DISEÑO Y CÁLCULO DEL ANILLO 10

Napoleon A. Chagnon (1938–) was born in Port Austin, Michigan, a small tourist town of only 500 people. Chagnon was the second child in a poor family of 12 children. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Michigan, completing his Ph.D. in 1966. After graduation, he joined the University of Michigan faculty, where he held joint appointments in the Department of Anthropology and in the Department of Human Genetics at the University’s medical school. Chagnon held several subsequent positions and then moved to the University of California–Santa Barbara in 1984, until his re-tirement (Chagnon, 1997).

Starting when he was at Michigan, Chagnon has made several trips to South America to study the Yanomamo people. He says of those studies, “I wanted to get a job in anthropology and the best way to get a job was to do some-thing different . . . If I was going to make a name for myself, I would have to do it by going to the most difficult, least desirable point in the world” (quoted in Bortnick 1999). Chagnon’s book that chronicles his studies, Yanomamo (1997) is in its 5th edition and has sold over 800,000 copies. Chagnon is also involved in the authorship and production of documentary films.

The conclusions Chagnon drew have proven to be controversial among his colleagues (e.g., Bortnick 1999; Tierney 2000) and others. He even reports death threats (Bortnick 1999). However, Chagnon also has supporters. One col-league calls him “an inspiration . . . Some people don’t like his results, but no one else in the world can match his data gathering” (quoted in Bortnick 1999).

Among Chagnon’s professional recognitions, he is a Fellow of the American As-sociation for the Advancement of Science, the American Anthropological Asso-ciation, and Current Anthropology. He also founded the Yanomamo Survival Fund in 1988 to support the Yanomamo people (Chagnon 1997; “Chagnon, Na-poleon A.” 1990).

Marvin Harris

Marvin Harris (1927–2001) was born in Brooklyn, New York. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Columbia University. After receiving his doctorate in 1953, Harris taught at Columbia for 27 years. In 1980, he took a position as Graduate Research Professor of Anthropology at the Uni-versity of Florida–Gainesville. He remained there, often summering on the Maine coast, until his retirement in 2000 (Margolis 2002).

In The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968) and Cultural Materialism:

The Struggle for the Science of Culture (1979), Harris originated and developed the paradigm of cultural materialism, for which he is best known. According to Harris’s paradigm, social and cultural patterns develop as people find ways to solve the practical problems of existence and best use available resources. Al-though a controversial paradigm, as many as half of U.S. anthropologists now claim to be cultural materialists to some extent (Margolis 2002, 9). Indeed, in 1986, Smithsonian magazine called Harris “one of the most controversial an-thropologists alive” (quoted in Martin 2001).

Harris’s research topics included finding explanations for a variety of

“riddles of culture” involving race, evolution, food preferences (which he termed human foodways), and warfare, among others. By looking for the reasons behind such questions as why Hindus do not eat cows but Muslims, Jews, and Chris-tians do, Harris felt that by “bring[ing] some light to bear on problems like that . . . people will be enlightened not only on the question but also on a way of approaching such questions” (Harris 2001).

Over the course of his career, Harris conducted research in such diverse locations as the United States, India, Mozambique, and Brazil. He also ad-dressed American culture in Why Nothing Works: The Anthropology of Daily Life (1981). He wrote 17 books that were translated into 14 languages. His work in-cluded textbooks as well as books written for a popular audience. Harris also served as the president of the General Anthropology Division of the American Anthropological Association (Margolis 2002, 9).

Marshall McLuhan

Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911–80) was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He earned his doctorate from Cambridge in 1943. Three years later, McLuhan joined the faculty of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto, where he stayed for the remainder of his career. He became a full professor in 1952. Beginning in 1963, he also served as the director of the Center for Culture and Technology, a center created to keep McLuhan at Toronto when other schools attempted to hire him away (Federmann, “Marshall McLuhan”).

McLuhan addressed many aspects of culture, communication, and the media. His work is complex and not written in linear arguments. As one McLuhan scholar says, “How does one understand Marshall McLuhan? The an-swer is a quintessentially McLuhanesque paradox: To understand McLuhan, you must read McLuhan, but to read McLuhan, you must first understand McLuhan”

(Federman, “On Reading McLuhan,” 1). McLuhan’s books include The Guten-berg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962), Understanding Media:

The Extensions of Man (1964), and War and Peace in the Global Village (1967).

