Citizenship American Role Anthropologist Nationality American | Doctoral advisor Clyde Kluckhohn Fields Social anthropology Name Elizabeth Colson | |
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Born June 15, 1917 (age 106)
Hewitt, Minnesota ( 1917-06-15 ) Known for Study of the Gwembe Tonga Influences Wilson Wallis
Ruth Sawtell Wallis
Clyde Kluckhohn
Robert Marett
Max Gluckman
Meyer Fortes
E.E. Evans-Pritchard
Lucy Mair
Raymond Firth Notable awards Lewis Henry Morgan Lecturer, University of Rochester (1973)
AAA Distinguished Lecture (1975)
Honorary Degrees, Brown University, Rochester University
National Academy of Sciences (1977) Alma mater University of Minnesota, Radcliffe College Influenced by Wilson Dallam Wallis, Ruth Sawtell Wallis Books Tradition And Contract, The Makah Indians, Tonga Religious Life in the, The social consequences of resettle, For prayer and profit | ||
Residence United States of America | ||
Elizabeth colson interview
Elizabeth Florence Colson (June 15, 1917 – August 3, 2016) was an American social anthropologist and professor emerita of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She was best known for the classic long-term study of the Tonga people of the Gwembe Valley in Zambia and Zimbabwe, which she began in 1956 with Thayer Scudder, 11 years after she obtained her doctorate and while Scudder was a second-year graduate student. Dr. Colson focused her research on the consequences of forced resettlement on culture and social organization, the effects of economic pressure on familial relationships, rituals, religious life, and even drinking patterns.
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Talk by elizabeth colson
Biography
Colson was born in Hewitt, Minnesota on June 15, 1917. She received her bachelor's and master's degrees in anthropology from the University of Minnesota and her Ph.D in Social Anthropology in 1945 from Radcliffe College. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1977 and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978. While at Radcliffe College, she experienced sex-discrimination in academia and would later work to eradicate this discrimination at the University of California. Her work was based on ethnography and focused on long-term, data supported research. Colson later became a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. She died in Monze, Zambia in August 2016 at the age of 99.
Gwembe Tonga Project
In 1956, Elizabeth Colson was sent by the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute to study the potential effects that the construction of a dam and hydro-electric power plant would have on the Gwembe Tonga of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). She partnered with Thayer Scudder in order to collect data on the residents of Gwembe. Colson then outlined the social reactions observed during the resettlement of the Gwembe Tonga in her project report titled "The Social Consequences of Resettlement, the Impact of Kariba Resettlement Upon the Gwembe Tonga". The reactions from the Gwembe expressed in Colson's report include: social upheaval, hostility towards the government, loss of legitimacy of local leaders who supported the resettlement of the Gwembe, increase of force on the part of the aforementioned leaders, and general instability in the Gwembe social structure.
This research directly contributed to the academic discussions of resettlement, migration, and refugee communities in applied and development anthropology. Colson's research with Scudder on the Gwembe and the social and political aspects of their resettlement is ongoing.