) was an American psychiatrist

Psychiatry

Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...

 and anthropologist

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

 known for his fieldwork in Tahiti

Tahiti

Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...

 and Nepal

Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

 and on the cross-cultural study of emotions. Though he did not receive a formal degree in anthropology, he spent most of his adult life conducting anthropological fieldwork or teaching in departments of anthropology. In developing his approach to anthropology, he credited his cousin, the anthropologist Roy Rappaport

Roy Rappaport

Roy A. Rappaport was a distinguished anthropologist known for his contributions to the anthropological study of ritual and to ecological anthropology.-Biography:...

, and Gregory Bateson

Gregory Bateson

Gregory Bateson was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. He had a natural ability to recognize order and pattern in the universe...

 (another famous anthropologist who never received a graduate degree in anthropology).

Robert Levy initially trained as a psychoanalytic psychiatrist and had a private practice in psychiatry for several years before he became involved in an ethnographic research project in the Society Islands (Tahiti), organized by anthropologist Douglas Oliver. He did field work in the Society Islands for twenty-six months, first during a pilot study in July and August 1961, then for two years between July 1962 and June 1964. He published this research in a number of articles and the book Tahitians: mind and experience in the Society Islands (1973), which was selected as a finalist for the National Book Awards in 1974. In this seminal work both in the ethnography of Polynesia

Polynesia

Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...

n societies and in psychological anthropology

Psychological anthropology

Psychological anthropology is an interdisciplinary subfield of anthropology that studies the interaction of cultural and mental processes. The subfield tends to focus on ways in which humans' development and enculturation within a particular cultural group—with its own history, language, practices,...

, he first demonstrated what he called person-centered ethnography

Person-centered ethnography

Person-centered ethnography is an approach within psychological anthropology that draws on techniques and theories from psychiatry and psychoanalysis to understand how individuals relate to and interact with their sociocultural context. The term was first used by Robert I...

, an approach to fieldwork that drew on his training as a clinical psychiatrist to understand individual feelings, experience, and motivation within a given cultural setting.

From 1964 to 1966 he was a Senior Scholar in the Institute of Advanced Projects at the East-West Center and Research Associate in Anthropology at Bishop Museum, Honolulu. In 1969 he took a faculty position as professor in the newly established anthropology department at the University of California, San Diego

University of California, San Diego

The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...

, where he taught for many years.

His other major fieldwork site was the Newar

Newar

The Newa , Newār or Newāl) are the indigenous people and the creators of the historical civilization of Nepal's Kathmandu Valley. The valley and surrounding territory have been known from ancient times as Nepal Mandala, its limits ever changing through history.Newas have lived in the Kathmandu...

 city of Bhaktapur

Bhaktapur

Bhaktapur , also Bhadgaon or Khwopa is an ancient Newar town in the east corner of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. It is located in Bhaktapur District in the Bagmati Zone...

 in Nepal.

After retiring from UCSD in 1991, he was appointed Research Professor of Anthropology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...

, and Research Professor of Anthropology at Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

.

He received a number of awards for his scholarly activities. He was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996. In 2001 the Society for Psychological Anthropology honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

He died while on holiday in the Italian town of Asolo, from complications of Parkinsons disease.. A number of articles relating to his research, as well as a brief memorial written by his wife, were published in a special volume of Ethos (December 2005, Vol. 33, No. 4), the journal of the Society for Psychological anthropology.

His students included the anthropologists Douglas Hollan, Paula Levin, Steven Parish.

Select bibliography

• Levy, Robert I. (1971) "The community functions of Tahitian male transvestites." Anthropological Quarterly 44:12-21.
• Levy, Robert I. (1973) Tahitians: mind and experience in the Society Islands. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Levy, Robert I. 1984. "Emotion, knowing, and culture." pp. 214–237 in Culture Theory: essays on mind, self, and emotion., edited by R. Shweder and R. LeVine. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Levy, Robert I. 1990. Mesocosm: the organization of a Hindu Newar city in Nepal. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Levy, Robert I. and Douglas Hollan. 1998. "Person-Centered Interviewing and Observation in Anthropology." pp. 333–364 in Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology, edited by H. R. Bernard. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.