He loved wordplay, titling one book The Medium Is the Massage (1967), and is credited with adding such terms as global village to our vernacular.

McLuhan was recognized around the world for his work. He was a Fel-low of the Royal Society of Canada. He received an appointment as a Champion of the Order of Canada and a Vatican appointment as consultor of the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications. His awards include the President’s Cabinet Award from the University of Detroit, Great Britain’s Institute of Public Relations President’s Award, the Christian Culture Award from Assumption Uni-versity, and a Gold Medal Award from the President of the Italian Republic at Rimini, Italy. He also held honorary degrees from several universities.

Marshall McLuhan died in his sleep on New Year’s Eve, 1980. After his death, the University of Toronto closed the Center for Culture and Technology.

However, continued demand resulted in the creation of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology. In 1994, that program became a distinct segment of Information Studies at the University (Federman, “Marshall McLuhan”;

McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, “History and Mandate”).

William Graham Sumner

William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) was born in Paterson, New Jer-sey. He obtained an undergraduate degree from Yale University in 1863. He then traveled to Europe for graduate studies in Britain, Switzerland, and Germany, after which he returned to Yale as a tutor. Sumner left Yale three years later and became an Episcopal pastor. In 1872, he returned once again to Yale as the chair of the Political and Social Science Department, where he would stay for 37 years.

In addition to being a pioneering sociologist, Sumner was a pastor, pro-fessor, economist, political scientist, historian, educator, and public servant (Curtis 1981). Intellectually, he was “vividly alive and insatiably curious,” once writing to his father that he intended to “learn all I can about everything I can”

(Starr 1925, 519).

Sumner offered his first sociology course in 1875. He became a popu-lar lecturer, although he often did not know students by name (Curtis 1981, 47–48). He also became an educational reformer and a member of the Con-necticut State Board of Education, and was elected for a term as alderman. Sum-ner was honored with an honorary doctorate of laws after his retirement in 1909, and he was elected president of the American Sociological Society (now the American Sociological Association) in the same year.

Although less known and influential among contemporary sociologists, Sumner was a well-known and influential sociologist during his lifetime. He

“wrote with ease” (Starr 1925, 306), producing material on economic history, biographies, essays, political economy, and political science that included a dozen research-based books. His one major sociological work, Folkways: A

Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals (1906), has been called one of “the few enduring monuments of Ameri-can sociological theory,” and his “concepts of folkways, of in-groups and out-groups, and of ethnocentricism” continue to be important in sociological thought (Curtis 1981, 154).

During his later years, Sumner was studying the customs and mores of a number of different cultures for a work on the “science of society.” Albert Gal-loway Keller, Sumner’s successor at Yale, estimated that for this single project Sumner had “collected and filed—without graduate student assistants—more than 150,000 notes from sources in the dozen languages that he read. His cross-referenced note system filled fifty-two file cabinet drawers” (Curtis 1981, 49).

After suffering a stroke, Sumner died in 1910 before his final work was com-pleted. Keller completed the work and published it as a coauthored four-volume series titled The Science of Society in 1927 (Curtis 1981; Starr 1925).

Benjamin Lee Whorf

Famous for reformulating the ideas of his teacher Edward Sapir into a view of language and culture known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941) began his linguistic studies in his late 20s by learning Hebrew. His “personal struggle to resolve the competing claims of science and religion led him to focus on the study of language as a likely source of insight”

(Schultz 1990, 7). His interest progressed to studies of Mexican people and lan-guage, correspondence with scholars in those areas, the presentation of his first scholarly paper in 1929, and a Social Science Research Council fellowship to study the Mayan language. He would also later study other languages (Carroll 1956; Schultz 1990).

Through his studies and interactions with Sapir and other Yale Univer-sity faculty, Whorf refined his powerful concept of the connection between lan-guage and culture. To Whorf, “the way man talks about the universe is his only way of knowing anything about it . . . an Aztec had Aztec ideas about the world, an ancient Hebrew had Hebrew ideas . . . They all talk about reality, but to each, reality is what he can talk about in his own language” (Trager 1968, 537).

This may seem a successful, albeit unremarkable, career. However, until 1931, when he enrolled in a Yale course under Sapir, Whorf had been self-taught.

He also held dual careers. Whorf was not an academic and held a job outside of the area of linguistics and anthropology throughout his life. He was a chemical engineer with a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked in fire-prevention engineering at the Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

Economically, he did not feel he could leave that position to become an aca-demic (Trager 1968). Whorf died at age 44.

