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

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

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in 1893. He studied at the College of the City of New York, where in 1896 he met and befriended Paul Radin 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, Livingston Farrand and Clark Wissler. Influenced by Wissler, Lowie began his first fieldwork on the Lemhi Reservation in

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

, where he conducted ethnographic

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 (Crow, 1907, 1910–1916, 1931), Arikaree, Hidatsa, Mandan and Shoshone (1906, 1912–1916). Shorter research expeditions led him to the southwestern United States, the Great Basin 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. The focus of some of Lowie's work was salvage ethnography, 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, 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, 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,

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* George (disambiguation) {{di ...

and Johann Gottfried Herder. 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". 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 and Bronislaw Malinowski. It was also the work that inspired Claude Levi-Strauss 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 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 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