Robert Redfield 1897-1958, American anthropologist and sociologist, b. Chicago, grad. Univ. of Chicago (B.A., 1920; Ph.D., 1928). He began teaching at the Univ. of Chicago in 1928, later becoming professor of anthropology and dean of the social science division. His field research in Mexico in the 1920s resulted in Tepoztlán (1930), a pioneer case study of a folk community that was the forerunner of a series of important studies. As research associate (1930-47) at the Carnegie Institution he directed anthropological investigations in Yucatán and Guatemala and evolved the concepts of folk society and folk culture, borrowing from sociological methods and concepts. He attempted a closer integration of the social sciences and the humanities. In his later years he turned increasingly to the comparative study of civilizations. His writings include The Folk Culture of Yucatán (1941), The Primitive World and Its Transformations (1953), and The Little Community (1955).

Redfield, Robert (1897–1958) An American anthropologist who, in 1930, published a study (Tepoztlan: Life in a Mexican Village) which outlines an idealtypical construct of folk society. Subsequently he suggested that the spread of urban-based civilization transforms folk societies. Depending on their social and cultural characteristics, individual settlements can be placed along an evolutionary folk–urban continuum.

According to Redfield, folk societies are small, isolated, non-literate, and socially homogeneous. There is strong group solidarity and kinship, a common culture rooted in tradition and religion, behaviour is personal and spontaneous rather than impersonal and law-bound, and there is little intellectual life. Urban societies are characterized by the converse traits: loss of isolation, heterogeneity, social disorganization, secularization, and individuality.

Redfield's ideal types encapsulate a distinction between industrial-urban and pre-industrial societies which others (such as Ferdinand Tönnies and Émile Durkheim) had earlier espoused. His work greatly influenced rural sociology and community studies. However, in 1951 Oscar Lewis published a re-study of Tepoztlan, examining aspects of village life—especially its economy, demography, and politics—which Redfield had ignored. His findings undermined Redfield's account of folk societies, which tended to gloss over conflict, poverty, and disorganization, and to present an idealized account of primitive societies. Lewis also rejected the over-simplified and ahistorical classification of individual settlements implicit in Redfield's approach. Later work on urban communities found this ideal type, and the concept of the folk—urban continuum, equally deficient.

Robert Redfield

The American anthropologist Robert Redfield (1897-1958) specialized in Meso-American folk cultures. He was concerned with socially relevant applications of social-science skills and researches.

Robert Redfield was born on Dec. 4, 1897, in Chicago, Ill., the son of an attorney. In 1915 he entered the University of Chicago to study law. During World War I he served as a volunteer ambulance driver, returning to the university to receive his bachelor's degree in 1920 and his law degree in 1921. Although he then joined a Chicago law firm, he had already been drawn toward social science by Robert Park (whose daughter he had married in 1920) of the sociology department of the University of Chicago. A 1923 trip to Mexico confirmed Redfield's interest in primitive cultures. He became an instructor in sociology at the University of Colorado in 1925 and the following year received a fellowship for his first Mexican fieldwork.

In 1927 Redfield returned to Chicago to an anthropology department which had just attained independence from sociology. After receiving his doctorate in 1928, he became an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 1930 and full professor in 1934, simultaneously becoming university dean of social sciences. The position as dean reinforced his broad conception of the integrated nature of the social sciences. Ties of the Chicago anthropology department to sociology encouraged him to concentrate on social anthropology, effectively excluding the archeology and linguistics which Franz Boas and his students considered integrally related to it. Redfield became chairman of the anthropology department in 1948 and Robert Maynard Hutchins distinguished service professor in 1953.

Redfield's fieldwork produced Tepoztlan (1930) and Chan Kom: A Maya Village (1934), the latter in collaboration with the village schoolteacher, Alfonso Villa. Folk Culture of Yucatan (1941) compared the effects of civilization on four Yucatan communities that shared a Mayan heritage but differed in amount of external communication. Chan Kom: A Village That Chose Progress (1950) dealt with the effort of Mexican peasants to adjust to the modern world.

Redfield's prevailing concern was with the effect of technological change on primitive peoples and the consequent responsibility of the social scientist for defining the resulting disruption of life-styles. He defined, within an established sociological tradition, two ideal types—"folk" and "urban" culture. The Primitive World and Its Transformations (1953) attempted to describe conflicts of the "moral order" accompanying the spread of civilization. Redfield's ideal types have been criticized primarily by students of Boas, who prefer to work with descriptions of particular culture histories rather than to find ways of comparing types of community.

The last book by Redfield, The Little Community (1955), drew on studies of Indian civilization. Although his own fieldwork in India was cut short by illness, he defined and contrasted a "great tradition" of urban intellectual life and a persistent "little tradition" of the villages. As in Mexico, communication rather than geography was crucial.

Redfield shared with Boas and many of his students a concern for social problems, maintaining that man and anthropologist were necessarily inseparable. During World War II he advised the War Relocation Authority; he participated in the initial UNESCO conferences in Europe; he became director of the American Council on Race Relations in 1948; and he served as president of the board of the American Broadcasting Company. He died on Oct. 16, 1958.

Further Reading

Although articles have appeared criticizing various aspects of Redfield's theoretical formulations, there is no significant biographical study of him. Some background is in Don Martindale, The Nature and Types of Sociological Theory (1960). □