Milton Borah Singer (July 5, 1912 – 1994) was a leading American

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...

and expert on Indian studies. He was a professor 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 ...

. Singer was the first to use the phrase Semiotic Anthropology in 1978.

Biography

Singer was born to Julius Singer and Esther Greenberg in Poland on July 5, 1912. His parents emigrated to the United States, settling in Detroit in 1920, and the family was naturalized in 1921. Singer received a B.A. in psychology in 1934 and an M.A. in philosophy in 1936, both from the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

. His M.A. thesis, "George Herbert Mead's Social-Behavioristic Theory of Mind," prefigured his move to the

, where he completed a dissertation "On Formal Method in Mathematical Logic," under the supervision of

Rudolf Carnap Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. He ...

, in 1940. He was a social science instructor at the University of Chicago in 1941 and a director of the social sciences department from 1947 to 1952, and in 1954 he became a professor of anthropology until his retirement in 1979. In the early 1960s, he organized studies in South Asia. He traveled to India in his fieldwork, during the years 1954–1955, 1960–1961 and 1964, also developing important contact with researchers of this country. His research centered on the discussion of tradition in the industrialized city of Madras and the Sanskrit tradition in modern urban centers. In the years 1970 and 1980 Singer directs his interests to the studies of the historical roots of the anthropological theories and also of the cultural symbolism. His field work focuses on comparative research into the modernization of American culture in Newburyport, Massachusetts and India, including a deepening of studies of logic and philosophy.

References

External links

Guide to the Milton Singer Papers 1925-1999
at th
University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:Singer, Milton Polish anthropologists Jewish anthropologists University of Chicago faculty University of Chicago alumni University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts alumni 1912 births 1994 deaths Academics from Detroit Naturalized citizens of the United States 20th-century American anthropologists