Oscar Lewis, born Lefkowitz (December 25, 1914 – December 16, 1970) was an 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 ...

. He is best known for his vivid depictions of the lives of

slum A slum is a highly populated urban residential area consisting of densely packed housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty. The infrastructure in slums is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are primarily inh ...

dwellers and his argument that a cross-generational

culture of poverty The culture of poverty is a concept in social theory that asserts that the values of people experiencing poverty play a significant role in perpetuating their impoverished condition, sustaining a cycle of poverty across generations. It attracted ...

transcends national boundaries. Lewis contended that the cultural similarities occurred because they were "common adaptations to common problems" and that "the culture of poverty is both an adaptation and a reaction of the poor classes to their marginal position in a class-stratified, highly individualistic, capitalistic society."Whitman, Alden
"Oscar Lewis, Author and Anthropologist, Dead; U. of Illinois Professor, 55, Wrote of Slum Dwellers"
''

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 18, 1970. Retrieved 2009-08-04. He won the 1967 U.S.

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

in Science, Philosophy and Religion for '' La vida: a Puerto Rican family in the culture of poverty--San Juan and New York''."National Book Awards – 1967"
National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-05.

Early life and education

Lewis was the son of a rabbi, born 1914 in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and raised on a small farm in upstate New York. He received a bachelor's degree in

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

in 1936 from

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 ...

, where he met his future wife and research associate, Ruth Maslow. As a graduate student at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, he became dissatisfied with the History Department at Columbia. At the suggestion of his brother-in-law,

Abraham Maslow Abraham Harold Maslow (; April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, cul ...

, Lewis had a conversation with Ruth Benedict of the Anthropology Department. He switched departments and then received a Ph.D. in

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 ...

from Columbia in 1940. His Ph.D. dissertation on the effects of contact with

white people White is a racialized classification of people and a skin color specifier, generally used for people of European origin, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, and point of view. Description of populations as ...

on the Blackfeet Indians was published in 1942.

Career

Lewis taught at

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls about 15,000 undergraduate and 2,800 graduate students on a 35-acre campus. Being New York City's first publ ...

, and Washington University, and helped to found the anthropology department at the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

Urbana-Champaign. His most controversial book was ‘La Vida’ that chronicled the life of Puerto Rican prostitute, living with her sixth husband, who was raising her children in conditions unimaginable to many middle-class American readers. He died in New York City of heart failure, at age 55 in 1970, and was buried in

New Montefiore Cemetery New Montefiore Cemetery is a Jewish cemetery located in West Babylon, New York. History Montefiore Cemetery Corporation had been maintaining Montefiore Cemetery in Springfield Gardens, Queens since 1908. The corporation bought 250 acres from Pine ...

West Babylon, Suffolk County, New York West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some R ...

Books

* ''High Sierra Country'', 1955 * ''Five Families; Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty'', 1959 * ''Life in a Mexican Village; Tepoztlán restudied'', 1960 irst edition 1951* '' The Children of Sanchez, Autobiography of a Mexican Family'', 1961 * ''Pedro Martinez - A Mexican Peasant and His Family'', 1964 * ''La Vida; A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York'', 1966 * ''A Death in the Sánchez Family'', 1969 * ''Village Life in Northern India''

References

External links

Oscar Lewis
at

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

Authorities — with 18 catalog records {{DEFAULTSORT:Lewis, Oscar 1914 births 1970 deaths Columbia University alumni National Book Award winners Brooklyn College faculty Washington University in St. Louis faculty University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty City College of New York alumni Scientists from New York City 20th-century American anthropologists