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Biography of Oscar LewisName: Oscar LewisBirth Date: December 25, 1914 Death Date: December 16, 1970 Place of Birth: New York, New York, United States Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: anthropologist Oscar Lewis The American anthropologist Oscar Lewis (1914-1970) was concerned with the study of culture change and was the originator of the "culture of poverty" concept.Oscar Lewis was born in New York City in 1914. The son of a rabbi, he was raised in upstate New York and majored in history at the City College of New York. After receiving his B.A. in history in 1936 he matriculated as a history student at Columbia University. Becoming somewhat disaffected from the history then taught at Columbia, he followed the advice of his wife's brother, Abraham Maslow, and had a long talk with Ruth Benedict of the Anthropology Department. Attracted by the field and by Benedict, he switched departments. Among those at Columbia who influenced him, in addition to Ruth Benedict, were Ralph Linton and Margaret Mead.Lewis was poor, and there was little financial aid available at the time. Therefore, his dissertation research was …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…accounts of peasant villages have described such differences or at least taken them into account.Oscar Lewis's works include "The Effects of White Contact upon the Blackfoot Indians," in Monographs of the American Ethnological Society, Vol. 6, edited by J. J. Augustin (1942); Life in a Mexican Village: Tepoztlan Restudied (1951); Village Life in Northern India (1958); Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty (1959); The Children of Sanchez (1961); Pedro Martinez, A Mexican Peasant and His Family (1964); La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty--San Juan and New York (1966); A Death in the Sanchez Family (1969); and Anthropological Essays (1970). Further Reading Additional information on Lewis can be found in Anthony Leeds "The concept of the 'culture of poverty': conceptual, logical, and empirical problems, with perspectives from Brazil and Peru," in E. B. Leacock, editor, The Culture of Poverty: A Critique (1971), and Charles Valentine, Culture and Poverty: Critique and Counter-Proposals (1968). |