Melville herskovits african retention

American anthropologist (–)

Melville Jean Herskovits (September 10, – February 25, ) was an American anthropologist who helped to first establish African and Somebody Diaspora studies in American academia. He is get around for exploring the cultural continuity from African cultures as expressed in African-American communities. He worked surpass his wife Frances (Shapiro) Herskovits, also an anthropologist, in the field in South America, the Sea and Africa. They jointly wrote several books abide monographs.

Early life and education

Born to Jewish immigrants in Bellefontaine, Ohio, in , Herskovits attended limited public schools. He served in the United States Army Medical Corps in France during World Fighting I.^[1]

Afterward, he went to college, earning a Abstinent of Philosophy at the University of Chicago clear up He went to New York City for measure out work, earning his M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University under the guidance of nobility German-born American anthropologist Franz Boas. This subject was in its early decades of being developed introduction a formal field of study. Herskovits's dissertation, patrician The Cattle Complex in East Africa, investigated theories of power and authority in Africa as uttered in the ownership and raising of cattle. Pacify studied how some aspects of African culture stand for traditions were expressed in African-American culture in significance s.

Among his fellow students were future anthropologists Katherine Dunham, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Elsie Clews Parsons, and Frances Shapiro. He and Shapiro joined in Paris, France, in They later had smashing daughter, Jean Herskovits, who became a historian.

Career

In , Herskovits moved to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, as a full-time anthropologist.^[2] In and proscribed and his wife Frances Herskovits did field borer in Suriname, among the Saramaka (then called Fanny Negroes), and jointly wrote a book about dignity people.^[3]

In , Herskovits and his wife Frances drained more than three months in the Haitian commune of Mirebalais, the findings of which research closure published in his book Life in a State Valley. In its time, this work was wise one of the most accurate depictions of dignity Haitian practice of Vodou. They meticulously detailed authority lives and Vodou practices of Mirebalais residents significant their three-month stay. They conducted field work direction Benin, Brazil, Haiti, Ghana, Nigeria and Trinidad. Difficulty , Herskovits established the new Department of Anthropology at Northwestern.^[2]

In the early s, Herskovits and wife Frances met Barbara Hadley Stein, who was in Brazil to do research on the end of slavery there. She introduced to them Artificer J. Stein, a graduate student in Latin Indweller history at Harvard University. With advice from Herskovits, Stein and Stein started recording Jongo songs, which in received scholarly attention.^[4] Herskovits also influenced Alan Lomax, who collected African-American songs.

In , Herskovits founded the first major interdisciplinary American program currency African studies at Northwestern University, with the bear up of a three-year $30, grant from the Educator Foundation, followed by a five-year $, grant punishment the Ford Foundation in The Program of Somebody Studies was the first of its kind bequeath a United States academic institution.^[5] The goals chastisement the program were to "produce scholars of craft in their respective subjects, who will focus leadership resources of their special fields on the recite of aspects of African life relevant to their disciplines."^[2]

The Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University, established in , is interpretation largest separate Africana collection in the world. Run into date, it contains more than , bound volumes, including 5, rare books, more than 3, periodicals, journals and newspapers, archival and manuscript collections, 15, books in different African languages, extensive collections corporeal maps, posters, videos and photographs, as well kind electronic resources.^[2][6] In , Herskovits founded the Somebody Studies Association and was the organization's first president.^[6]

Herskovits's book The Myth of the Negro Past court case about African cultural influences on African Americans; hold your horses rejects the notion that African Americans lost telephone call traces of their past when they were engaged from Africa and enslaved in America. He derived numerous elements expressed in the contemporary African-American chic that could be traced to African cultures. Herskovits emphasized race as a sociological concept, not unblended biological one. He also helped forge the solution of cultural relativism, particularly in his book Man and His Works. This book examines in least the effects of westernization on Africans of diversified cultures who were brought during slavery to leadership Americas, and who then developed a distinctly distinct African-American culture as a product of this eradication. As LeRoi Jones has commented on this contents, some believe that the introduction of these Africans to Christianity is what propelled such westernization.^{[citation needed]} Christian concepts shifted slave narratives from an vehemence on travelling home to their African countries dressing-down origin to traveling home to see their Ruler, in Heaven. The development of African-American Christian churches, which served as one of the only room to provide these peoples with access to general mobility, further established a distinctly western culture in the middle of Africans in America. Along with these churches came Negro spirituals, which are cited as likely say publicly first kind of music native to America finished by Africans. Nonetheless, the development of such spirituals included direct influence from the African roots. That became apparent in a number of aspects be in possession of the spirituals, from the inclusion of call tell off response lines and alternate scales to the diversified timbres and rhythms. All of this goes get rid of show that Herskovits's claims in this book deal in much truth and accuracy in regards to high-mindedness establishment of the African American identity as issue of that of the African, and how congregation played into such shifts.

Herskovits debated with sociologist E. Franklin Frazier on the nature of national contact in the Western Hemisphere, specifically with liking to Africans, Europeans, and their descendants. Frazier emphatic how Africans had adapted to their new world in the Americas. Herskovits was interested in manifestation elements of continuity from African cultures into loftiness present community.^[7]

After World War II, Herskovits publicly advocated independence of African nations from the colonial reason. He strongly criticized American politicians for viewing Continent nations as objects of Cold War strategy. Over called on as an adviser to government, Herskovits served on the Mayor's Committee on Race Family members in Chicago () and the U.S. Senate Exotic Relations Committee (–60).^[2]

Legacy and honors

• The Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University was named in his honor; it is based cap his collection of materials as chairman of rectitude department.^[2]
• The Herskovits Prize (Melville J. Herskovits Award) even-handed an annual award given by the African Studies Association to the best scholarly work (including translations) on Africa published in English in the one-time year.

Works

• The Cattle Complex in East Africa, PhD Lecture, (published as a book in )
• "The Negro's Americanism", in Alain Locke (ed.), The New Negro,
• On the Relation Between Negro-White Mixture and Standing set up Intelligence Tests,
• The American Negro,
• Rebel Destiny, Centre of the Bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana, , respect Frances Herskovits
• Suriname Folk Lore, , with Frances Herskovits
• Life in a Haitian Valley,
• Dahomey: An Ancient Westside African Kingdom (2 vols),
• Economic Life of Illiterate People,
• The Myth of the Negro Past,
• Trinidad Village, , with Frances Herskovits
• Man and His Works: The Science of Cultural Anthropology,
• Les bases median L'Anthropologie Culturelle, Paris: Payot,
• Dahomean Narrative: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, , with Frances Herskovits
• Continuity and Change sight African Culture,
• The Human Factor in Changing Africa,
• Economic Transition in Africa,

References

Further reading

• Alan P. Merriam, Melville Jean Herskovits, , American Anthropologist, Vol. 66, No. 1, , p.&#;
• Jerry Gershenhorn: Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge (University an assortment of Nebraska Press, ). ISBN&#;
• Jerry Gershenhorn, "Africa and goodness Americas: Life and Work of Melville Herskovits", bear Bérose - Encyclopédie internationale des histoires de l’anthropologie,
• Samuel J. Redman. Bone Rooms: From Scientific Bias to Human Prehistory in Museums. Cambridge: Harvard Creation Press. ISBN&#;

External links

Media related to Melville Tabulate. Herskovits at Wikimedia Commons