Ruth Landes

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Ruth Landes
Born(1908-10-08)October 8, 1908
New York City, New York
Died(1991-02-11)February 11, 1991 (Aged 82)
Hamilton, Ontario
EducationPh.D., Columbia University (1935)
OccupationAnthropologist

Ruth Landes (October 8, 1908 – February 11, 1991) was an American

gender relations.[1][2]

Early life

Ruth Schlossberg was born in Manhattan, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. Her father was Joseph Schlossberg, a cofounder and long-term secretary-general[3] of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.[4]

Education

Landes received her B.A. in sociology from New York University in 1928 and a Master's degree from The New York School of Social Work (now part of Columbia University) in 1929 before she studied for her doctorate in anthropology at Columbia University. She earned her Ph.D. in 1935 under the mentorship of Ruth Benedict, a pioneer in the field of anthropology and student of Franz Boas.[5]

Benedict had a profound influence on Landes.[6] She was enthralled by the way in which Benedict taught her classes and with the way she forced the students to think in an unconventional way. Landes also stated that she was never as happy studying anthropology as when she was studying with Benedict and Boas. Landes has recorded that the friendship between herself and Benedict was one of the most meaningful friendships of her life. The friendship encouraged her to expand her thinking about anthropology and question the social norms of society.[6]

Field studies

Museu Nacional
in Rio de Janeiro, 1930s

Landes began researching the social organization and religious practices of marginalized subjects with her masters thesis on Black Jews in Harlem. Seeking to enhance her analysis of that group, she contacted Boas, who suggested her to move to the field of anthropology.[7]

Under Benedict's mentorship, Landes shifted her focus toward

Santee Dakota in Minnesota, and the Potawatomi in Kansas. Using her notes from those trips, Landes produced a large body of written research, including the landmark texts Ojibwa Sociology (1937), Ojibwa Woman (1938), and, much later, Ojibwa Religion and the Midewiwin (1968) and The Mystic Lake Sioux (1968). In Ojibwa Sociology and Ojibwa Woman, Landes provides notes on kinship
, religious rites and social organization, and in the latter, through the tales of chief informant Maggie Wilson, reported how women navigated within gender roles to assert their economic and social autonomy. In Ojibwa Religion and The Mystic Lake Sioux, Landes discussed her subjects' strategies to maintain religious and cultural beliefs and practices while they also respond to rapid changes in their cultural and political environment.

In 1938–1939, Landes worked in

Afro-Brazilian Candomblé practitioners. She wrote that the women-centered sphere of candomblé was a source of power for certain disenfranchised blacks and a creative outlet for what she called "passive homosexuals."[8] In her published work on these findings, City of Women (1947), Landes discussed how racial politics in Brazil shape many candomblé practices. She returned to Brazil in 1966 to study the effects of urban development in Rio de Janeiro.[9]

Career

For much of her professional career, Landes held a number of contract research positions. In 1939, she became a researcher for Gunnar Myrdal's study of African-Americans. In 1941, she became research director for the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. In 1941 to 1945, she was the representative for African-American and Mexican-American Affairs on President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Committee on Fair Employment Practices. Meanwhile, she began to study the Acadians of Louisiana.

In 1948–1951, Landes was study director of the

Africans, English-speakers, and Afrikaans
-speakers. She resumed interest in the Acadians of Louisiana in 1963.

Until 1965, Landes's institutional affiliations consisted of fairly short-term appointments. Besides those already named, she was an instructor at

professor emerita.[citation needed
]

Death and legacy

Ruth Landes died in

Washington, DC
.

Bibliography

Selected books

References

  1. ^ "Ruth Landes: a life in anthropology, by Sally Colle". University of Nebraska Press. Archived from the original on 2016-09-20. Retrieved July 21, 2019.
  2. S2CID 150978596
    .
  3. ^ "Ruth Schlossberg Landes | Jewish Women's Archive". jwa.org. Retrieved July 21, 2019.
  4. ^ "Ruth Landes Is Dead; Anthropologist Was 82". The New York Times. February 24, 1991. Retrieved July 21, 2019.
  5. ^ "Guide to the Collections of the National Anthropological Archives (#L1)". Archived from the original on February 6, 2012. Retrieved July 21, 2019.
  6. ^ a b Cole, Sally. "Mrs Landes Meet Mrs. Benedict." American Anthropologist 104.2 (2002): 533-543. Web. 12 January 2010.
  7. ^ Cole, Sally (2002) Ruth Landes: A Life in Anthropology
  8. ^ Landes, Ruth (1947) City of Women
  9. ^ Glenn, James R. "Register to the Papers of Ruth Landes" (PDF). National Anthropological Archives. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 19 July 2015.
  10. ^ The anthropologist Sally Cole discussed her contributions to multiple fields of scholarship in her book Ruth Landes: A Life in Anthropology
  11. ^ "Award Description". Retrieved July 21, 2019.
  12. ^ a b "Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund". thereedfoundation.org. Retrieved July 21, 2019.

External links

Media related to Ruth Landes at Wikimedia Commons

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