© The contents of this finding aid are the copyright of the University of Chicago Library
© 2010 University of Chicago Library
Series VIII contains student evaluative material, which is restricted for 80 years from the date of creation.
When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Smith, Raymond T. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library
Raymond T. Smith was born in 1925 and served in the Royal Air Force before finishing his studies in social anthropology at Pembroke College in Cambridge. He graduated with a PhD in anthropology in 1954 and then worked at the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. It was there that he began his field research into economic and kinship studies in the West Indies and particularly in British Guiana.
Before settling in at the University of Chicago in 1966, Smith gained teaching experience at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Ghana, West Africa, and McGill University, Montreal. Smith retired from the University of Chicago in 1995.
Smith’s research interests include race, class and class consciousness, gender, kinship, poverty, family life, social and political transformations, and social and cultural change among African and East Indian populations.
The collection consists of research conducted for Smith’s USA & West Indies Kinship Project and consists largely of interviews and mapped genealogies of subjects in Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica, and Chicago. Smith was assisted in his Interviews by students and sometimes by subjects who became interviewers. The interviewer is identified when possible.
Series I contains the materials from the West Indies Kinship Studies. In this section are summaries, interviews and genealogies produced by fieldwork in the Caribbean from the 1950’s and 1960’s.
Series II contains the materials from Smith’s research in British Guiana. Included here are the general research materials and the summaries, interviews and genealogies collected in the original study in the 1950’s and in the re-study in the 1970’s.
Series III contains summaries, interviews and geneologies from subjects in Jamaica.
Series IV contains the materials from the Urban Family Life Project conducted in Chicago from the 1960’s until the 1980’s. This section includes summaries, interviews and genealogies.
Series V contains Smith’s correspondence between colleagues, students, publishers, and in particular correspondence concerning the Anthropology Department at the University of Chicago.
Series VI contains essays written by Raymond T. Smith and reprints by his colleagues.
Series VII contains the oversize materials which consist mainly of genealogies and maps.
Series VIII contains the materials that are restricted because they are evaluative materials concerning students and colleagues.