People
Encyclopedia Entries
multilinear cultural evolution, according to which increases in cultural complexity occur in different ways in different societies; he also emphasized the importance of cultural ecology, the way in which adaptation to the environment promotes culture change. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2003 Columbia University Press
Area Research, Theory and Practice (1950)
Theory of Culture Change (1955)
The People of Puerto Rico: A Study in Social Anthropology (1956).
Notes on the development of cultural ecology
http://www.nap.edu/html/biomems/jsteward.html
http://courses.smsu.edu/waw105f/Steward.htm
Julian
Steward
(1902-1972)
· Studied with Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie at UC-Berkeley, receiving his PhD there in 1929, with a library dissertation on clowning in American Indian society
· Taught at the University of Utah from 1930-1935, where he initiated research on Pueblo archaeology and an ethnographic study of the Shoshone and Northern Paiute, focusing on how subsistence activities dominated their lives
· Worked at the Bureau of American Ethnology, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution, from 1935-1946, directing a large project on the native peoples of South America that resulted in the Handbook of South American Indians
· Taught at Columbia University from 1946-1952, where he trained 35 PhDs and directed five students, including Sidney Mintz and Eric Wolf, in a major ethnographic study of Puerto Rico
· Research professor at the University of Illinois from 1952-1968, where he directed a large research project on socioeconomic change in eleven Third World societies
· Steward was one of the first ethnographers (aside from Mead’s work in Samoa) to do “problem-centered” fieldwork rather than attempting a complete description of a society
· His work with the Shoshone and Northern Paiute led to his focus on the processes that a people use to adapt to their environment, which he called cultural ecology
· He believed that the effect of environment was inversely related to the development of technology in a society (whereas White said environment was a constant)
· He identified cross-cultural parallels in social organization, such as the egalitarian hunting and gathering band, which he explained as a cultural adaptation to similar environments rather than as a result of diffusion or as a stage in unilineal evolution
· His study of a society focused on what he called the cultural core--the features that are most related to subsistence--and their relationship to the environment and technology on the one hand and their relationship to other aspects of culture on the other
· Steward did not believe in unilineal evolution; he did believe that societies could independently follow the same path, though, which he called multilinear evolution
· Steward built a comparative approach and a theoretical base upon the culture historical approach of Boas and his students.
· His scientific approach revolutionized both ethnography and archaeology in the 1950s and 1960s
Selected Publications
Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups. BAE Bull. 120. Smithsonian Institution, 1938.
Handbook of South American Indians. BAE Bull. 143, vols. 1-6. Smithsonian Institution, 1946-50.
Native Peoples of South America (with Louis Faron). Columbia University Press, 1959.
Cultural Ecology. In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Vol. 4. D. Sills, ed. Pp. 337-344. Macmillan, 1968
Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution. University of Illinois Press, 1973.
References
Robert Manners. Julian Haynes Steward, 1902-1972. American Anthropologist 75:886-903, 1973.
Jerry D. Moore. “Julian Steward.” Chapter 14 in Visions of Culture. Pp. 181-189. AltaMira Press, 1997.
Robert F. Murphy. “The anthropological theories of Julian H. Steward.” In Evolution and Ecology: Essays on Social Transformation. J.C. Steward and R.F. Murphy, eds. Pp. 1-39. University of Illinois Press, 1977.
