Ronald Loewe

Ron Loewe was born in East Cleveland in 1957. At the age of two his family moved to South Euclid, Ohio, a white, largely Jewish, working-class community. There he attended Rowland Elementary School and spent much of the next six years in the cloakroom. His third-grade teacher, Ms. Whitney, noted that he was good at math, but didn鈥檛 practice self-control. From 1972-1974 he attended Brush High School where he was one of a small group of hippies (called the family) in a school dominated by greasers and jocks. With the help of Brian Gibbons of the Ohio ACLU, he wrote the Brush High School Student Bill of Rights which is yet to be ratified. After dropping out of Earlham College in 1976 to work with the United Farm Workers Union and travel around Mexico with his girlfriend, he returned to Indiana in 1977 at his mother's insistence to finish his degree. In 1995 he was kicked out of the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in anthropology to make room for more serious students. After reading his dissertation, his father commented that it was 鈥渧ery good,鈥 but he should learn the difference between a comma and semi-colon.  

Professor Loewe鈥檚 dissertation, Ambiguity and Order in Yucatan: A Study of Identity and Statecraft at the Mexican Periphery, is based on two years of fieldwork in Yucatan, first in Calcehtok where he learned Yucatec Maya while planting seedlings in the community orange grove, and sitting for hours under a Ceiba tree, drinking Cerveza Montejo and conversing with villagers. Considered 鈥渢all鈥 for the first time in his life, he was affectionately known as Sak Tsiimin, the great white horse, He later moved to neighboring Maxcanu where he had access to more modern amenities including the pool hall which Sandino hung out in the 1930s when U.S. marines, stationed in Nicaragua, got too close for comfort. Professor Loewe鈥檚 first book, Maya or Mestizo: Nationalism, Modernity and Its Discontents, is based on this and subsequent fieldwork, and focuses on the national government鈥檚 efforts to transform indigenous Maya into 鈥渕estizos鈥 within a rapidly modernizing Mexican state and the various forms of resistance this engendered. He is now completing the sequel to this book, The Making and Unmaking of a Mexican Town.
 
Due to the difficulty of finding a tenure track position, Professor Loewe continued working as the Director of Faculty Development in Family Medicine at Cook County Hospital after he completed his Ph.D. Here he was responsible for helping prepare family practice residents and fellows for academic medicine by teaching workshops on research methods, pedagogy and culture. His publications on diabetes grew out of an effort to engage young physicians in research projects relevant to their clinical practice, particularly the management of chronically ill patients. As a 鈥渞eborn鈥 medical anthropologist, he was finally able to obtain a tenure track position in the old confederacy where few Yankee anthropologists dare go. At Mississippi State he learned to speak Southern, began publishing his Yucatan research, studied civil rights tourism, and helped organize the first anti-war protests (contra the second Iraq War in 2003) in Starkville MS. However his best work, according to Adele Crudden, a colleague in the Sociology/Anthropology Department, was the 5000 word appeal he wrote after being denied early tenure by MSU鈥檚 sadistic provost. A year after getting tenure (2005), he moved to 黑料网 where he has been ever since. Because his office is next to the American Indian Studies office, his first friends were members of the Tongva/Acjachemen community who invited him to sail in their reconditioned Tiat. His rowing skills are not exceptional, but he played a vital role as ballast in the choppy waters of Mothers Bay. This association led to his participation with the 黑料网 NAGPRA committee, his research on the conflict over Puvungna and, eventually, Of Sacred Lands and Strip Malls: The Battle for Puvungna.
 
He is married, and has a biological daughter, an adopted son, two stepchildren, three grandchildren, several unofficial foster children, and an old, arthritic dog and a cat.
 

