Helen Codere

Helen Frances Codere (born September 10, 1917 in Winnipeg , Canada , † June 5, 2009 in Concord , Massachusetts ) was an American cultural anthropologist . She became known for her work on the Kwakiutl tribe on the coast of British Columbia in Canada.

Life

Helen Codere was born in Canada in 1917. In 1919 the family moved to the US state of Minnesota and Codere became an American citizen. She graduated from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in 1939 and received her PhD in anthropology from Columbia University with Ruth Benedict .

Codere was a member of the American Ethnological Society and worked as a full professor at Brandeis University from 1964 to 1982 , where she was also the dean of the Graduate School from 1974 to 1977 . She also worked at Vassar College , the University of British Columbia , Northwestern University , Bennington College, and the University of Pennsylvania .

In 1966 she published Franz Boas ' work Kwakiutl Ethnography . Because of her interest in the Kwakiutl and her intensive research into the culture of the Kwakiutl tribes, she was chosen by Boas. 1951 and 1954/55 Codere was on field research trips in British Columbia and lived with the Indians.

Codere was never married, but lived with her partner Marion Tait, who was an ancient scholar and dean of Vasser College. After retiring, the couple lived in Concord. Codere died here in 2009 at the age of 91. She bequeathed her land to the Vermont Land Trust and bequeathed her books to the library of the Anthropology Department at the University of Vermont .

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Kwakiutl

Coderes first significant work was Fighting with Property: Study of Kwakiutl Potlatching and Warfare, 1792-1930 , which was also her dissertation. In the book, Codere emphasized the peaceful aspects of the Indians, such as their sociability and helpfulness, while countering the widespread prejudice that the Indians are aggressive. In Fighting with Property she explains the history of the Kwakiutl from 1792 to 1930 using historical material and documents the changes in society during this time. In doing so, she brought the potlatch festival, where gifts are used to express one's social rank, with the decline in violence and fighting. The Kwakiutl no longer fought with weapons, but with their possessions, which they "fought for" social prestige by giving them away. Her book was not only a significant contribution to the understanding of culture, but also one of the pioneering works in the field of historical anthropology and while most anthropologists focused on the study of cultures, Codere focused on cultural change.

Rwanda

In 1959 Codere became interested in the Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda . Here, too, she was primarily concerned with the changes during the revolutionary years before independence in 1962. For this purpose, she recorded 48 autobiographies of men and women, including Hutu, Tutsi and Twa, and examined social change with a special focus on the problems and social tensions. Codere saw societies as complex adaptive systems that form a web of different relationships. The biographies showed the complexity of the caste system and showed how the relationships between the castes worked and how it changed.

Fonts

• Ed .: Franz Boas : Kwakiutl Ethnography . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1966
• Fighting with Property: A Study of Kwakiutl Potlatching and Warfare, 1792-1930. JJ Augustin, New York 1950
• The Amiable Side of Kwakiutl Life: The Potlatch and the Play Potlatch . Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis 1956
• The biography of an African society, Rwanda, 1900–1960: based on forty-eight Rwandan autobiographies . Tervuren, 1973

literature

• In Memoriam of Helen Frances Codere . In: Anthropology News , October 2009, p. 44

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gloria Negri: Helen Codere - A Real Anthropologist , The Boston Globe, July 5, 2009
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Abraham Rosman, Paula Rubel: Helen Francis Codere . In: American Anthropologist , Vol. 112, No. 2 (June 2010), pp. 342-350.
3. ^ ^{A b c d} Judith T. Irvine, Stephen Pastner: In Memoriam - Helen Codere , Anthropology News. October 1, 2009 ( online )