Robert B. Edgerton

Robert Breckenridge Edgerton (28 November 1931 – July 2016) was an American anthropologist.

Biography

Edgerton received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and his doctorate in the Department of Anthropology at UCLA.

He started his 47-year career at UCLA in 1961 as a Research Anthropologist in the Department of Anthropology. He was appointed Instructor-in-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry in 1962, advancing until 1972, when he became Professor-in-Residence in the Departments of Psychiatry and Anthropology. He served for 14 years as Associate Chair for Academic Affairs in the Department of Psychiatry and 10 years as Assistant Dean in the Dean’s Office (Academic Affairs) of the School of Medicine. Prior to these appointments, Edgerton served as a Member and Chair of the Campus Academic Personnel Committee (CAP). He served as the Director and the Associate Director of the UCLA Mental Retardation Research Center and as Director of the UCLA Center for Culture and Health.

Edgerton was elected Fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award at UCLA in 1974. He served as President of the Society for Medical Anthropology (1976–77) and President of the Society for Psychological Anthropology (1985–86), where he also received the Distinguished Career Research Award, both in the American Anthropological Association.

Robert B. Edgerton was buried at the Arlington National Cemetery.

Works

• Drunken Comportment (1969; with Craig MacAndrew)
• The Individual in Cultural Adaptation: A Study of Four East African Societies (1971)
• Mental Retardation (1979)
• Deviance: A Cross-cultural Perspective (1976)
• Like Lions They Fought: The Zulu War and the Last Black Empire in South Africa (1988)
• Mau Mau: An African Crucible (1989)
• Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony (1992)
• The Cloak of Competence: Stigma in the Lives of the Mentally Retarded (1993)
• Warriors of the Rising Sun: A History of the Japanese Military (1997)
• Warrior Women: The Amazons of Dahomey and the Nature of War (2000)

References

• Amit, Vered (2004). Biographical Dictionary of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London: Routledge.

External links

• Works by Robert B. Edgerton at Unz.com
• Works by Robert B. Edgerton at JSTOR