Alexander Alexandrovich Goldenweiser

Alexander Goldenweiser ( Russian Александр Александрович Гольденвейзер ; born January 29 ^{. Jul} / 10 February 1880 ^greg. In Kiev , † 6. July 1940 in Portland , Oregon ) was a from the Ukraine originating American anthropologist and sociologist .

Life

Alexander Goldenweiser was the son of the lawyer Alexander Solomonowitsch Goldenweiser (1855-1915). His brothers were the economist Emmanuil Alexandrowitsch Goldenweiser, known in the US as Emanuel A. Goldenweiser (1883–1953), and the lawyer Alexei Alexandrowitsch Goldenweiser (1890–1979).

After the family emigrated to the USA in 1900, Alexander Goldenweiser studied anthropology with Franz Boas at Columbia University . Goldenweiser obtained his AB in 1902 , his MA in 1904 , and in 1910 he received his PhD under Boas with a dissertation on totemism (published in the Journal of American Folk-Lore ).

After receiving his doctorate, Goldenweiser taught at Columbia University until 1919. He then worked as a lecturer at the New School for Social Research, founded in 1919 . His colleagues included John Dewey , James Harvey Robinson and Thorstein Veblen . In 1926 the lectureship ended, and Goldenweiser became co-editor of the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences .

From 1915 to 1929, Goldenweiser also taught at the Rand School for Social Science . This school founded the Socialist Party of America in 1906. In 1923 he took a professorship at the University of Washington , and from 1930 to 1938 he taught at the University of Oregon at Eugene . Goldenweiser held visiting professorships from 1937 to 1938 at the University of Wisconsin and from 1933 to 1939 at Reed College .

position

In his questions, Alexander Goldenweiser also included the knowledge of psychology and psychoanalysis beyond anthropology, especially in his work on cultural diffusion . He was also able to gain theoretical aspects from his field research with the Iroquois . He spent a total of ten months from 1911 to 1913 on the Grand River Reservation in Ontario . Here he was concerned with symbolic and mystical relationships in totemism . Goldenweiser recognized that the structures of primitive peoples ( nonliterate people ) are not fundamentally different from the living environment of modern people.

Publications

• Totemism. An analytical study . In: Journal of American Folk-Lore , Volume 23, Boston 1910, pp. 179-293. ( Digitized version )
• Early Civilization. An Introduction to Anthropology . Knopf, New York 1922. ( digitized version )
• The Social Sciences and their Interrelations . With William Fielding Ogburn . Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1927.
• History. Psychology and Culture . Knopf, New York 1933.
• Anthropology. An Introduction to Primitive Culture . Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York 1937. Sixth Printing 1946 ( digitized )

Web links

• Encyclopædia Britannica