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JULIAN HARES STEWARD
January 31, 1 902-February 6, 1972
BY ROBERT A. MANNERS
JULIAN HAYNES STEWARD, ANTHROPOLOGIST, was born in Wash-
ington, D.C., the son of Thomas G., chief of the Bo arc! of
Examiners of the U.S. Patent Office, en c! Grace Garriott,
whose brother, Edward! Garriott, was chief forecaster of the
U.S. Weather Bureau.
In an autobiographical sketch preparer! for the National
Academy of Sciences, Stewart! remarkoc! that nothing in his
family background! or in his early education accountec! for
his later interest in anthropology. On the other hancI, his
school en c! neighborhood! in the suburbs of Washington
involves! him in close association with the chilciren of writ-
ers, senators, representatives, cloctors, en c! "generally per-
sons of some distinction" who apparently did contribute to
a cleveloping interest in intellectual matters.
When he was sixteen, Steward was admitted to the newly
establisher! Deep Springs Preparatory School (now Deep
Springs College), a school located near Death Valley and
clevotec! to the clevelopment of practical skills en c! to the
promotion "of the highest well-being." At this time, he sail!
This memoir was originally prepared for inclusion in the multivolume American Na-
tional Biography to be published by Oxford University Press.
325
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B I O G RA P H I C A L
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somewhat laconically, "I took this purpose seriously but did
not know what to do about it." His time at Deep Springs
exposed him to the lifeways of the local Palute and Shoshoni
Indians, an experience that lay partly dormant until his
freshman year at the University of California, Berkeley, where
he discovered academic anthropology in a course given jointly
by Alfred Kroeber, Robert Lowie, and Edward Gifford. The
following year he transferred to Cornell where, in the ab-
sence of an anthropology faculty, he completed his under-
graduate training in zoology and geology. Livingston Farrand,
then president of Cornell and himself an anthropologist,
nurtured Steward's continuing interest in anthropology-
temporarily sidetracked by circumstances and urged him
to return to Berkeley and its reigning triumvirate for his
doctorate in anthropology.
In 1928 Steward joined the faculty at the University of
Michigan, where he gave the first course in anthropology
ever given there. In 1930 he went to the University of Utah,
where he taught and conducted considerable archeological
research in Puebloid cultures until 1933. Accompanied by
his wife, the former Jane Cannon, he spent the next year
~ ~ 934) conducting research in Owens Valley, Death Valley,
and northward through Nevada to Idaho and Oregon. In
1935 he left university teaching to take a position as associ-
ate anthropologist in the Bureau of American Ethnology of
the Smithsonian Institution, remaining there until ~ 946.
During one year of his tenure at the BAE, he was loaned to
the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the request of its director,
John Collier, and assisted in the creation of programs for
the reform of the BIA. The product, a radical transforma-
tion in the organization and functioning of the BIA, is usu-
ally referred to as a New Deal for American Indians. The
experience was valuable, for it was there that Steward had a
chance to examine the effectiveness of a fairly well-financed
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J
rULIAN HAYNE S STEWARD
327
program in applied anthropology and to observe at first-
hand the practical as well as the theoretical significance of
the relation between subcultures and the larger society of
which they were a part an issue that occupied a dominant
place in his teaching, research, and writing for the remain-
der of his life and is the central theme of such major works
as Area Research: Theory and Practice, The People of Puerto Rico,
and the three-volume Contemporary Change in Traditional So-
cieties, as well as a number of shorter pieces dealing with
the study of nonisolated, nonself-sufficient cultures or part-
cultures.
While at the BAE he set up and was the first director of
the Institute of Social Anthropology, a branch of the Smith-
sonian Institution. During his last years at the BAE, Steward
chaired a committee that reorganized the governance of
the American Anthropological Association. He was also in-
volved in the planning and establishment of the National
Science Foundation and was instrumental in persuading
Congress to appropriate funds for the creation of the Com-
mittee for the Recovery of Archeological Remains, subse-
quently the nation's River Basin Archeological Surveys Pro-
gram, often referred to as the model and stimulus for salvage
archeology in the United States.
. ~
In partnership with Wendell Bennett, Steward planned
and helped to establish the Viru Valley Project in Peru, a
research program whose contributions to theory in arche-
ology and especially to the archeology of South America
have been of major significance.
