Includes correspondece, a paper by Beth A. Conklin and Laura Graham entitled "Forging a Middle Ground: Amazonian Indians and Eco-Politics," a paper by Herbert S. Lewis entitled "On the Parlous State of Anthropology Today," a paper entitled "Toast on Ice: The Ethnopsychology of the Winter-Over Experience in Antarctica," and comments on "Like Mirrors They Break."
Collection Restrictions:
Audiovisual and digital materials are restricted. Please contact the archives for information on the availability of access copies.
Graded papers are restricted for 80 years from the date of their creation and grant applications are restricted for 30 years from the date of their creation. These restrictions are noted on the folder level.
Access to the Terence Turner papers requires and appointment.
Collection Rights:
Contact the repository for terms of use.
Collection Citation:
Terence Turner papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Wenner-Gren Foundation.
The Robert I. Levy papers document his field work, research and professional activities from 1949-2001 and primarily deal with his work studying social organization, culture, and their psychological effects in Tahiti and Nepal. The collection consists of correspondence, field notes, sound recordings of interviews with informants in Tahiti and Nepal, interview transcripts and analyses, language and culture research materials, maps, and color slides. Also included are files about his books, articles, essays, and lectures; course materials from his time as a professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD); and conference files.
Scope and Contents:
The Robert I. Levy papers document his field work, research and professional activities from 1949-2001 and primarily deal with his work studying social organization, culture and their psychological effects in Tahiti and Nepal. The collection consists of correspondence, field notes, sound recordings of interviews with informants in Tahiti and Nepal, interview transcripts and analyses, language and culture research materials, maps, and color slides.
The correspondence includes Levy's thoughts on his first field work experience in Tahiti from 1961-1964 along with extensive correspondence with Levy's cousin, anthropologist Roy Rappaport, in the same time period. Interview transcripts from Tahiti are written in Tahitian with Levy's notes in English. Transcripts from Nepal are in Newar (Devanagari script) with English translations. Full transcripts in both languages are not always present. Research materials comprise documents Levy gathered before and after his periods of field work and include extensive analyses of psychological terms in Tahitian and Newar. The color slides depict adults, children, daily activities, rituals, and some landscapes in Tahiti and Nepal.
Also included in this collection are files about his books, articles, essays, and lectures; course materials from his time as a professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD); and conference files.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged in 4 series: Series 1. Tahiti, 1959-1964, 1970, undated; Series 2. Nepal, 1959-1990, undated; Series 3. Professional activities, 1949-2001, undated; Series 4. Slides, 1961, 1973-1978, undated.
Biographical note:
1924 -- Robert I. Levy was born on June 1st in New York, New York.
1947 -- M.D. Degree, New York University, College of Medicine.
1953-1956 -- Army Medical Corps, Neuropsychiatric and Psychiatric Services, Germany.
1954 -- Specialty certification in psychiatry. American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.
1956-1962 -- Private psychiatry practice. Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of California, School of Medicine. Attending Psychiatrist, Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute, San Francisco, California. Adjunct in psychiatry, Mount Zion Hospital, San Francisco, California.
1961 -- Fellow, American Psychiatric Association.
1961-1964 -- From July-August 1961 and July 1962-June 1964, field work in French Polynesia. Grants from the National Institute for Mental Health and the National Science Foundation.
1964-1966 -- Research Associate, Anthropology, Bishop Museum, Honolulu. Senior Scholar, Institute of Advanced Projects, East-West Center;
1966-1967 -- Visiting Associate Professor of Public Health, University of Hawaii.
1967-1969 -- Research Professor, Social Science Research Institute of Hawaii; Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaii.
1969-1991 -- Professor of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego.
1973-1976 -- Field work in Nepal. National Science Foundation grant.
1990-1991 -- Fellow, National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, NC.
1991-2003 -- Research Professor of Anthropology, Duke University. Research Professor of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego;
1996 -- Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
2003 -- Died August 29th in Asolo, Italy.
Robert I. Levy was a professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) from 1969 until his retirement in 1991 who was known for his ground breaking work in psychological anthropology. Born in 1924 in New York, New York, he originally trained in medicine and psychiatry (M.D. Degree, New York University, 1947). Levy was lured into anthropology in the early 1960s by Douglas Oliver to work on a field project in Tahiti. Levy spent a total of 26 months from 1961-1964 conducting research in Tahiti focused on aspects of Tahitian culture and psychological organization. The resulting book Tahitians: Mind and Experience in the Society Islands (1973) was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award. Levy went on to complete field work in Nepal in the traditional Hindu city of Bhaktapur, from 1973-1976 conducting research on social organization, culture, and their psychological correlates. The culmination of his research, Mesocosm: Hinduism and the Organization of a Traditional Newar City in Nepal, was published in 1990.
Prior to joining the faculty at UCSD, Levy was a senior scholar at the East-West Center, a research associate at the Bishop Museum, and a professor at the University of Hawaii, all in Honolulu. He was also the associate editor of ETHOS from 1971-1979 and received fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, CA (1985-1986) and the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, NC (1990-1991). After his retirement from UCSD in 1991 Levy was appointed a Research Professor of Anthropology at both the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Duke University. He died in 2003 in Asolo, Italy.
Source consulted:
Hollan, Douglas 2005 "Mind and Experience in Tahiti, Nepal, and Beyond." ETHOS. Vol. 33, No. 4, Special Section in Honor of Robert I. Levy (Dec., 2005), pp. 430-432.
Provenance:
These papers were donated to the National Anthropological Archives by Robert Levy's wife,
Nerys Levy, in 2014.
Restrictions:
Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice.
The Robert I. Levy papers are open for research.
Access to the Robert I. Levy papers requires an appointment.
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