Paul Radin

Paul Radin (April 2, 1883 – February 21, 1959) was an American linguist, anthropologist, and ethnographer, famous for his work on the ethnology of religion and mythology, and his fieldwork among Native Americans of California and the Great Lakes.

Life

Paul Radin was born on April 2, 1883 in Lodz, Russia (today Poland), into the family of Adolf and Johanna Radin. His father was a physician and a rabbi of the reform movement, who took his five children and wife and immigrated to Elmira, New York in 1884. Paul's two sisters died soon after their arrival, from scarlet fewer. The family eventually moved to New York City in 1890.

Radin graduated from the City College of New York in 1902, and enrolled in Columbia University to study zoology. However, after a trip to Europe (from 1905 to 1907), he decided to change his major to anthropology. Franz Boas had just opened the first Ph.D. program in anthropological studies in the United States a few years earlier, and Radin, together with some prominent names in this area, such as Alfred L. Kroeber, Clark Wissler, Edward Sapir, and Robert Lowie, decided to join.

Radin married in 1910, and earned his Ph.D. in 1911.

Already in 1908, Radin began years of productive fieldwork among the Winnebago Indians of Wisconsin. He published numerous books later in his life on the life and beliefs of the Winnebago people, covering nearly every aspect of their lives.

Radin’s career, however, officially started in 1911, when he was hired by the Bureau of American Ethnology. He spent several years after that in studying Zapotec mythology and linguistics. In 1914, he and his friend Sapir went to work for the Geological Survey of Canada, for which they studied Ojibwa Indians.

In 1918, Radin moved to California, where he worked on the University of California Berkeley together with Kroeber and Lowie.

In 1920, Radin went to Europe to work in Cambridge University. There he became increasingly interested in the works of Carl Jung, especially on mythology.

In 1925, he returned to America, and started his work for the University of Michigan, studying the Ottawa Indians. From 1927 to 1930 he worked at Fisk University, and in 1930 he went back to Berkeley. Radin spent the next ten years in California, doing fieldwork among different California Indians, and among minority groups of the San Francisco area. By the end of this period, he married his second wife, Doris Woodward.

From 1941 to 1944, Radin taught at Black Mountain College, and then moved back to Berkeley where he stayed until 1949. He became editor of the Indiana University Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics in 1948, maintaining that responsibility for the rest of his life.

Radin decided to move permanently to Europe in 1949, where for the next three years he lectured in Sweden and Switzerland. He finally settled down in Lugano, Switzerland in 1952, becoming a professor at the C.G. Jung Institute. At the same time he sporadically taught at Oxford, Cambridge, and Manchester universities. In 1957, he moved again, to teach at Brandeis University.

Radin died in 1959, in New York City.

Work

As with Radin’s life which is characterized by constant flux—moving from university to university, teaching here and there—his work can also be seen as rather paradoxical. Radin was strongly influenced by Boasian cultural relativism. On the one side, he tried to explain religion in Freudian terms, yet on the other side he believed in genuine religious experience. Moreover, although being a Jew himself, he advocated for the similarities of Jewish scriptures with other sacred texts, pointing to the general nature of revelation in world religions.

In his Primitive Religion (1937) Radin claimed that all religious experiences are similar in nature. That this is true can best be seen in the example of mythologies from different parts of the world, which all share common themes. To understand the history of a certain culture, Radin suggested starting by study of its mythologies and beliefs. With this claim, Radin was probably one of the first anthropologists who approached the study of culture from within the human mind – that of the thought process itself.

Radin advocated for an individualistic approach to culture-studies. He believed that ethnographical study should start with the interpretation of the culture from the perspective of a member of that culture. The interpretation would be in the language of the culture, through the knowledge of the culture’s history, and in the environment of the culture (Radin 1987, pp.184-186)

His autobiographical sketch of a Winnebago Indian, Crashing Thunder (1926) is still widely read today. In it Radin, through the eyes of one of the members of the Winnebago tribe, described the world of change and chaos, the way it was experienced by the Indian. This book was a landmark in American anthropology, being the first autobiographical study of this kind.

