Melford E. Spiro papers
name: label: Creator
content: Spiro, Melford E., 1920-2014
label: Names
content: University of California, San Diego. Department of Anthropology
place: label: Place
content: Israel
label: Place
content: Ifalik Atoll (Micronesia)
label: Place
content: Burma
topic: label: Topic
content: Kibbutzim
label: Topic
content: Ethnology
label: Topic
content: Anthropologists -- United States
label: Topic
content: Ethnopsychology
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: These papers were donated to the National Anthropological Archives by Melford Spiro's son, Jonathan Spiro, in 2015.
creator: label: Creator
content: Spiro, Melford E., 1920-2014
setName: label: See more items in
content: Melford E. Spiro papers
abstract: label: Summary
content: Melford E. Spiro was a psychological anthropologist whose career included fieldwork on the Pacific Atoll of Ifaluk, on kibbutzim in Israel, and in Burma. His research topics included child rearing, cooperation, aggression, and supernatural beliefs. His papers, dated 1943-2003, primarily document these periods of fieldwork in relation to these topics. The collection consists of field notes, personality data and analysis, photographs, interview tapes and transcriptions, ephemera, subject card files, and research files. It also includes limited material related to his teaching and writings in the form of course outlines and research, lecture notes, annotated articles, drafts, and book reviews.
bioghist: label: Biographical Note
content: Chronology

1920 April 26 -- Melford Spiro born in Ohio

circa 1942 -- BA Philosophy, University of Minnesota

circa 1942 -- Studied at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York

1947-1948 -- Field work in Ifaluk (Caroline Islands atoll)

1950 -- PhD in Anthropology, Northwestern University

1950 -- Start of field work in Israel

1950-1957 -- Taught at Washington University, St. Louis, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Washington

1957 -- Began teaching at the University of Chicago

1961-1962 -- Field work in Burma

1968 -- Started at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) as a founding member of the Anthropology department

1968-1972 -- Chair of the Anthropology department at UCSD

1969-1972 -- Summers: Worked with Burmese refugees in Thailand

1975 -- Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

1982 -- Appointed UCSD's first holder of the Presidential Chair

1982 -- Elected to the National Academy of Sciences

1990 -- Retired from UCSD

2014 October 18 -- Died in La Jolla, CA

Melford E. Spiro was a psychological anthropologist whose career included fieldwork on the Pacific Atoll of Ifaluk, on kibbutzim in Israel, and in Burma.  His research topics included child rearing, cooperation, aggression, and supernatural beliefs. He was renowned for his "careful, insightful, and insistent emphasis upon motivational and psychological underpinnings of human behavior…and upon the need to take them into account in cross-cultural analysis." (Jordan)

While a PhD student at Northwestern University, Spiro was introduced to psychological anthropology by A. Irving Hallowell, who became a lifelong mentor and friend. After receiving his PhD in 1950, he went on to teach at Washington University in St. Louis, and the Universities of Connecticut, Washington, and Chicago before becoming the founding chair of the anthropology department at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 1968. He recruited the department's first faculty members in 1969 including Roy D'Andrade, Marc J. Swartz, Theodore Schwartz, Robert I. Levy, David K. Jordon, and Joyce Bennett Justus. Spiro also received training in psychoanalysis after arriving in San Diego and practiced as a lay analyst while establishing links to the medical school to provide anthropology graduate students with general psychiatric training.

Spiro served terms as president of the American Ethnological Society and the Society for Psychological Anthropology (SPA). He was one of the founders of Ethos, the SPA's journal. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was the recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships and an Einstein Fellowship from the Israel Academy of Science. He also received an Excellence-in-Teaching award from the Chancellor's Associates at UCSD based on his mentoring of anthropology graduate students.

Sources consulted:
Jordan, David K. "In Memoriam, Melford E. Spiro." Anthropology News 56, no. 11-12 (December 2015): 26-27.

Avruch, Kevin. "Biographical Memoirs, Melford E. Spiro." National Academy of Sciences. 2015. Accessed April 4, 2016. http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/spiro-melford.pdf.
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 9.6 Linear feet ((24 boxes))
label: Extent
content: 12 Sound recordings
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1943-2003, undated
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Anthropological Archives
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NAA.2015-04
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Sound recordings
label: Type
content: Field notes
label: Type
content: Photographic prints
label: Type
content: Slides (photographs)
label: Type
content: Psychological tests
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: This collection is arranged in 4 series: Series 1. Ifaluk, 1947-1988, undated; Series 2. Israel, 1951-1981, undated; Series 3. Burma, 1943-1978, undated; Series 4. Teaching and writing, 1953-2003, undated.
processinfo: label: Processing Information
content: Original file titles were retained when possible. When handwriting was indecipherable, titles are followed by a question mark and a copy of the original folder was placed with the material.

Processed and encoded by Katie Duvall, 2016.
bibliography: label: Selected Bibliography
content: 1952.  -- Ghosts, Ifaluk, and teleological functionalism -- . [Indianapolis]: [Bobbs-Merrill].

1956.  -- Kibbutz: venture in Utopia -- . Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

1965.  -- Children of the kibbutz -- . New York: Schocken Books.

1967.  -- Burmese supernaturalism; a study in the explanation and reduction of suffering -- . Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

1970.  -- Buddhism and society; a great tradition and its Burmese vicissitudes -- . New York: Harper & Row.

1977.  -- Kinship and marriage in Burma: a cultural and psychodynamic analysis -- . Berkeley: University of California Press.

1979.  -- Gender and culture: kibbutz women revisited -- . Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

1997.  -- Gender ideology and psychological reality: an essay on cultural reproduction. --  New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press.
genre_format: label: Genre/Form
content: Field notes
label: Genre/Form
content: Photographic prints
label: Genre/Form
content: Slides (photographs)
label: Genre/Form
content: Psychological tests
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The Melford E. Spiro papers, 1943-2003, primarily document his periods of field work on the Ifaluk Atoll, on kibbutzim in Israel, and in Burma.  The collection consists of field notes, personality data and analysis, photographs, interview tapes and transcriptions, ephemera, subject card files, and research files. It also includes limited material related to his teaching and writings in the form of course outlines and research, lecture notes, annotated articles, drafts, and book reviews.

The collection includes a great deal of the data Spiro collected at all three field sites, including Rorschach and Thematic Apperception tests (TAT) and the subsequent analysis, sentence completions, drawings by children, and autobiographies of informants. The majority of the interview transcriptions and questionnaires in the collection are from Israel and are written in Hebrew.  Translations in English do not exist within this collection. The photographs include black-and-white snapshots of people and landscapes on Ifaluk and color slides taken in Burma and other locations in Southeast Asia.
relatedmaterial: label: Related Materials
content: Film and sound reels have been transferred to the Smithsonian's Human Studies Film Archive, HSFA.2016.09.