Melford Spiro

Melford Elliot Spiro was an American cultural anthropologist specializing in religion and psychological anthropology. He is known for his critiques of the pillars of contemporary anthropological theory - wholesale cultural determinism, radical cultural relativism, and virtually limitless cultural diversity - and for his emphasis on the theoretical importance of unconscious desires and beliefs in the study of stability and change in social and cultural systems, particularly in respect to the family, politics, and religion. Explicated in numerous theoretical publications, they are empirically exemplified in monographs based on his fieldwork in Ifaluk atoll in Micronesia, an Israeli kibbutz, and a village in Burma.

Country

United States

Category

Academics

Type

Academic

Status

deceased

Dates

Lived 1920 to 2014 · aged 94

Written about in

10 languages