Alan Page Fiske (born 1947) is an American professor of

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

, known for studying the nature of human relationships and cross-cultural variations between them.

Early life

Fiske was born in 1947. His father,

Donald W. Fiske Donald Winslow Fiske (August 27, 1916 – April 6, 2003) was an American psychologist. Early life Donald W. Fiske was born on August 27, 1916 in Lincoln, Nebraska. He grew up in Medford, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University and in ...

, was a professor of psychology at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. His sister, Susan Fiske, is a social psychologist and Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at the Princeton University Department of Psychology. Fiske earned a bachelor's degree (

Cum Laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

) in Social Relations from

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

in 1968. He went on to earn a master's degree in 1973 and a PhD in 1985, both from the

, focusing on cross-cultural problems and human development.Curriculum vitae
Alan Fiske, Social Sciences division of UCLA

Career

Between earning degrees, Fiske worked as a director and consultant to the

Peace Corps The Peace Corps is an independent agency and program of the United States government that trains and deploys volunteers to provide international development assistance. It was established in March 1961 by an executive order of President John F. ...

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

and Upper Volta, and as consultant to

USAID The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 bi ...

for the

Central African Republic The Central African Republic (CAR; ; , RCA; , or , ) is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan to the northeast, South Sudan to the southeast, the DR Congo to the south, the Republic of th ...

. Fiske held various professorships at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

UCSD The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...

, and

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United St ...

, before obtaining a full professorship at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

in 2002. There he is former director of the Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture, and of the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development. His areas of research interest include

psychological anthropology Psychological anthropology is an interdisciplinary subfield of anthropology that studies the interaction of cultural and mental processes. This subfield tends to focus on ways in which humans' development and enculturation within a particular ...

, social relationships, and theories of violence. Fiske is the author of

Relational Models Theory Relational models theory (RMT) is a theory of interpersonal relationships, authored by anthropologist Alan Fiske and initially developed from his fieldwork in Burkina Faso. RMT proposes that all human interactions can be described in terms of just ...

and, with Tage Rai, the author of Virtuous Violence Theory - the idea that violence is largely motivated by the evolved social relations models which underlie moral behavior in Fiske's theory, and that this violence is therefore experienced as justified by the perpetrators in the same way that forceful opposition to perpetrators of violence is perceived as laudable and moral.

Publications

* ''Virtuous Violence'' (2015). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * ''Structures of Social Life: The Four Elementary Forms of Human Relations'' (1991). New York: Free Press (Macmillan). * * * A.P. Fiske, S. Kitayama, H. Markus, & D. Nisbett 1997. "The Cultural Matrix of Social Psychology". In ''Handbook of Social Psychology'', 4th Ed. Gilber, S. Fiske, & G. Lindzey, Eds. pp. 915–981. New York: McGraw Hill. * * * "Four Modes of Constituting Relationships: Consubstantial Assimilation; Space, Magnitude, Time and Force; Concrete Procedures; Abstract Symbolism" (2004) In N. Haslam, Ed., ''Relational Models Theory: A Contemporary Overview''. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fiske, Alan Living people American anthropologists American anthropology writers American male non-fiction writers Anthropology educators University of California, Los Angeles faculty Writers from California Cultural anthropologists Harvard College alumni University of Chicago alumni 1947 births