Edward O. Wilson

Edward O. Wilson (1929–) was fascinated by and studied insects and sea life as a child. In addition to his interest in these creatures, he was also a

self-described workaholic by the age of 13, delivering 420 newspapers each morning.

Wilson had his first experience in teaching at age 14 as a nature counselor at a Boy Scout summer camp (Wilson 1994).

Wilson attended the University of Alabama, graduating in 1949. He earned a doctorate from Harvard University five years later. At age 26, he be-came an assistant professor at Harvard on a five-year contract. He was initially tasked to create a new biology course for non-science majors. Harvard offered him a tenured position only when he was recruited by Stanford University. As Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard four decades later, Wilson was still teaching his course on biology to non-science majors.

In 1975, Wilson authored Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. That work was followed in 1978 by On Human Nature. Both books were highly controver-sial, even among Wilson’s colleagues at Harvard. They led to public attention, various groups distributing opposition leaflets, anti-sociobiology teach-ins, and small protests. An August 1, 1977, cover feature on sociobiology in Time maga-zine also generated strong reaction. Wilson recalls attending the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science two months after that feature appeared. Before he could present his scheduled lecture, demon-strators took the stage, dumped a pitcher of ice water over his head, and chanted,

“Wilson, you’re all wet” (Wilson 1994, 307).

Among his many notable accomplishments, Wilson is curator in ento-mology at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. He has written 21 books, almost 400 articles, won two Pulitzer Prizes, and received 27 honorary doctoral degrees. Wilson’s lengthy list of additional awards includes the National Medal of Science, presented at a White House dinner by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. He has also been awarded the 1990 Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (an award that recognizes scientific fields not covered by the Nobel Prize), the 1993 International Prize for Biology, Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal International Prize for Science (2000), the Franklin Medal of the Ameri-can Philosophical Society (1999), and the Audubon Medal of the National Audubon Society (Wilson, “Dr. Edward O. Wilson Biography”).

CAREERS IN SOCIOLOGY

Those with an interest and training in sociological perspectives on cul-ture and society have backgrounds that prepare them for careers including

• advertising agent

• advocate for special-interest organization

• alumni-relations director/staff

• athletic/recreation coordinator

• college-recruitment/placement/admissions personnel

• communication director

• community specialist

• foreign-service worker

• human-resources management/staff-member

• industrial-relations specialist

• international-aid agency worker

• international-business researcher

• international-relations analyst

• journalist

• liaison for international organizations

• marketing/consumer researcher

• meeting/convention planner

• organizational trainer/facilitator

• outreach coordinator

• protocol officer

• public-relations specialist

• recruiter

• relocation coordinator

• resource developer

• seminar/workshop consultant

• special-events coordinator

Additional Resources

Alcock, John. 2001. The Triumph of Sociobiology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This book tackles and defends many of the criticisms of sociobiology. It cham-pions the perspective, but provides food for thought for both sides of the socio-biology debate.

Bell, David. 2001. An Introduction to Cybercultures. London: Routledge. This book cov-ers a range of topics in cyberculture, including technology and research in cy-berspace.

Berger, Peter L., and Samuel P. Huntington, eds. 2002. Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World. New York: Oxford University Press. This series of essays look at the many cultural and societal impacts of globalization.

Chagnon, Napoleon. 1997. Yanomamo. 5th ed. Fort Worth, Tex.: Harcourt Brace. Follow Chagnon’s famous research on the Yanomamo people and the changes that con-tact with the outside world has brought to the Yanomamo people.

Harris, Marvin. 1974. Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches. New York: Random House. Har-ris applies his concept of cultural materialism to explain the roots of human be-haviors ranging from religious dietary prohibitions to beliefs in witches.

National Geographic Society. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/. This site covers a wealth of information on world cultures.

Peace Corps. Culture Matters. http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/culturematters/. The Peace Corps has designed this cross-cultural training workbook to help new vol-unteers develop the skills they will need to work in other cultures.

University of Toronto, McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology. http://mcluhan.

utoronto.ca/. Visit the Web site of this program, now a distinct research and teaching unit within the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto, to learn more about ongoing work in the McLuhan tradition.

U.S. Department of State. http://www.state.gov/. Search this page for information on country facts, travel advisories, cultural issues, and more for countries around the world.

CHAPTER 4