Hortense Powdermaker was an anthropologist best known for her ethnographic

Ethnography

Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

 studies of African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

s in rural America and of Hollywood

Hollywood, Los Angeles, California

Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...

. Born to a Jewish family, Powdermaker spent her childhood in Reading, Pennsylvania

Reading, Pennsylvania

Reading is a city in southeastern Pennsylvania, USA, and seat of Berks County. Reading is the principal city of the Greater Reading Area and had a population of 88,082 as of the 2010 census, making it the fifth most populated city in the state after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown and Erie,...

 and in Baltimore, Maryland. She studied history and the humanities at Goucher College

Goucher College

Goucher College is a private, co-educational, liberal arts college located in the northern Baltimore suburb of Towson in unincorporated Baltimore County, Maryland, on a 287 acre campus. The school has approximately 1,475 undergraduate students studying in 31 majors and six interdisciplinary...

. After she graduated in 1921 she took an unusual career path for most Goucher graduates, becoming a labor organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. After becoming dissatisfied with the prospects of the U.S. labor movement amid the repression of the Palmer Raids, she took courses at the London School of Economics

London School of Economics

The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

, then became a graduate student under anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, who convinced her to embark on a course of doctoral studies. While at the LSE, Powdermaker also worked under and was influenced by other well known anthropologists such as A. R. Radcliffe-Brown

Alfred Radcliffe-Brown

Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown was an English social anthropologist who developed the theory of Structural Functionalism.- Biography :...

, E. E. Evans-Pritchard

E. E. Evans-Pritchard

Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard was an English anthropologist who was instrumental in the development of social anthropology...

 and Raymond Firth

Raymond Firth

Sir Raymond William Firth, CNZM, FBA, was an ethnologist from New Zealand. As a result of Firth's ethnographic work, actual behaviour of societies is separated from the idealized rules of behaviour within the particular society...

.

Powdermaker completed her PhD on "leadership in primitive society" in 1928. Like her contemporaries, Powdermaker sought to identify her anthropological work with a "primitive" people and conducted fieldwork among the Lesu of New Ireland

New Ireland (island)

New Ireland is a large island in Papua New Guinea, approximately 7,404 km² in area. It is the largest island of the New Ireland Province, lying northeast of the island of New Britain. Both islands are part of the Bismarck Archipelago, named after Otto von Bismarck, and they are separated by...

 in present-day Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...

 (Life in Lesu: The Study of a Melanesian Society in New Ireland. Williams & Norgate, London 1933).

After returning to the United States, Powdermaker was given an appointment at the new, Rockefeller Foundation

Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...

 supported, Yale Institute of Human Relations. Director Edward Sapir

Edward Sapir

Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics....

 encouraged her to apply ethnographic field methods to the study of communities in her own society. Powdermaker conducted anthropological fieldwork in an African American community in Indianola, Mississippi

Indianola, Mississippi

Indianola is a city in Sunflower County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 12,066 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Sunflower County.-History:...

 (After Freedom: A Cultural Study In the Deep South. Viking, New York 1939) and in Hollywood, the Dream Factory (1950), the first and still the only substantial anthropological study of the film industry.

Her final book, Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist (1966), was a personal account of her anthropological career, from the beginning as a labor movement leader to her last field work in an African copper mining community. In 1968, Hortense Powdermaker retired from Queens College, where she had founded the department of anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

 and sociology

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

, and moved to Berkeley

Berkeley, California

Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

, where she remained engaged in ethnographic fieldwork. She died two years later of a heart attack. The building on the Queens College campus that houses the anthropology and sociology departments (along with other social science disciplines) is named in her honor.

Legacy

Powdermaker wrote many books and articles over her lifetime, however there are a few that stand out more than others. Her ethnographies on Northern Rhodesians, Hollywood, and Indianola and her comparison of these and one another ethnography are still recognized today as important works.

Her study in Indianola, Mississippi

Indianola, Mississippi

Indianola is a city in Sunflower County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 12,066 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Sunflower County.-History:...

, was important as it was one of the first studies of modern American culture by an anthropologist, as well as one of the first studies of an interracial community. This study was conducted from 1932 to 1934 and is of particular importance mainly because she successfully completed participant observation in both White and Black communities, despite the danger of doing so. Her groundbreaking theory which arose from this study was her explanation of the psychological adaptation underwent by Blacks and Whites due to their interracial environment.

Most people, outside of the field of anthropology, who know of Powdermaker, know her from her study of Hollywood. Hollywood, the Dream Factory, published in 1950 is known today as the only serious anthropological study of Hollywood.

In order to write Copper Town, Powdermaker had to overcome some difficulties. It has been criticized by many social anthropologists who did not like her use of psychological concept as well as her lack of “linguistic preparation”. Nevertheless, it is an important work when looking at the effects of the cinema on African culture as she presents an unbiased, anthropological perspective.

Stranger and Friend, published in 1966, was a comparison of her four ethnographic studies and provides an insight into her own understanding of her works. This book is also held highly in the anthropological community due to its “insight into the anthropological enterprise”

Copper Town: Changing Africa

This work was published in 1962 in the United States. This book discusses the direct implication that the cinema, or the “bioscope” as it was called by Northern Rhodesians, had on the people who went to it. The cinema was introduce to Africa by colonial governments in the mid twentieth century and was perceived to have different influences on the African population depending on the group writing about it. There were many studies on the effects of the cinema on African people, and Powdermaker was one among many who published works about it. Copper Town: Changing Africa, was an ethnographic study of the effects on Northern Rhodesia specifically. One of the main points of her work was to explain the confusion many Africans experienced when viewing Western films. One of these was understanding the concept of acting. Some who attended were confused by the concept of a film being fictional. Powdermaker describes that the concept of acting was not understood for the most part, and as a result whenever an actor “died” in one film and reappeared in another, the lack of continuity was upsetting . This was part of a deeper issue of censorship in African film. Colonial governments at the time were beginning to censor the films Africans were seeing in the cinema out of fear that certain contents would inspire Africans to challenge the colonial governments. Powdermaker looks into the content of the films and explains how some of the content was often critiqued by Africans as the difference in culture and misunderstandings of this difference led to a lack of respect for European officials. For example such things as kissing and the use of guns. These issues created a lack of respect amongst Africans towards the White officials due to differences in culture . This conflict, in turn, threatened the Colonial order who then began censoring the films as a means of keeping Africans from rising against them. One of the main conclusions that Powdermaker draws from this conflict of culture between colonial governments and African people is that as long as the European and African relationship was non existent “the resulting ignorance [was] bound to distort communication from movies”

External links

• Detailed Biography.