Clyde Kluckhohn

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Clyde Kluckhohn (January 11, 1905 – July 28, 1960) was an American anthropologist and social thinker best known for his long study of the Navajo and for helping shape theories about culture in anthropology.

Born in Le Mars, Iowa, he started college at Princeton but had to pause because of ill health. While recovering in New Mexico, he met the Navajo people and began a lifelong interest in their language and culture. He wrote two popular books based on his experiences in Navajo country: To the Foot of the Rainbow (1927) and Beyond the Rainbow (1933). He finished his AB in Greek at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1928, then studied at Corpus Christi College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (1928–1930) and spent two years studying anthropology at the University of Vienna.

Kluckhohn taught at the University of New Mexico (1932–1934) before earning his PhD at Harvard in 1936, where he spent the rest of his career as a professor in Social Anthropology and later Social Relations. In 1949, he helped lead a major cross-cultural study in the American Southwest and, with his wife Florence Rockwood Kluckhohn and colleagues, developed the Values Orientation Theory. This approach looks at five parts of life to understand cultures and improve communication: Human Nature, Man-Nature Relationship, Time, Activity, and Social Relations. The method was further developed by Florence and others in later years.

Kluckhohn received numerous honors, including serving as president of the American Anthropological Association in 1947 and becoming the first director of Harvard’s Russian Research Center. His book Mirror for Man won a McGraw Hill award for popular science writing in 1947. He later wrote that genetic differences among populations likely affect certain abilities, marking a shift in thoughts about race.

He died of a heart attack on July 28, 1960, in a cabin near Santa Fe, New Mexico, at age 55. He was survived by his wife, Florence Rockwood Kluckhohn, and their son, Richard. Most of his papers are at Harvard University, with some early manuscripts at the University of Iowa.