Radin was widely interested in the use of psychology in anthropological studies. He wanted to understand human nature, and the connection between individual character and collective phenomena. Radin believed that in every culture, regardless of how primitive it appeared, the degree of religiosity among its people is similar, ranging from indifferent (people who do not care about spirituality) to deep (people with profound spiritual experiences). Radin thus made a distinction between “religious” and “non-religious” people. In addition, reflective individuals can be found in every culture. Radin called such individuals the “thinkers.” On the other hand, there are always people who are more practice oriented, and who are not thinkers. Radin called them the “men of action.”

Radin rejected Freudian and Marxist ideas of the exploitative nature of religion, which claim that religion is frequently used to dominate people. Radin was aware that religion can indeed be used by religious figures or movements as a means to control others, but he claimed that in primitive societies such domination was nowhere to be found. It is probable, argued Radin, that the idea of religion as a controlling force is the product of our “civilized” society.

Legacy

Radin preferred to be an independent scholar. He thought that academic affiliation limited one freedom of expression, so he never stayed within one academic institution for longer than few years. As a student and a follower of Franz Boas, Radin belongs to the group of scholars who left a significant mark on the development of anthropology as a modern science. Through his work he thus influenced numerous generations of anthropologists who followed the Boasian method.

Radin’s approach to ethnography, from within the mind of a member of the culture under investigation, is perhaps not revolutionary itself. However, his insistence on psychology as the door to understanding culture is. With this, Radin opened the field of culture-and-personality studies. He also pioneered the autobiographical method in anthropological study.

As a linguist, Radin described a number of North American languages, developing a classification scheme that emphasized their unity.

Radin's ideas attracted the interest of individuals from different fields of study, including historian and critic, Lewis Mumford, psychoanalyst Carl Jung, poet John Crowe Ransom, and philosopher John Dewey.

Publications

• Radin, Paul. 1927. Primitive Man as Philosopher. Dover Publications Inc. ISBN 0486203921
• Radin, Paul. 1933. Social anthropology. McGraw-Hill
• Radin, Paul. 1934. The racial myth. Whittlesey house, McGraw-Hill book company.
• Radin, Paul. 1937. Primitive Religion: Its Nature and Origin. Dover Publications. ISBN 048620393X
• Radin, Paul. 1946. Indians of South America. Doubleday & Company, Inc.
• Radin, Paul. 1969 (original work from 1956). The Trickster: A Study in Native American Mythology. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0837121124
• Radin, Paul. 1971. The Golden Mountain. Oriental Book Store. ISBN 0899860168
• Radin, Paul. 1975. The Italians of San Francisco. Ayer Co Pub. ISBN 0405064152
• Radin, Paul. 1983. (original work from 1926). Crashing Thunder (The Native American Autobiography Series). University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803289103
• Radin, Paul. 1987. African Folktales (New Ed. edition). Schocken. ISBN 0805207325
• Radin, Paul. 1987. (original work from 1933). The Method and Theory of Ethnology. Bergin & Garvey Paperback. ISBN 089789118X
• Radin, Paul. 1990. (original work from 1923). The Winnebago Tribe. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803257104
• Radin, Paul. 1991. The Road of Life and Death. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691019169

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Diamond, Stanley. 1960. Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin. Octagon Books. ISBN 0374921555

• Hoijer, Harry 1959 Paul Radin: 1883-1959. American Anthropologist, 61, 839-843

• Lindberg, Christer 2000. Paul Radin: The Anthropological Trickster. European Review of Native American Studies, 14(1)

• Lurie, N.O. 1989. Relations between Indians and Anthropologists. In William C. Sturtevant & Wilcomb E. Washburn (Eds.), Handbook of North American Indians: History of Indian-White Relations (Vol. 4). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0160045835

• Vidich, Arthur J. 1965. Paul Radin and Contemporary Anthropology. Social Research, 32, 375-407.

External links

• Paul Radin's Winnebago Notebooks at the American Philosophical Library

• Paul Radin Papers - Special Collection at Marquette University Libraries

• Paul Radin – Short biography

• Biography of Paul Radin – Radin’s biography in Encyclopedia Britannica

• Winnebago Tribe – Some historical facts on Winnebago Indians

• Clothes of Winnebago Indians – Some photos of dolls in Winnebago clothing

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