ABSTRACT
The primary intellectual influence of Redfield’s life was his father-in-law, Chicago sociologist Robert E. Park. Park had encouraged Redfield to pursue a career in social science, and from the time Redfield was in graduate school through his early years as a professor, Park exerted a profound influence on Redfield’s thinking. Much of their interaction took place through letters, in which they often discussed social scientific topics. The letter reprinted here reflects Park’s response to his reading of “Sociological Investigation in Yucatan.” At the time of the paper’s publication, Park was in Honolulu teaching at the University of Hawaii. Park responded enthusiastically to Redfield’s description of his Yucatan study and offered Redfield several ideas which were to exercise profound influence upon his thinking and practice. Most important, Park urged Redfield to ground his study more theoretically, drawing especially upon the conceptualization Park had used in his own writings in which he conceived social change as a dynamic in which family-based societies (tribes) eventually gave way to territory-based societies (states). Park urged Redfield not only to seek to use this analytic framework in his Yucatan research, but also as an organizing principle for the basic ethnology course he had begun to teach at the University of Chicago. Park’s suggestions resonated strongly with Redfield, and they exercised a shaping influence in his work over his entire career. Park’s notions clearly underlie Redfield’s later formulation of his Folk-Urban Continuum, and the ethnology course Redfield organized along Park’s suggested lines became Redfield’s trademark course “The Folk Society.” Redfield recognized the profound influence of this letter upon his thinking and, while organizing his papers late in his life, penciled “of historical interest” at the top of the first page.
