David Murray Schneider

Background

Schneider, David Murray was born on November 11, 1918 in New York City.

Education

He received his Bachelor of Surgery in 1940 and his Master of Surgery from Cornell University in 1941. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology from Harvard in 1949, based on fieldwork on the Micronesian island of Yap.

Career

After completing his graduate work, he first taught at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1960, he accepted a position at the University of Chicago, where he spent most of his career, teaching in Anthropology and the Committee on Human Development. He was Chairman of Anthropology from 1963 to 1966.

While at Chicago, Schneider was director of the Kinship Project, a study supported by the National Science Foundation that looked at how middle-class families in the United States and Great Britain respond to their kinship relations.

His findings challenged the common-sense assumption that kinship in Anglo-American cultures is primarily about recognizing biological relatedness. While a rhetoric of "blood" ties is an important conceptual structuring device in United States and British kinship systems, cultural and social considerations are more important.

The discoveries he demonstrated through a series of books, most famously American Kinship: a cultural account, revolutionized and revitalized the study of kinship within anthropology, on the one hand, and contributed to the theoretical basis of feminist anthropology, gender studies, and lesbian and gay studies, on the other. Schneider critiqued the so-called Western theories of kinship by accusing its supporters of being ethnocentric.

As a teacher, Schneider was also known for taking on and encouraging students studying nontraditional topics, and as a mentor to women and lesbian or gay graduate students, who often otherwise had difficulty finding mentors.

After retiring from Chicago in 1986, he joined the anthropology department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he remained until his death in James Boon Vern Carroll Raymond J. DeMallie Richard Feinberg, kinship, navigation, Polynesia Susan Montague, cultural anthropologist, Trobriand Islands Esther Newton, cultural anthropologist, gay and lesbian communities in United States. Charles Nuckolls, psychocultural anthropologist Bradd Shore, psychological anthropologist Roy Wagner Gary Witherspoon Triloki Nath Pandey, anthropology professor at University of California Santa Cruz Education

Achievements

• David Murray Schneider has been listed as a noteworthy anthropologist, educator by Marquis Who's Who.

Works

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• book

  • American Kinship: A Cultural Account (Anthropology of Modern Societies)

    ( American Kinship is the first attempt to deal systemati...)

  • A Critique of the Study of Kinship

    ( Schneider views kinship study as a product of Western b...)

  • American Kinship: A Cultural Account (Anthropology of Modern Societies Series)

    (This book takes the kinship system of modern America as i...)

  • Marriage, Authority and Final Causes: A Study of Unilateral Cross-Cousin Marriage

    (Marriage, Sociology, Relationships)

  • Dialectics And Gender: Anthropological Approaches

    (Book by Randolph, Richard R., Schneider, David M.)

  • Dialectics and Gender: Anthropological Approaches by Richard R. Randolph (1988-05-03)
  • Matrilineal Kinship
  • Matrilineal Kinship (Library Reprint)
  • Matrilineal Kinship (Library Reprint)

Politics

Richard Handler, cultural anthropologist, Quebecois nationalism, museums, Colonial Williamsburg.

Membership

Fellow American Anthropology Association (executive board 1968-1970), American Academy Arts and Sciences, Royal Anthropological Institute Great Britain (honorary). Member Association Social Anthropologists Commonwealth, Society for Cultural Anthropology (president 1984-1988).