Scenes from the High Desert: JULIAN STEWARD'S LIFE AND THEORY [Hardcover]

Virginia Kerns (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2003

Julian Steward (1902-72) is best remembered in American anthropology as the creator of cultural ecology, a theoretical approach that has influenced generations of archaeologists and cultural anthropologists. This generous biography by Virginia Kerns considers the intellectual and emotional influences of Steward's remarkable career and provides insights into the development of anthropology during his lifetime. Scenes from the High Desert locates the concept of cultural ecology as a social theory in the context of Steward's lived experience and personal construction of meaning. Kerns explores the scholar's early life in the American West, his continued attachments to western landscapes and inhabitants, his research with Native Americans, and the writing of his classic work, "Theory of Culture Change". Extracting the personal and professional experiences that shaped his ideas on labor, technology, and the natural world, Kerns focuses particularly on the ideas and experiences that gave rise to Steward's theory of cultural ecology and most influenced American anthropology. Through her exploration of Steward's career and his particular interest in men's labor, Kerns illustrates how Steward's concept of the patrilineal band was central to his intellectual work and grounded in his own social experiences and autobiographical memory, especially memories of place. With fluid prose and rich detail, the book captures the essence and breadth of Steward's career while carefully measuring the ways he reinforced the male-centered structure of mid-twentieth-century American anthropology.

Editorial Reviews

Review

ADVANCE PRAISE "A brilliant, exquisitely written account of the life of one of the most influential anthropologists of the twentieth century." -- Rita Wright, author of Gender and Archaeology "A work of consummate scholarship. Kerns's book is so effortlessly crafted and beautifully constructed that it has the quality often attributed to Inca walls -- you can't insert a knife blade between the stones." -- Robert L. Carneiro, author of The Muse of History and the Science of Culture

Book Description

Julian Steward (1902-72) is best remembered in American anthropology as the creator of cultural ecology, a theoretical approach that has influenced generations of archaeologists and cultural anthropologists. Virginia Kerns considers the intellectual and emotional influences of Steward's remarkable career, exploring his early life in the American West, his continued attachments to western landscapes and inhabitants, his research with Native Americans, and the writing of his classic work, Theory of Culture Change. With fluid prose and rich detail, the book captures the essence and breadth of Steward's career while carefully measuring the ways he reinforced the male-centered structure of mid-twentieth-century American anthropology.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (June 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252027906
• ISBN-13: 978-0252027901
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,173,577 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Detailed Anthropological Biography, December 2, 2003

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This review is from: Scenes from the High Desert: JULIAN STEWARD'S LIFE AND THEORY (Hardcover)

Julian Steward was a highly influential anthropologist who is often credited with founding the field of cultural ecology. Aside from his theoretical contributions, Steward also helped reorganize the AAA in the 1940s and influenced a number of his students who would go on to play important roles in post World War II anthropology. Despite the fact Steward's work is often sited, Kern's detailed and meticulous biography reveals a myriad of facts about his life I was unaware of. In short, her book is a model of anthropological biography.
Kern's work demonstrates that all too often the history of anthropology is not written by anthropologists but by historians such as George Stocking. Thus her work underscores the fact an adequate anthropological history of anthropology has yet to be written. I hope her biography will inspire other theoreticians and anthropologists to undertake similar studies for biography is woefully under represented in the discipline (this is the case despite the fact a number of biographies are being published by the University of Nebraska Press--see Sally Coles work on Ruth Landes, William Peace on Leslie White and Jerry Gershenhorn on Melville Herskovits).