Melford Spiro

Lore & Background

Melford Elliot Spiro was an American cultural anthropologist whose work centered on religion and psychological anthropology. He is distinguished by his sustained critiques of three foundational concepts in anthropological theory: the idea that culture wholly determines behavior, the principle of radical cultural relativism, and the notion of virtually limitless cultural diversity. Instead, Spiro emphasized the theoretical importance of unconscious desires and beliefs for understanding both stability and change within social and cultural systems, particularly concerning family, politics, and religion. His theoretical arguments were grounded in extensive fieldwork conducted in three distinct settings: the Ifaluk atoll in Micronesia, an Israeli kibbutz, and a village in Burma (now Myanmar). During the 1980s and early 1990s, he was a central figure in debates among American cultural anthropologists over cultural relativism and postmodern theory, consistently advocating for the comparative method and the recognition of universal cultural and psychological processes. Spiro received his PhD from Northwestern University in 1950, where he studied under Melville Herskovits and A. Irving Hallowell. He later taught at several universities before becoming a founding member of the anthropology department at the University of California, San Diego in 1968. He also underwent postgraduate training in psychoanalysis and practiced as a lay analyst. Spiro was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and served as president of both the American Ethnological Society and the Society for Psychological Anthropology, which he helped found.

Reader's Guide

Melford Spiro was an American cultural anthropologist whose work centered on religion and psychological anthropology. He is best known for challenging three major tenets of mid-20th-century anthropological theory: the idea that culture wholly determines human behavior, the notion of radical cultural relativism, and the assumption of virtually limitless cultural diversity. Instead, Spiro argued for the importance of unconscious desires and beliefs in understanding both stability and change within social and cultural systems, particularly in the domains of family, politics, and religion. He developed these theoretical positions in numerous publications and supported them with empirical data from extensive fieldwork conducted in three distinct settings: the Ifaluk atoll in Micronesia, an Israeli kibbutz, and a village in Burma (now Myanmar). During the 1980s and early 1990s, Spiro was a central figure in debates among American cultural anthropologists over cultural relativism and postmodern theory, consistently advocating for the comparative method and the recognition of universal cultural and psychological processes. He received his PhD from Northwestern University in 1950, where he studied under Melville Herskovits and A. Irving Hallowell. After teaching at several universities, he became a founding member of the anthropology department at the University of California, San Diego in 1968. He also obtained postgraduate training in psychoanalysis and practiced as a lay analyst, and he arranged for UCSD anthropology graduate students to receive psychiatric training. Spiro served as president of both the American Ethnological Society and the Society for Psychological Anthropology, and was a founder of the journal *Ethos*. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Did You Know?

• Melford Spiro was a student of anthropologist A. Irving Hallowell.
• He is listed among Hallowell's students, which included eight other anthropologists.
• The source does not provide any other details about Spiro's life or career.