Brigitte Jordan papers

Jordan conducted seminal work in the study of cross-cultural birth practices in the 1970s, including home birth and hospital birth, in the Yucatan and in Holland, Sweden and the United States, resulting in publication of her book Birth in Four Cultures (1983). She taught and conducted research for many years at the university level, where her interests focused on the dynamics of change in the medical systems of developing countries. In 1988, Jordan began working as a corporate anthropologist, and her research and consulting interests evolved to include the changing nature of work under the impact of new communication and information technologies and the consequent transformation of ways of life, societal institutions, and global economies. A sought-after speaker and leader of executive workshops, Jordan was the author of many scholarly and technical publications.

Brigitte (Gitti) Muller Jordan was born in Passau, Germany, in 1937 and grew up there during World War II. Her parents were Gertrude Frank Muller, who died in 1944 when Jordan was seven, and Josef Karl Muller. She married Richard Jordan in 1958, and they had three children: Wayne (b. 1959), Susan (b. 1960), and Kimsey (b. 1961). The couple divorced in 1968. Jordan earned her B.A. and M.A. degrees in anthropology at California State University at Sacramento, and her Ph.D. in social science/anthropology from University of California at Irvine in 1975. She died at home on May 24, 2016 of pancreatic cancer. Her website states, "she chose to meet the cancer on her own terms, refusing medical intervention, embracing hospice care, and remaining as physically and mentally active as humanly possible until the end."