Maya Language and Culture, Social Theory, Medical Anthropology, Critical Theory, Folklore and Myth

ANTH 120 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology 

ANTH 305: Radical Social Analysis

ANTH 307 Modernization

ANTH 329 Cultural Diversity in California

ANTH 353 Health and Healing

ANTH 401: Foundations of Anthropological Theory

ANTH 432: Peoples of Mexico and Central America

ANTH 436: Medical Anthropology

ANTH 501: Current Trends in Anthropological Theory

ANTH 505 Practicing Anthropology

ANTH 510 Proseminar

ANTH 517/417 Applied Anthropology

Books
 

Loewe, R. The Making and Unmaking of a Mexican Town: Culture, Politics and Economy 1925-2025. (In process).

Loewe, R. Sacred Lands and Strip Malls: The Battle for Puvungna. Rowman and Littlefield, 2016.

Loewe, R. Maya or Mestizo: Nationalism, Modernity and its Discontents. University of Toronto Press. September 2010.  

 

Invited and Peer Reviewed Articles

Loewe, R. 2025. The Financialization of the American Academy and the Decline of Dissent, Critique of Anthropology. Forthcoming.

Loewe, R. 2024. , Contemporary Jewry (September 2024) 44:705鈥725

Loewe, R. 2024. Agrarian Reform Turns Thirty: Dispossession, Community Division and Environmental Degradation. Human Organization, March 2024, Vol. 83, No. 2, 116鈥129 

Loewe, R. 2014. Civil Rights Tourism in Mississippi: Openings, Closures, Redemption and Remuneration. Sociology Mind, 84-92.

Loewe, R. 2009. Maya Reborn, Reviews in Anthropology. 38(3):1-26. [Invited review article]

Loewe, R. and Sarah Taylor. 2008. Neoliberal Modernization at the Mexican Periphery: Gender, Generation and the Construction of a New, Flexible Workforce. Urban Anthropology, Volume 37, Numbers 3-4, Fall and Winter, 2008, pp. 357-392. [Article]

Loewe, R. 2008. The Wisdom of Way Kot: Art, Rhetoric and Political Economy. Critique of Anthropology, Fall, 2008,Issue 28 (4): pp. 347-375 [Article]

Loewe, R. 2007. Euphemism, Parody, Insult and Innuendo: Rhetoric and Ethnic Identity at the Mexican Periphery. [Article]  Summer, 2007, Journal of American Folklore, 120(477): 284-307. 

Loewe, R. and Rebecca Read. Mayan Folklore, Encyclopedia of World Folklore and Folklife, Greenwood Press, 2006, pp. 256-268. [Invited Review Article]

Loewe, R. Marching with San Miguel: Festivity, Obligation and Hierarchy in a Mexican Town. Journal of Anthropological Research, Volume 59(Winter, 2003): 463-486. [Article]

Loewe. R. Yucat谩n鈥檚 Dancing Pig鈥檚 Head (Cuch): Icon, Carnival and Commodity. The Journal of American Folklore, 116:4 (Fall 2003): 420-443. [Article]

Loewe, R. Cambio y continuidad en la folkmedicina de Yucat谩n: renombre, resistencia y profec铆a. Revisita de la Universidad Aut贸noma de Yucat谩n, n煤mero 226, vol.18, Septiembre de 2003, pp. 40-49. [Article]

Loewe, R.  Illness Narratives. The Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004, pp. 42-49. [Invited article]

Loewe, R. and Helene Hoffman. Building the New Zion: Unfinished Conversations between the Jews of Venta Prieta, M茅xico and their Curious Visitors to the North. American Anthropologist, Volume 104(4):1135-1147 (December, 2002). [Article]

Loewe, R. and Freeman, J. Interpreting Diabetes Mellitus: Differences in Patient and Practitioner Illness Models and their Implications for Clinical Practice. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 24(4):379-401, (December 2000). [Article]

Loewe R., Schwartzman J., Freeman J., Quinn L., and Zuckerman S. Doctor Talk and Diabetes: Towards an Analysis of the Clinical Construction of Chronic Illness. Social Science and Medicine, 1998, Vol. 47, No. 9, pp. 1267-1276. [Article]