On the whole, and despite the wealth of Steward's contri-
butions recorded during his years at the BAE, it is generally
agreed that his most concretely impressive achievement dur-
ing his tenure was the organization, staffing (over 100 sci-
entists were involved), and editorship of the six-volume Hand-
book of South American Indians. Despite its imperfections, it
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B I O G RA P H I C A L
EMOIRS
remains a monument to Stewarcl's sustainer! efforts to iclen-
tify links between what he saw as culture types en c! the
evolutionary schema towarc! which his research hac! clearly
incTinec! him an evolutionary design that eschewoc! the
form of unilinear stages emphasizec! in the earlier work of
Lewis Henry Morgan as well as the upciatec! en c! amenclec!
evolutionary design proposer! by Leslie White. Stewart! caller!
his schema multilinear evolution, an approach that pair!
special attention to the varieties of ecological, technologi-
cal, en c! historical circumstances exposer! by expanding gio-
bal research. It is "essentially a methoclology baser! on the
assumption that significant regularities in culture change
occur, en c! it is concernec! with the determination of cul-
tural laws."
Although Stewart! was always iclentifiec! as a cultural an-
thropologist, his publications in archeology constituted about
half of his output in the perioc! from the 1920s to about
1940. This may help explain, in part, his persistent fascina-
tion with evolutionary formulations extending over Tong
periods of time. He maintainer! that the line between the
subclisciplines of archeology en c! cultural anthropology was
largely artificial, referring to the data of archeology as
ethnohistory on (or in) the ground. Since he believer! that
archeology was more than potshercis en c! monuments, test
pits and stratigraphy, he urged Gordon Willey, against Willey's
wishes, to deal intensively with settlement patterns in the
Viru Valley Project, which Stewart! helpec! launch.
He prevailec! on Willey by insisting that intensive stucly of
settlement patterns in the valley wouIc! show "when en c!
how these patterns changer! through time en c! what the
changes implied" (Willey, p. 216~. Willey's work set a pat-
tern for archeological research that grew virtually to domi-
nate the fielc! in later years. Stewart! hac! himself signaler!
the importance of such analysis in "Ecological Aspects of
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J
rULIAN HAYNE S STEWARD
329
Southwestern Society" (1937), a research thesis that, until
publication of Willey's Viru Valley work, largely hac! been
unnoticed.
Throughout his professional life Stewart! carrier! on his
search for cross-culturally valic! regularities. In effect, he
saw his anthropological mission as a search for causes. An c!
while he was appropriately cautious about spelling out laws
or ineluctable causes, he was not immune from the criti-
cism of those who clismissec! the search for cultural regu-
larities, citing diffusion as an argument against Stewarcl's
evolutionary propositions. He responclec! to these objections
by cirawing attention to the force of cultural ecological fac-
tors in determining when, where, how, en c! if diffusion of
cultural items or artifacts conic! take place, thus making
diffusion an aspect of cultural evolution, a clepenclent rather
than an inclepenclent variable. Stewart! presser! on with his
search for what may be referrer! to as micicIle-range gener-
alizations or, more ciaringly, analysis en c! inference with pre-
clictive potential.
In short, Stewart! "minimally hoper! that anthropologists
wouIc! accept the position that culture is an orclerly domain
in which causality operates, en c! fits] operation is accessible
through scientific method. Given the complexity of our sub-
ject matter, this may have been a naive expectation, but to
Stewart! these were the unstatec! premises which uncleriay
the rest of his theories" (Murphy, p. 10~.
In 1946 Steward accepted a professorship at Columbia
University, entering at a time when the influence of Boas
still clominatec! the program en c! when the small clepart-
ment (six full-time en c! several adjunct staff members) was
cleTugec! by an influx of 120 graduate students, overwhelm-
ingly G.I. Bill recipients. Stewart! remainec! at Columbia
until 1952, when he left to take a position as University
Professor at the University of Illinois.
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B I O G RA P H I C A L
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During his years at Columbia, Stewart! supervisec! some
thirty-five cloctoral dissertations en c! servec! on the commit-
tees of several clozen others. In all, he influencec! a large
number of students, many of whom later came to occupy
senior professorships in universities arounc! the country.
