Item Detail
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11995
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1
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0
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English
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The Harvard Five Cultures Values Study and Postwar Anthropology
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University of New Mexico
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Ph.D. diss.
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"This study examines the Harvard Comparative Study of Values in Five Cultures of 1949-1955. The Values Study was a long-range, multi-disciplinary project, designed and directed by Clyde Kluckhohn, that was run out of the newly created Department of Social Relations at Harvard. The five cultures studied by the project--Navajo, Zuni, Mormon, Texan homesteader, and Hispanic--living in and around Ramah, New Mexico. This area, where Kluckhohn had done research on the Navajo since 1936, was chosen in order to draw on previous work; it also provided an affordable location for post-war field research. The goal of the study was to compare the value systems of each culture and to analyze the perpetuation of and change in these values. The Values Study project was innovative and important, but has been all but forgotten. The study captured two intellectual themes of the period: the topic of values, and the development of interdisciplinary, scientific methods in social science. Anthropology itself was experiencing growth and development in the post-war years. This project, following the discipline's involvement in World War II, brought continued attention to anthropological activities, as well as providing training or field experience for many who went on to make contributions to anthropology. The project produced many publications and much unpublished discussion of method and theory, issues and problems. One of the two final volumes was in preparation when Clyde Kluckhohn died in 1960; the second was never attempted. This historicist account of the Values Study suggests that the project's successes lay not in the publications of field work or a theoretical framework for values (which Kluckhohn was working on when he died), but in exploring a difficult topic and its methodological issues. Because debate on these subjects was largely internal, and because of development in the discipline on many fronts, these results went unnoticed. The history of the Values Study shows the early roots of interdisciplinary social science and the continuity of the debate over science, its role and problems. It also suggests that understanding past projects in their time is a necessary part of the development of social knowledge." [Author's abstract]