowie, Ethnologist; A Personal Record'' (1959)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lowie, Robert Harry American curators American folklorists 20th-century American educators Anthropologists of religion Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Emigrants from Austria-Hungary to the United States Austrian Jews 1883 births 1957 deaths People associated with the American Museum of Natural History 20th-century American non-fiction writers Linguists of Siouan languages Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Jewish anthropologists 20th-century American anthropologists American Anthropologist editors Presidents of the American Folklore Society