Alfred Métraux

Alfred Métraux (1902 with Lausanne - 1963) is a anthropologist of origin Suisse formed with Paris which will obtain American nationality. He is specialist in the people of Latin America, Haiti and the Easter Island.

Its rich person contributions touched many fields: History, Archeology and Ethnography, as its bulky bibliography testifies some.

Biography

  • 1928 : Alfred Métraux supports an arts thesis on the Tupi-Guarani. He founds also the Institute of ethnography of the university of Tucuman (Argentine).
  • 1938 : he is teaching with Berkeley, and Yale. He is also researcher with the Bishop Museum of Honolulu.
  • 1946 : he is attached to the the United Nations.
  • 1947 : he becomes adviser of the department social sciences of UNESCO.
  • 1948 : he is also researcher with the Smithsonian Institution .
  • 1950 to 1962 : he becomes permanent member of the department social sciences of UNESCO.
  • 1953 to 1963 : he is director of study to the Life section of the practical École of the high studies, and directs the seminar “Ethnology and sociology of the indigenous populations of South America” .

Alfred Métraux puts an end to his days in 1963.

Work

Alfred Métraux specialized in the study of the people of South America and Polynesia, in particular in the study the Haitian farming community and the worships Afro-Americans. Besides its work on the Voodoo Haiti in and on the Chamanisme refers always today in Religious anthropology.

Its rich person experiment and his scholarship on the populations indigenous S of South America, off explain his strong contribution to the monumental work Handbook south american Indians published by Steward in 1949.

Its passage to UNESCO, was the occasion to promote many programs of anthropology applied to him, particularly in Amazonia, in the the Andes and in Haiti. Moreover, he fought actively against the Racisme by coordinating the interdisciplinary project at the origin of the publication of the review Racism in front of Science (published as from 1951).

Alfred Métraux remains today in the memory of the anthropologists like a scientist except par, having had a all the more exemplary ethics as it put his work at the service of the Human rights, and having a knowledge of a rare smoothness of the cultures in which it was made the specialist.

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