Editing Hortense Powdermaker (section)

==Early life and education==
Born to a [[Judaism in the United States|Jewish family]], Powdermaker spent her childhood in [[Reading, Pennsylvania|Reading]], Pennsylvania, and in [[Baltimore]], [[Maryland]].  She studied history and the humanities at [[Goucher College]], graduating in 1921. She worked as a [[union organizer|labor organizer]] for the [[Amalgamated Clothing Workers]] but became dissatisfied with the prospects of the U.S. [[labor movement]] amid the repression of the [[Palmer Raids]]. She left the United States to study at the [[London School of Economics]], where she met eminent anthropologist [[Bronisław Malinowski]], who convinced her to embark on a course of doctoral studies.  While at the LSE, Powdermaker also worked under and was influenced by other well-known anthropologists such as [[Alfred Radcliffe-Brown|A. R. Radcliffe-Brown]], [[E. E. Evans-Pritchard]] and [[Raymond Firth]].<ref>{{citation|title=Visionary Observers: Anthropological Inquiry And Education|author=Jill B. R. Cherneff, Eve Hochwald|year= 2006|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=Hhmc63cL5TIC&q=%22Hortense+Powdermaker%22&pg=RA6-PA121|isbn=978-0-8032-6464-9}}</ref>

Powdermaker completed her PhD on "leadership in [[Urgesellschaft|primitive society]]" in 1928.  Like her contemporaries, Powdermaker sought to identify her anthropological work with a [[primitivism|"primitive" people]] and conducted fieldwork among the Lesu of [[New Ireland (island)|New Ireland]] in present-day [[Papua New Guinea]] (''Life in Lesu: The Study of a Melanesian Society in New Ireland.'' Williams & Norgate, London 1933).