Professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...
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 ...
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
from 1950 until his death in 1986. He made considerable contributions to the fields of
social
Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not.
Etymology
The word "social" derives from ...
and
political theory
Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, l ...
.
Fried attended
Townsend Harris High School
Townsend Harris High School at Queens College (THHS) is a public magnet high school for the humanities in the borough of Queens in New York City. Students and alumni often refer to themselves as "Harrisites." Townsend Harris consistently ranks a ...
and then the
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...
. At City College, he was originally an English major but changed to anthropology. While a student at CCNY, Fried and his friend Richard F. Shepard formed the Mundial Upheaval Society, which later flourished at Columbia University.
Fried served in the
U.S. Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...
during World War II, after one year of graduate work in anthropology at Columbia. In the Army, he was sent to Harvard to learn Chinese and he went on to specialize in the anthropology of China, earning his Ph.D. at Columbia in 1951. He did fieldwork in 1947,'48 in Anhwei Province, China, and published his research in ''The Fabric of Chinese Society'' (1953).
His mentors were
Julian Steward
Julian Haynes Steward (January 31, 1902 – February 6, 1972) was an American anthropologist known best for his role in developing "the concept and method" of cultural ecology, as well as a scientific theory of culture change.
Early life and edu ...
and
Karl Wittfogel
Karl August Wittfogel (6 September 1896 – 25 May 1988) was a German-American playwright, historian, and sinologist. He was originally a Marxist and an active member of the Communist Party of Germany, but after the Second World War, he was an ...
.
His cohort included
Elman Service
Elman Rogers Service (1915–1996) was an American cultural anthropologist.
Biography
He was born on May 18, 1915 in Tecumseh, Michigan and died on November 14, 1996 in Santa Barbara, California. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1941 from the ...
,
Eric Wolf
Eric Robert Wolf (February 1, 1923 – March 6, 1999) was an anthropologist, best known for his studies of peasants, Latin America, and his advocacy of Marxist perspectives within anthropology.
Early life Life in Vienna
Wolf was born in V ...
,
Sidney Mintz
Sidney Wilfred Mintz (November 16, 1922 – December 27, 2015) was an American anthropologist best known for his studies of the Caribbean, creolization, and the anthropology of food. Mintz received his PhD at Columbia University in 1951 and cond ...
and
Stanley Diamond
Stanley Diamond (January 4, 1922 in New York City, NY – March 31, 1991 in New York City, NY) was an American poet and anthropologist. As a young man, he identified as a poet, and his disdain for the fascism of the 1930s greatly influenced ...
. His first graduate teaching assistant was
Marvin Harris
Marvin Harris (August 18, 1927 – October 25, 2001) was an American anthropologist. He was born in Brooklyn, New York City. A prolific writer, he was highly influential in the development of cultural materialism and environmental determinism ...
and his first graduate student was
Marshall Sahlins
Marshall David Sahlins ( ; December 27, 1930April 5, 2021) was an American cultural anthropologist best known for his ethnographic work in the Pacific and for his contributions to anthropological theory. He was the Charles F. Grey Distinguished ...
.
He taught one semester at Yale University during the All Term of 1965. He was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan for one year, 1960-61.
He married Martha Nemes, and the couple had two children, Nancy Fried Foster, an anthropologist and Elman Steven Fried, a writer and filmmaker.
A resident of
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', December 20, 1986. Accessed May 16, 2016. "Dr. Morton H. Fried, a professor of anthropology at Columbia University, died of cardiac arrest Thursday night at his home in Leonia, N.J."
Select bibliography
*Fried, Morton H. 1959. ''Readings in anthropology.'' New York: Crowell.
*Fried, Morton H. 1960. ''On the evolution of social stratification and the state.'' Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
*Fried, Morton. 1965. "A Four Letter Word that Hurts." SATURDAY REVIEW, October 2,. 1965
*Fried, Morton H. 1967. ''The evolution of political society an essay in political anthropology.'' Random House studies in anthropology, AS 7. New York: Random House.
*American Anthropological Association, Morton H. Fried, Marvin Harris, and Robert Francis Murphy. 1968. ''War: the anthropology of armed conflict and aggression.'' Garden City, N.Y.: Published for the American Museum of Natural History ythe Natural History Press.
*Fried, Morton H. 1969. ''Fabric of Chinese society; a study of the social life of a Chinese county seat.'' New York: Octagon Books.
*Fried, Morton H. 1975. ''The notion of tribe.'' Menlo Park, Calif: Cummings Pub. Co.
*Fried, Martha Nemes, and Morton H. Fried. 1980. ''Transitions: four rituals in eight cultures.'' New York: Norton.
*Fried, Morton H. 1987. ''Reflections on Christianity in China.'' AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST 14:1, Frontiers of Christian Evangelism, (Feb., 1987): 94-106.