Melford Elliot Spiro (April 26, 1920 – October 18, 2014) 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,[1][2] and a village in Burma (now Myanmar).[3]
He was a significant figure in a series of debates over cultural relativism and postmodern theory among American cultural anthropologists in the 1980s and early 1990s, in which he consistently argued for the importance of the comparative method and the appreciation of universal cultural and psychological processes.[4][5]
Spiro received his B.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1942,[6] where he majored in philosophy,[7] following which he studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Having developed an interest in culture theory, he explored this interest through enrolling in the anthropology department at Northwestern University, where he worked with Melville Herskovits and A. Irving Hallowell, and received his PhD in 1950. He taught at Washington University in St. Louis, University of Connecticut, University of Washington, and University of Chicago before moving In 1968 to the University of California, San Diego where he was a founding member of the anthropology department. He received postgraduate training in psychoanalysis at the San Diego Psychoanalytic Center and practiced as a lay analyst,[7] additionally overseeing a course series at UCSD that exposed graduate students in anthropology to psychiatric training.
Spiro became professor emeritus at UCSD in 1990, but continued teaching for another decade. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served terms as president of the American Ethnological Society and the Society for Psychological Anthropology (SPA) and was one of the founders of the SPA's journal, Ethos.
Mel Spiro was married for 62 years to Audrey Spiro, with whom he had two sons.[8] He died in La Jolla, CA, in October 2014 of natural causes.[7]
^Spiro, Melford E.(1956) Kibbutz:Venture in Utopia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.[page needed]
^Spiro, Melford E.(1958) Children of the Kibbutz. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.[page needed]
^Spiro, Melford E. (1971) Buddhism and Society: A Great Tradition and its Burmese Vicissitudes. New York: Harper and Row.[page needed]
^Spiro, Melford E. (1986). "Cultural Relativism and the Future of Anthropology". Cultural Anthropology. 1 (3): 259–286. doi:10.1525/can.1986.1.3.02a00010. S2CID 145249843.
^Spiro, Melford E. (1993). "Is the Western Conception of the Self 'Peculiar' within the Context of the World Cultures?". Ethos. 21 (2): 107–153. doi:10.1525/eth.1993.21.2.02a00010.
^ abcd'Andrade, Roy G. (2015). "Melford E. Spiro, 1920–2014". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112 (7): 1915–1916. Bibcode:2015PNAS..112.1915D. doi:10.1073/pnas.1500172112. PMC 4343101. PMID 25675524.
^"Melford e. Spiro, Department of Anthropology Founder, Dies".
Melford Elliot Spiro (April 26, 1920 – October 18, 2014) was an American cultural anthropologist specializing in religion and psychological anthropology...
ISBN 978-0-415-02137-1. On varieties of cultural relativism in anthropology, see Spiro, Melford E. (1987) "Some Reflections on Cultural Determinism and Relativism with...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
Melford, Suffolk, England Middle Melford, Nova Scotia, small community in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, in Guysborough County MelfordSpiro (1920–2014)...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
Revue de l’histoire Des Religions. 174 (2): 229–229. JSTOR 23668319. Spiro, Melford E. (1968). "[Review of Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
rules, and that they therefore should be maintained. Anthropologist MelfordSpiro found that Burmese Buddhists mostly upheld the precepts to avoid bad...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
cultural symbols or social institutions provide defense mechanisms (MelfordSpiro) or otherwise alleviate psychological conflicts (Gananath Obeyesekere)...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
Devereux, Cora DuBois, A. Irving Hallowell, Abram Kardiner, Ralph Linton, MelfordSpiro, and at least tangentially Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead, and Marvin...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
ISBN 978-0-8248-2897-4. Harvey, G. E. (1925). History of Burma. Longmans. pp. 327–328. Spiro, Melford E. (1978). Burmese Supernaturalism. Transaction Publishers. pp. 69–70...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...
naturalist's approach to well-being of oneself and others. According to MelfordSpiro, this approach undermines the Four Noble Truths, for it does not address...
Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins MelfordSpiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco...