Intro
The volume of papers presented here is not, nor is it designed to be, a complete collection of all that Robert Redfield wrote or said publicly. The selection is intended to illustrate his ideas on the study of man in society. The descriptive reporting of his early ethnography and the public lectures or writings in which were discussed for a general audience subjects dealt with more systematically elsewhere have been omitted not only for lack of space but also so that emphasis could be placed more clearly upon the organizing ideas of his work. (A list of published papers which might have been included but were not is given in the Appendix. A second volume is to contain the papers on race, education, “the commands of reason,” and the good life.)
In a collection of this sort there must be of necessity some repetition.
But Redfield disliked repeating himself-he found it almost impossible, for example, to teach a subject in exactly the same way two years running. Thus in each of these papers directed toward his colleagues in social science some new point of illumination will, I think, be found.
Though there has been in the past some lack of understanding of Redfield’s special point of view, it can hardly have been because of difficulties of language. Redfield did not believe in scientific jargon. If a man understood what he was saying, he could usually say it simply. “The plain word is all that is needed until the plain word will no longer say precisely enough just what the meaning demands.” But the plain word does not have to everyone the ring of science; simplicity and lucidity may even be suspect. Again Redfield did not set up rigid systems or models which he felt he must defend against the destructive criticism of others. He liked, he said, “to look all round a subject,” and in this process of looking round to take account of and derive stimulus from the varied discoveries and insights of many different kinds of people. This was neither humility nor generosity-though both these elements entered in-so much as a capacity and zest for learning. He devised concepts as tools for understanding, for examining and asking further questions rather than for answering and finishing off.
It might be said that, once intellectually mature, his basic ideas never changed. They did not change so much as expand, taking in more and more, growing in the process not less clear but more so, not more superficial but more profound. At his death, at approaching sixty-one, he was still looking freshly at the world.
Redfield has been called, not unkindly, a humanist and poet, sometimes with the implication that such qualities get in the way of science. But his first serious thoughts of a profession were toward the field of natural science, zoology in particular. And his boyish notebooks, full of self-directed, systematic observations on birds and pond life, his guide to mushrooms, represent his youthful interests even more than do his early poetry. Personally acquainted with and sympathetic to the methods of natural science, he came later to criticize those scientists who in the study of man imitated the natural scientists instead of working out methods in accordance with the special needs of social science-needs which, he thought, could only be fully satisfied by the student’s use of his own humanity. Humanistic insight combined with the critical and detached and generalizing methods of science-this was the goal toward which Redfield strove. This point of view was perhaps his most important contribution to social anthropology and to social science in general.
I acknowledge gratefully the kindness and help given me, as ever to my husband, by the members of the anthropology department of the University of Chicago, especially Fred Eggan, Milton Singer, and Sol Tax. In addition, Raymond Firth made a number of valuable suggestions, and Lisa Peattie and James Redfield shared my interest and contributed, each in his own way. Barbara Dwyer gave much welcome secretarial assistance.
Margaret Park Redfield