Julian Steward

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Julian Steward (right)

Julian Haynes Steward (born January 31, 1902 in Washington, DC ; † February 6, 1972 in Urbana , Illinois ) was an American anthropologist who, through his cultural ecology and the further development of the anthropological theory of cultural evolution in the years after the Second World War became known.

Life

Julian Steward was the second child of Thomas and Grace Steward. His father headed the examination board in the US patent office. His uncle was the head of weather forecast at the US Weather Bureau. While father Thomas Steward was a staunch atheist , mother Grace Steward converted to Christian Science in 1911 . The different religious attitudes of the parents ended in a divorce of the marriage.

As a child, Julian Steward initially showed little interest in anthropology, but at sixteen he joined the exclusive Deep Springs College in California , located near the Owens Valley . His experience of working on a ranch, in the high mountains of the area and with the local tribes of the Shoshone and Paiute aroused his interest in the American West. From 1921 to 1922 Julian Steward studied at the University of California, Berkeley and then moved to Cornell University in Ithaca (New York) . Since the latter did not have an anthropological department, he studied zoology and biology and earned his BA. The president of the college, Livingston Farrand (1867-1939), a student of Franz Boas , was able to further promote Steward's interest in anthropology. In 1925 Steward returned to Berkeley and did an MA in anthropology in 1926. In 1929 he received his Ph.D. in anthropology on the ritual clown with the dissertation: The Clown in Native North America .

Anthropology was founded at the University of California, Berkeley by Alfred Kroeber with the financial support of Phoebe Hearst in the early 20th century; Kroeber, Robert Lowie and Edward Gifford made Berkeley the most important university of anthropology on the west coast in the 1920s.

In 1928 Steward became a lecturer in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan , whose anthropological department he built up. The evolutionist Leslie White later made them known. Steward went to the University of Utah in 1930 and from there carried out extensive field research in California , Nevada , Idaho and Oregon .

From 1935 to 1946, Julian Steward worked in the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the reform of the organization in a leading position. The reform came to be known as the New Deal for the American Indian . Steward was involved in various political and financial matters, which he had a considerable influence.

He edited the seven volume Handbook of South American Indians . He also accepted a position at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, where he founded the Institute for Social Anthropology in 1943. He also served on a committee to reorganize the American Anthropological Association and helped create the National Science Foundation . He was active in archaeological activities, and he caused Congress to establish the Committee for the Recovery of Archaeological Remains (the beginning of what is now called "salvaging archeology"). Together with Wendell Bennett, he set up the Viru Valley Project, an ambitious research program in Peru .

In 1946 Steward took over the chairmanship of the anthropological department at New York's Columbia University , the center of anthropology in the USA. At that time there was an enormous influx of World War II veterans who were able to study under the G. I. Bill of Rights , Steward is said to have supervised 35 doctoral students. A group of his students, many of whom were to have significant influence in American anthropology, formed the Mundial Upheaval Society . To her belonged:

Many of these students participated in a large-scale research study on modernization in Puerto Rico . Virginia Kerns also names David Aberle , Pedro Carrasco, Clifford Evans, Louis Faron, Frederic K. Lehman, Robert Murphy, Raymond Scheele and Elliott Skinner. Elena Padilla and Vara Rubin were apparently the only two female students Steward was convinced of.

Steward moved from Columbia to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1952 , where he taught until his retirement in 1968. There he carried out another study - a comparative analysis of modernization in eleven third world societies . He published the results of this research in the three-volume work Contemporary Change in Traditional Societies .

In 1954, Steward was elected to the National Academy of Sciences .

position

Julian Steward contributed to the development of a theory of cultural evolution , to neoevolutionism and to the modeling of a cultural ecology :

During the first three decades of the 20th century, American anthropology was criticized for its generalizations and its refusal to draw broader conclusions from meticulously accurate monographs. Steward moved anthropology away from this particularist approach and developed the concept of multilinear evolutionism :

"With its help, the problematic generalizations of the unilinear approach, which presupposed a monogenesis of cultural development, should be overcome. Including more precise historical analyzes of cultural development under the influence of the environment, it was necessary to understand the multidimensionality of evolution and to use a corresponding methodology for research develop."

