Hortense Powdermaker. A sociocultural anthropologist ahead of her time

Abstract

The text presents elements of the life and work of the American anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker, with some information about her social origin in a Jewish family in the Northern part of the United States, and her social commitment that made her contribute to the trade union development in her region. The text discusses her fieldwork in four different regions: in Melanesia, in the Deep South in the United States, in Hollywood and in central Africa, but above all attention is drawn to the methodological features that are a result of her studies of anthropology with Malinowski in London and the characteristic style inherited from her work with Edward Sapir at Yale in the United States. In the first part of the text mention is made of her career of thirty years´ teaching of anthropology at a college in New York.