Lowie, Robert Harry

Lowie, Robert Harry, or Robert Heinrich Lowie (lō`ē), 1883–1957, American anthropologist, b. Vienna, grad. College of the City of New York, 1901, Ph.D. Columbia, 1908. He was on the staff of the American Museum of Natural History from 1908 until 1921. From that year until his death he taught at the Univ. of California. Lowie gained international fame through his studies of the Native North American, especially the northern Plains tribes, and his contributions to ethnological theory. His book, Primitive Society (1920, 2d ed. 1947), and its sequel, Social Organization (1948), are regarded as classics in their field. Other writings include Primitive Religion (1924, rev. ed. 1948), An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (1934, rev. ed. 1940), The History of Ethnological Theory (1938), and Indians of the Plains (1954). His autobiography was published in 1959; the Crow Texts translated and edited by him and Selected Papers in Anthropology appeared in 1960.

Bibliography

See biography by R. F. Murphy (1972).

---

Lowie, Robert Harry 

Born June 12, 1883, in Vienna; died Sept. 21, 1957, in Berkeley, Calif. American ethnologist. Professor at the University of California from 1921 to 1950.

Lowie conducted field investigations among numerous American Indian tribes and devoted a series of monographs to them. He was a representative of the antievolutionist historical school in ethnology but toward the end of his life departed considerably from his former views and recognized the scientific importance of the principal concepts of historical materialism.

WORKS

Primitive Society. New York, 1920.
Primitive Religion. New York, 1924.
Social Organization. London, 1950.

REFERENCE

Averkieva, Iu. P. “Sovremennye tendentsii v razvitii etnografii SShA.” In the collection Sovremennaia amerikanskaia etnografiia. Moscow, 1963.