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Chris Gjording. The Chris Gjording papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.
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Chris
Gjording was an anthropologist and Jesuit priest who worked in Central America
in the last two decades of the 20th century. Prior to gaining his
M.A. (1978) and Ph.D. (1985) in social and cultural anthropology from the New
School for Social Research, he taught philosophy and liberation theory at
Gonzaga University (1973-1975). Gjording was strongly influenced by liberation theology,
which was a movement that arose in the Roman Catholic church in Latin America
and stressed aiding the poor by improving the socioeconomic structures that
oppressed them.1 As a result, his work was focused on the poor in
Central America and the social and political climate which surrounded them. For
his dissertation, he studied the Guaymí people and the transnational Cerro
Colorado mining project on their lands in Chiriquí, Panama. A revised version
of his dissertation was published under the title Conditions Not of Their
Choosing: The Guaymí Indians and Mining Multinationals in Panama by the
Smithsonian Institution Press in 1991. He also visited and documented the
conditions in Guatemalan Indian refugee camps in Los Lirios and Maya Balam in
Quintana Roo, Mexico, and wrote articles for a Spanish language bimonthly
newsletter focused on the social, economic, and political situation in Honduras
called Informaciones. His papers document his research and activities in
Central America.
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Marvin
Harris lecturing. The Marvin Harris papers, National Anthropological Archives,
Smithsonian Institution.
|
Marvin
Harris was one of the major anthropologists of the 20th century who
is best known for developing the concept of cultural materialism. Harris
described this paradigm as a scientific research strategy “based on the simple
premise that human social life is a response to the practical problems of
earthly existence”2 in his 1979 book Cultural Materialism. He
applied this research method to taboos, food preferences, and family and social
structures, arguing that the Aztecs practiced cannibalism due to a protein
deficiency and that Yanomami warfare was caused by the pursuit of animal
protein. Some of his arguments were controversial, such as his belief that the Hindu
religion’s prohibition against the consumption of beef was based on the
economic usefulness of cows as draft animals. He also focused on the difference
between emic and etic refers to analysis of a
culture by perspectives.
In social sciences, emic someone participating in that culture3, while
etic refers to analysis by someone outside the culture4. He used
video as a method of etic analysis, studying families in their home environment
during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Harris authored several important books in the field
of anthropology (The Rise of Anthropological Theory and Cultural
Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture), as
well as several books which reached a wider, non-academic audience (Cows,
Pigs, Wars and Witches and Cannibals and Kings). While he was on the
faculty of Columbia University (where he had studied, earning his B.A. in 1948
and his Ph.D. in 1953, and taught from 1953 to 1980), he was active in the
anti-war movement, serving as vice-chairman of Vietnam Facts, helping to
organize the Ad Hoc Teaching Committee on Vietnam, organizing a symposium with
Morton Fried and Robert Murphy at the American Anthropological Association’s
annual meeting in 1967 which led to the publication of War: The Anthropology
of Armed Conflict and Aggression (1968), and openly siding with the
students during the 1968 Columbia student uprising. After his time at Columbia,
he served as a Graduate Research Professor at the University of Florida
(1980-2000).
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| Page
from Anthony Leeds’ scrapbook with photographs from Salvador. Anthony Leeds
papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. |
Anthony
Leeds studied at Columbia at the same time as Marvin Harris, receiving his B.A.
in 1949 and his Ph.D. in 1957. His main focus as an anthropologist was urban
development, although his papers at the NAA include research in rural areas as
well. Like Gjording, Leeds was interested in the social, economic, and
political situation in Latin America and he analyzed these factors in cacao
production in the Bahia region of Brazil for his dissertation: “Economic Cycles
in Brazil: The Persistence of a Total-Cultural Pattern: Cacao and Other Cases.”
He studied the social and political cultures of squatter settlements in Rio de
Janeiro, São
Paulo, Bogotá,
Lima, and Santiago de Chile. With funding from the Social Science Research
Council and the Ford Foundation, he studied twelve favelas (Brazilian slums5)
in Rio de Janeiro from 1965 to 1966, organizing Peace Corps volunteers,
academics, and favela residents to collect data.
Leeds also taught at a number of colleges and universities:
Hofstra University and City College in New York City from 1956 to 1961, the
University of Texas-Austin from 1963 to 1972, and Boston University from 1973
to 1989. While at Boston University, he served as an active mentor to many of
his students.
____________________________________
1“Liberation Theology,” Encyclopedia
Britannica, accessed May 1, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberation-theology.
2 Harris, Marvin. Cultural
Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture. (New York: Random House, 1979), xv.
3“Emic,” Merriam Webster Dictionary,
accessed May 1, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emic.
4“Etic,” Merriam Webster Dictionary,
accessed May 1, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/etic.
5“Favela,” Merriam Webster Dictionary,
accessed September 28, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/favela.
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