Morton Fried

Morton Herbert Fried (March 21, 1923 in Bronx, New York – December 18, 1986 in Leonia, New Jersey), was a distinguished professor of anthropology at Columbia University in New York City from 1950 until his death in 1986. He made considerable contributions to the fields of social and political theory.

Biography Fried attended Townsend Harris High School and then the City College of New York. At City College, he was originally an English major but changed to anthropology. While a student at CCNY, Fried and his friend Richard F. Shepard formed the Mundial Upheaval Society, which later flourished at Columbia University.

Fried served in the U.S. Army during World War II, after one year of graduate work in anthropology at Columbia. In the Army, he was sent to Harvard to learn Chinese and he went on to specialize in the anthropology of China, earning his Ph.D. at Columbia in 1951.

Select bibliography Fried, Morton H. 1959. Readings in anthropology. New York: Crowell. Fried, Morton H. 1960. On the evolution of social stratification and the state. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Fried, Morton. 1965. "A Four Letter Word that Hurts." SATURDAY REVIEW, October 2. 1965 Fried, Morton H. 1967. The evolution of political society an essay in political anthropology. Random House studies in anthropology, AS 7. New York: Random House. American Anthropological Association, Morton H. Fried, Marvin Harris, and Robert Francis Murphy. 1968. War: the anthropology of armed conflict and aggression. Garden City, N.Y.: Published for the American Museum of Natural History [by] the Natural History Press. Fried, Morton H. 1969. Fabric of Chinese society; a study of the social life of a Chinese county seat. New York: Octagon Books. Fried, Morton H. 1975. The notion of tribe. Menlo Park, Calif: Cummings Pub. Co. Fried, Martha Nemes, and Morton H. Fried. 1980. Transitions: four rituals in eight cultures. New York: Norton. Fried, Morton H. 1987. Reflections on Christianity in China. AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST 14:1, Frontiers of Christian Evangelism, (Feb., 1987): 94-106.