This approach was more nuanced than Leslie White's theory of unilinear evolution, which was influenced by thinkers like Herbert Spencer . Steward's interest in the evolution of society also led him to examine processes of modernization. As one of the first anthropologists he explored how the national and local levels of society are connected. He doubted the possibility of creating a social theory of the entire evolution of mankind, but said anthropologists are not limited to describing specific, existing cultures. He thought it possible to set up a theory with which one can analyze a typical, common culture that represents specific ages or regions. He named technology and the economy and secondary factors such as the political system, ideologies and religion as decisive factors for the development of a culture . All these factors lead the evolution of a certain society in several directions at the same time, which is why one speaks here of multilinear evolution.

Publications

author
  • The Clown in Native North America. Dissertation 1929 a. Taylor & Francis 1991.
  • The Ceremonial Buffoon of the American Indian . Michigan Academy of Science. Art and Letters No. 14, 1930, pp. 187-207.
  • Petroglyphs of California and Adjoining States. In: University of California Publications in American Archeology and Ethnology , Vol. 24, No. 2. Berkeley 1929, pp. 47-238.
  • Ecological Aspects of Southwest Society. In: Anthropos , Vol. 32, Issue 1/2, 1937, pp. 87-104.
  • Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute . In: University of California Publications in American Archeology and Ethnology , Vol. 33, No. 3. Berkeley 1934.
  • Native Cultures of the Intermontane ( Great Basin ) Area. In: Essays in Historical Anthropology of North America , Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collection , C. , Washington, DC, 1938, pp. 479–498.
  • Basin Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin , No. 120, Washington, DC, 1938.
  • Theory of Culture Change. The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution. University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1955.
  • Native Peoples of South America. Together with Louis C. Faron. McGraw-Hill, 1959.
  • Alfred Kroeber . Columbia University Press, New York 1973.
editor
  • Handbook of South American Indians. 6 volumes u. 1 vol. Index (1963). Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin , No. 142, Washington, DC, 1946ff. u. Cooper Square Publishers, New York 1963.
  • Julian Steward with Robert A. Manners, Eric R. Wolf, Elena Padilla Seda, Sidney W. Mintz and Raymond L. Scheele: The People of Puerto Rico , University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1956 a. 1972.
  • Contemporary Change in Traditional Societies. 3 volumes. University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1967.

literature

  • RO Clemmer u. a. (Ed.): Julian Steward and the Great Basin. The Making of an Anthropologist. Salt Lake City 1999.
  • Virginia Kerns: Scenes from the High Desert. Julian Steward's Life and Theory. University of Illinois Press, Urbana 2003 a. 2009.
  • Sonja Lührmann: Julian H. Steward . In: Christian F. Feest , Karl-Heinz Kohl (Hrsg.): Hauptwerke der Ethnologie (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 380). Kröner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-520-38001-3 , pp. 454-459.
  • Robert A. Manners (Ed.): Process and Pattern in Culture, Essays in Honor of Julian H. Steward. Chicago 1964.
  • Robert A. Manners: Julian H. Steward (1902-1972). American Anthropologist , 75 (3), 1973, pp. 886-903.
  • Johannes W. Room : Julian Haynes Steward (1902-1971 [sic!]). In: Wolfgang Marschall (Ed.): Classics of cultural anthropology. From Montaigne to Margaret Mead . Beck, Munich 1990, pp. 248-276 u. Pp. 353-355, ISBN 3-406-34100-4
  • Sydel Silverman (Ed.): Totems and Teachers. Perspectives on the History of Anthropology. New York 1981.
  • Jane C. Steward et al. Robert F. Murphy (Ed.): Evolution and Ecology, Essays on Social Transformation by Julian H. Steward . University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1977.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John Plant : Heyoka. The contraries and clowns of the Plains Indians . Publisher for American Studies, Wyk auf Föhr 1994, p. 228.
  2. ^ Sidney Mintz: An Impartial History of the Mundial Upheaval Society . AnthroWatch , Vol. 2, No. 3, 1994.
  3. ↑ Christoph Wulf : Anthropology. History, culture, philosophy . Anaconda, Cologne 2009, p. 111.
personal data
SURNAME Steward, Julian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Steward, Julian Haynes (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American anthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, DC
DATE OF DEATH February 6, 1972
Place of death Urbana , Illinois