Robert RedfieldBorn 4 Dec 1897; died 16 Oct 1958 at age 60.U.S. pioneer of urban anthropology. From his studies of Mexican communities, Redfield developed a theory (1956) of a folk-urban continuum, to account for the differences between folk society and urban society. A folk society was small in size, isolated, homogeneous, preliterate with a social and cultural life linked to kinship and sacred beliefs. Urban society had opposite of all these features. He believed that any community had a place on this continuum from folk to urban. This scale implied that simpler or folk forms of society would evolve to complex social forms with time. Anthropologists now consider the way folk and urban societies are part of a larger social, political and economic environment, rather than considered as separate poles on a continuum. |
