![]() ![]() ![]() Steward studied as directed by Kroeber and Lowie- and was taught by Oskar Schmieder in regional geography- at Berkeley, where his dissertation The Ceremonial Buffoon of the American Indian, a Study of Ritualized Clowning and Role Reversals was accepted in 1929. Farrand advised Steward to continue pursuing his interest (or, in Steward's words, his already chosen "life work") in anthropology at Berkeley (Kerns 2003:71–72). ![]() Although Cornell, like most universities at the time, did not have an anthropology department, its president, Livingston Farrand, had previously been a professor of anthropology at Columbia University. (Kerns 1999 Murphy 1977)Īs an undergraduate, Steward studied for a year at UC Berkeley, with two of his professors being Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie, after which he transferred to Cornell University, from which he graduated in 1925 with a B.Sc. Steward's "direct engagement" with the land (specifically, subsistence through irrigation and ranching) and the Northern Paiute Amerindians that lived there became a "catalyst" for his theory and method of cultural ecology. Steward's experience at the newly established Deep Springs Preparatory School (which later became Deep Springs College), high in the White Mountains had a significant influence on his academic and career interests. to attend boarding school in Deep Springs Valley, California, in the Great Basin. Steward was born in Washington, D.C., where he lived on Monroe Street, NW, and later, Macomb Street in Cleveland Park.Īt age 16, Steward left an unhappy childhood in Washington, D.C. It charts new directions for research, demanding a more exacting study of environmental conditions, material adaptations, and organizational responses, as well as an appreciation of the ideological and humanistic dimensions of Basin Life.Julian Haynes Steward (Janu– February 6, 1972) was an American anthropologist known best for his role in developing "the concept and method" of cultural ecology, as well as a scientific theory of culture change. Julian Steward and the Great Basin also corrects long-standing misperceptions that originated with Steward about lifeways of the Indians living between the Great Plains and California. Each chapter explores a different aspect of his work ranging from early efforts at documenting trait distributions to his later role in the development of social transformation theory, area studies, and applied anthropology. In one sense, the phases of Steward’s career epitomize the successive schools of anthropological theory and practice. He was also central in shaping basic anthropological constructs such as "hunter-gatherer" and "adaptation." But his fieldwork took place almost entirely in the Great Basin. Steward (1902–1972) was one of the foremost American exponents of cultural ecology, the idea that societies evolve in adaptation to their human and natural environments. Julian Steward and the Great Basin is a critical assessment of Steward’s work, the factors that influenced him, and his deep effect on American anthropology.
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