Hortense Powdermaker: Difference between revisions

{{Short description|American anthropologist, ethnographer and professor (1896–1970)}}

| birth_date = December 24, 19001896<ref>Eric R. Wolf, "Hortense Powdermaker 1900-1970," American Anthropologist 73, no. 3 (1971): 783-86.</ref>

'''Hortense Powdermaker''' (December 24, 19001896 – June 16, 1970) was an American [[anthropologist]] best known for her [[ethnography|ethnographic]] studies of [[African American]]s in rural America and of [[Cinema of the United States|Hollywood]].

Born to a [[Judaism in the United States|Jewish family]], Powdermaker spent her childhood in [[Reading, Pennsylvania|Reading]], Pennsylvania, and in [[Baltimore]], [[Maryland]]. She studied history and the humanities at [[Goucher College]], graduating in 1921. She worked as a [[union organizer|labor organizer]] for the [[Amalgamated Clothing Workers]] but became dissatisfied with the prospects of the U.S. [[labor movement]] amid the repression of the [[Palmer Raids]]. She left the United States to study at the [[London School of Economics]], where she met the eminent 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 [[Alfred Radcliffe-Brown|A. R. Radcliffe-Brown]], [[E. E. Evans-Pritchard]] and [[Raymond Firth]].<ref>{{citation|title=Visionary Observers: Anthropological Inquiry And Education|author=Jill B. R. Cherneff, Eve Hochwald|year= 2006|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=Hhmc63cL5TIC&pg=RA6-PA121&lpg=RA6-PA121&dqq=%22Hortense+Powdermaker%22&pg=RA6-PA121|isbn=978-0-8032-6464-9}}</ref>

Powdermaker completed her PhD on "leadership in [[Urgesellschaft|primitive society]]" in 1928. Like her contemporaries, Powdermaker sought to identify her anthropological work with a [[primitivism|"primitive" people]] and conducted fieldwork among the [[Lesu]] of [[New Ireland (island)|New Ireland]] in present-day [[Papua New Guinea]] (''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]] -supported, Yale Institute of Human Relations. Director [[Edward Sapir]] encouraged her to apply ethnographic field methods to the study of communities in her own society. She remained at Yale between 1930 and 1937, during which time she conducted anthropological fieldwork in an African-American community in [[Indianola, Mississippi|Indianola]], Mississippi, in 1932-34 (''After Freedom: A Cultural Study In the Deep South'', 1939).<ref name="jwa">{{cite webencyclopedia |url=https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/powdermaker-hortense|title="Hortense Powdermaker" |encyclopedia=in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia |last=Johnson |first=Barbara C. |date=1 March 2009 |websitevia=Jewish Women's Archive. jwa.org |access-date=11 March 2017}}</ref> (''After Freedom: A Cultural Study In the Deep South.'' Viking, New York 1939).

In 1938 she began working at [[Queens College, City University of New York|Queens College]], where she founded the departments of Anthropology and Sociology during a career spanning three decades.<ref name="jwa" /> Subsequent research yielded ''Hollywood, the Dream Factory'' (1950), the first and still the only substantial anthropological study of the film industry. She then worked documenting the mining industry and the consumption of American media in Northern Rhodesia (''Copper Town: Changing Africa'', 1962).

The building on the Queens College campus that houses the anthropology and sociology departments (along with other social science disciplines) is named in her memory.<ref>[http://www.qc.cuny.edu/Map/powdermaker_hall.php Queens College -– CUNY<!-- Bot generated title -->] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080125065951/http://www.qc.cuny.edu/Map/powdermaker_hall.php |date=2008-01-25 }}</ref>

This was part of a broader issue of censorship of films in Africa. Colonial governments at the time were beginning to censor the films intended for African audiences out of fear that certain content might inspire Africans to challenge the colonial governments.<ref>Charles Ambler, "Popular Films and Colonial Audiences: The Movies in Northern Rhodesia," ''The American Historical Review'', February 2001 <{{cite web |url=http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.1/ah000081.html |title=Archived&#124; copyPopular Films and Colonial Audiences: The Movies in Northern Rhodesia &#124; the American Historical Review, 106.1 &#124; the History Cooperative |accessdateaccess-date=2011-02-15 |url-status=dead |archiveurlarchive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110211124440/http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.1/ah000081.html |archivedatearchive-date=2011-02-11 }}> 14 February 2011</ref> Powdermaker examines the films's content and explains how some of the content was often critiqued by Africans due to cultural differences such as kissing and the use of guns, the misunderstandings of which led to a lack of respect for European officials.<ref>Powdermaker, ''Copper Town: Changing Africa'', p. 267</ref> This cultural values conflict, in turn, threatened the colonial order who used film censorship as a means of keeping Africans from rising against them.<ref>Harloff, A.J.W. ''Pernicious Influence of Picture Shows on Oriental Peoples''. 1934, p. 313.</ref>

<references/>Pennsylvania Births and Christenings

[[Category:20th-century American anthropologistsJews]]

[[Category:20th-century American anthropologists]]