Robert Redfield

Cultural anthropologist, born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He studied law at Chicago and Harvard universities, then a trip to Mexico inspired him to change to anthropology. He conducted field research in an Aztec community near Mexico City (1926), on which he based the acclaimed Tepoztlán, a Mexican Village (1930). From 1930 he was a research associate for the Carnegie Institute, Washington, DC, becoming professor of anthropology at Chicago (1934–58). A leading theorist in the study of peasant societies, he continued his field research in Central America, introducing the concept of the ‘folk–urban continuum’.

(He is not to be confused with the virologist of the same name.) Redfield graduated from the University of Chicago, eventually with a JD from its law school and then a PhD in social anthropology, which he began to teach in 1927. After a series of published field studies from Mexican communities, 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, social anthropology, and ethnology.

Redfield wrote in 1955 about his own experience doing research in Latin America on peasants. Redfield realized it did not make sense to study people as isolated units, but rather it would be better to understand a broader perspective.

Redfield and his wife Margaret are the parents of James M. Redfield, a professor of classics at the University of Chicago.