description Roy D'Andrade Overview
Roy D'Andrade (1931–2016) was an American cognitive anthropologist who played a foundational role in advancing schema theory within the discipline. His research utilized quantitative methods to study how cultural knowledge is organized, shared, and transmitted across generations. In the 1990s, he also authored a prominent critical essay that sparked widespread debate regarding objectivity, moralism, and scientific advocacy in anthropological research.
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What did Roy D'Andrade contribute to cognitive anthropology?
D'Andrade helped explain culture as shared systems of knowledge organized through schemas and models. His work joined ethnographic questions with psychological experiments and quantitative analysis.
What is a cultural schema in D'Andrade's work?
A cultural schema is a learned framework that helps people interpret situations and choose actions. D'Andrade examined how such schemas can be socially shared without being identical in every person's mind.
What is The Development of Cognitive Anthropology about?
D'Andrade's 1995 book traces approaches including componential analysis, folk taxonomies, schemas, and cultural models. It is widely used as an intellectual history of cognitive anthropology.
Why was Roy D'Andrade involved in anthropology's science debate?
D'Andrade defended systematic explanation and empirical testing as important anthropological goals. He famously debated Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who argued for a more explicitly moral and politically engaged anthropology.
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