caption death_date birth_place nationality field birth_date article_title name alma_mater
robert redfield 16 october 1958 chicago , illinois american anthropology ethnolinguistics communication studies december 4 , 1897 robert redfield
 robert redfield -lsb- chicago law degree , 1921 ; phd , anthropology , university university of chicago , 1928 . of chicago high school , university of
robert redfield

robert redfield -lrb- december 4 , 1897 -- october 16 , 1958 -rrb- was an american anthropologist and ethnolinguist .
redfield graduated from the university of chicago with communication studies , eventually with a j.d. from its law school and then a ph.d. in cultural anthropology , which he began to teach in 1927 .
after a series of published field studies from mexican communities -lrb- tepoztlán in morelos and chan kom in yucatán -rrb- , in 1953 he published `` the primitive world and its transformation '' and in 1956 , `` peasant society and culture '' .
moving further into a broader synthesis of disciplines , dr redfield embraced a forum for interdisciplinary thought that included archeology , anthropological linguistics , physical anthropology , cultural anthropology , and ethnology .
redfield wrote in 1955 about his own experience doing research in latin america on peasants .
as he did research , he realized he had been trained to treat the society as an isolated culture .
however , he found people were involved with trade , and there were connections between villages and states .
more than that , the village culture was not bounded .
beliefs and practices were not isolated .
redfield realized it did not make sense to study people as isolated units , but rather it would be better to understand a broader perspective .
traditionally , anthropologists studied folk ways in the `` little tradition '' , taking into account broader civilization , the `` great tradition '' .
he was elected a fellow of the american academy of arts and sciences in 1950 .
redfield and his wife margaret are the parents of lisa redfield peattie , professor emerita , department of urban planning , massachusetts institute of technology , james m. redfield , a professor of classics at the university of chicago and joanna redfield gutmann -lrb- 1930 -- 2009 -rrb- .
another son , robert -lrb- called tito -rrb- , died at the age of twelve from injuries suffered in a sledding accident .
the papers of robert redfield and margaret redfield are located at the special collections research center , university of chicago library .
