A thorough analysis of Julian Steward’s life and work and the history of the discipline of anthropology during his lifetime

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.

“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

"The history of anthropology offers a unique opportunity to combine an interest in anthropological theory with the methods of ethnography and Karns' book succeeds remarkably well in demonstrating how this can be done. . . . As the ethnographer forces us to look at Steward through her eyes, she often provokes or entices readers to make up their own mind about these matters, certainly if they happen to be anthropologists themselves. I think that this is one of the reasons why this book stands out fom most of the run-of-the-mill 'intellectual biographes', which remain caught in the hermeneutics of self-referential thick description."--Jan de Wolf, Utrecht University (The Netherlands)

Virginia Kerns, a professor of anthropology at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, is the author of Women and the Ancestors: Black Carib Kinship and Ritual and coeditor of In Her Prime: New Views of Middle-Aged Women.

Awards:

Winner of the 2003 William P. Clements Prize for the Best Non-Fiction Book on Southwestern America. Winner of the 2003 Evans Biography Award.

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Subjects:
Biography & Personal Papers / Anthropology

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