Ralph Linton
| Ralph Linton | |
|---|---|
| Born |
February 27, 1893 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Died | December 24, 1953 (aged 60) New Haven, Connecticut |
| Citizenship | USA |
| Fields | Cultural anthropology |
| Institutions | Field Museum, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Yale University |
| Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University |
| Known for |
The Study of Man (1936) The Tree of Culture (1955) |
| Notable awards | Viking Fund Medal (1951) |
Ralph Linton (27 February 1893 – 24 December 1953) was a respected American anthropologist of the mid-20th century, particularly remembered for his texts The Study of Man (1936) and The Tree of Culture (1955). One of Linton's major contributions to anthropology was defining a distinction between status and role.
Linton was born into a family of Quaker restaurant entrepreneurs in Philadelphia in 1893 and entered Swarthmore College in 1911. He was an indifferent student and resisted his father's pressures to prepare himself for the life of a professional. He grew interested in archaeology after participating in a field school in the southwest and took a year off of his studies to participate in another archaeological excavation at Quiriguá in Guatemala. Having found a strong focus he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1915.
Although Linton became a prominent anthropologist, his graduate education took place largely at the periphery of the discipline. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his master's degree studying with Frank Speck while undertaking additional archaeological field work in New Jersey and New Mexico.
He was admitted to a Ph.D. program at Columbia University thereafter, but did not become close to Franz Boas, the doyen of anthropology in that era. When America entered World War I, Linton enlisted and served in France during 1917-1919 with Battery D, 149th Field Artillery, 42nd (Rainbow) Division. Linton served as a corporal and saw battle at the trenches, experiencing first hand a German gas attack. Linton's military experience would be a major influence on his subsequent work. One of his first published articles was "Totemism and the A.E.F.” (Published in American Anthropologist vol. 26:294-300)", in which he argued that the way in which military units often identified with their symbols could be considered a kind of totemism.
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