ROBERT I. LEVY
1924 - 2003
A psychiatrist by training, Robert Levy was lured into
anthropology by Douglas Oliver as a participant in Oliver’s Tahitian
project in the early 1960s. He did field work in the Society Islands
for twenty-six months, first during a pilot study in July and August
1961, then for two years between July 1962 and June 1964. From 1964
to 1966 he was a Senior Scholar in the Institute of Advanced Projects
at the East-West Center and Research Associate in Anthropology at Bishop
Museum, Honolulu. In 1969 he took a faculty position as Professor of
Anthropology at the University of California - San Diego, where he served
until his retirement in 1991. Since then he has been appointed Research
Professor of Anthropology at University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill,
and Research Professor of Anthropology, Duke University.
It was apparent from the beginning that Levy had an ability
to see beyond the obvious into the subtle intricacies of Polynesian
culture. To some extent this was the result of his bringing to bear
his psychiatric training, but the impressive thing was the degree to
which he was able to integrate an in-depth understanding of individual
experience with a developing knowledge of cultural systems. His early
papers had a significant impact on those of us who had been grappling
with the puzzles of Polynesian socialization and character development.
For example, his papers on drinking patterns (1966), folk psychotherapy
(1967), child management structure (1968), anger and its expressions
(1968), adoption (1970), transvestism (1971) and the integration between
personality and sociocultural systems (1971) served to reorient the
directions of interpretation away from simplistic motivational analysis
in the traditional culture and personality vein, toward a more complex,
but far more satisfying communication framework. The culmination of
his work in Polynesia was his book, Tahitians (1973), which
was selected as a finalist for the National Book Awards in 1974.
It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of
Tahitians to Polynesian studies. It is one of the most frequently cited
Polynesian ethnographies, and ranks with Firth’s We, the Tikopia
as a measure of ethnographic sophistication in the region. Tahitians
set new directions by opening up avenues of inquiry about concepts of
personhood, the cultural management of emotions, and the nature of Polynesian
world view. It set a new standard for evaluating evidence and provided
a model for ethnographic inquiry that has been adopted by many subsequent
scholars working in the region.
What is extraordinary about Levy’s work is that
it takes full advantage of his psychiatric background (for example,
by using intensive interviewing skills to penetrate the inner recesses
of people’s experience) without succumbing to the inherent restrictions
of the psychiatric paradigm, which is anathema to anthropologists because
of its built-in implications of pathology. In fact, Levy, more than
anyone else, helped to place mental health issues in the Pacific into
a culturally appropriate framework (for example in his groundbreaking
1969 working paper on "Personality Studies in Polynesia and Micronesia:
Stability and Change").
Levy’s career has been marked by an intellectual
independence that has made him a leader, an initiator of trends, rather
than a follower or mere synthesizer. During a period (1983-1985) when
the emotional life of individuals was sacrificed to a predominant concern
for cognition in the anthropological literature, he published several
papers insisting on its importance for understanding cultural process.
This was reflected in his ethnographic work and has been spelled out
in subsequent papers on emotion and culture. The resurrection of emotion
as a central topic in psychological anthropology was given impetus by
the issues he raised.
Although he has spent the last two decades working on
field material gathered in Nepal, his Polynesian research has remained
central to his overall project, which focuses on the social patterning
of mind and experience. In “The Quest for Mind in Different Times
and Different Places,” published in a book on Social History
and Issues in Human Consciousness (1989), and a paper on parental
ideas about learners and teaching (1996), he explicitly contrasts Nepalese
and Tahitian cultural patterns. A loyal member (and one of the original
Fellows) of ASAO, Levy’s most recent contribution to our Association
was as discussant for the sessions on spirits organized by Jeannette
Mageo and myself. His critical analysis not only shaped the direction
of the individual contributions, but formed the basis for a comparative
framework that lent coherence to the published volume (Chapter 1 of
Spirits in Culture, History and Mind [1996]).
In 1996 Levy was elected Fellow of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences.
Alan Howard, University of Hawai'i (April 1998 Newsletter) |