While at Columbia Stewart! planner! en c! supervisec! the
preparation, fieldwork, en c! write-up activities of five graclu-
ate students in the execution of the cliscipline's first at-
tempt to stucly the culture of an entire area. He chose the
island! of Puerto Rico. The student team preparer! for the
enterprise with a semester seminar on the history, economy,
polity, social structure en c! clepenclency constraints, en c!
opportunities in Puerto Rico from just before initial con-
tact with the Spanish conquerors in 1492 through the pe-
rioc! of American control en c! into the late 1940s. The fielcI-
work was concluctec! from the enc! of 1947 to August 1949.
It was cluring this perioc! that Stewart! completec! work on
Area Research: Theory and Practice ~ ~ 950) . Publication of the
team enterprise, The People of Puerto Rico, was clelayoc! until
1956. It is still reckoner! one of the several significant con-
tributions that mark Stewarcl's eminence among anthropolo-
gists in the micicIle years of the twentieth century.
At the University of Illinois, Steward conceived and ex-
ecutec! an even more ambitious research effort to clocu-
ment "the processes of change in peasant agricultural sys-
tems that have been exposed to outside markets and wage
labor" (Murphy, p. 12~. To this end he established a pro-
gram called "Studies in Cultural Regularities." With a grant
from the Forc! Foundation, Stewart! selectee! eleven field!
workers who were assignee! to test the theories clevelopec!
in the Cultural Regularities program, one field worker was
assigned to Nigeria, one to Mexico, two to Peru, one to
Kenya, two to Tanganylka, one each to Burma and Malaya,
en c! two to Japan. The fieldwork was carrier! out between
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J
rULIAN HAYNE S STEWARD
331
1957 en c! 1959, en c! the results, Contemporary Change in Tra-
ditionat Societies, were publisher! in three volumes in 1967.
The Puerto Rican project en c! the work that grew out of
the program in Studies in Cultural Regularities were guiclec!
by research principles that market! all but the very earliest
of Stewarcl's research activities. He combiner! incluction with
clecluction, moving from hunches stimulates! by reacting en c!
observation en c! acivancec! by certain "logical inferences" to
create a hypothesis. He clic! not see the field! as a place
where one went to recorc! as carefully as possible a general
description of a culture. Rather he was among the earliest
anthropologists to go into the field! guiclec! by a firm set of
problems, a set of clecluctive hypotheses to be testec! by
examination of documentary en c! archival resources en c! by
incluction, by the careful collection of ciata in the fielcI. The
cross-cultural comparisons on which his work placer! such
great emphasis were a calculates! test en c! attachment of the
hypothesis/problem-orientec! fieldwork for which he en c!
his students hac! prepared.
Stewarcl's significance in the history of anthropology cle-
rives from a number of innovative icleas en c! practices, many
of which helpec! to determine major clevelopments in re-
search methodology. He will be remembered for his "theory
of cultural ecology," a theory that Murphy caller! his "great-
est contribution to anthropology." Other anthropologists
had dealt with the shaping force of environmental factors
(Kroeber, Wissler, etch. But it remainec! for Stewart! to em-
phasize the importance of culture en c! its effects on the
environment, in a sense to relegate the natural habitat to
the role of clepenclent variable in determining the lifeways
of the group, society, or region. Consequently, Stewart! was
most impatient with those anthropologists who user! the
terms "environment" en c! "ecology" interchangeably. The
theory and method of cultural ecology goes beyond the
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B I O G RA P H I C A L
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influence of the natural habitat, or it postulates a relation-
ship among the resources of a particular environment, the
technology (tools en c! knowlecige) available at a particular
time to exploit these resources en c! the patterns of work
clesignec! to bring the technology to bear upon the resources.
"The organization of work, in turn, is hypothesizer! as hav-
ing a determinative effect upon other social institutions
en c! practices. The key element in the equation is not the
environment" (Murphy, p. 22~.
Despite his devotion to the search for causes en c! regu-
larities in processes of culture change, Stewart! remainec!
generally indifferent to the premises en c! promises of ap-
pliec! anthropology because he was keenly aware of the clif-
fering values, theoretical positions, and conflicting prescrip-
tions for social action that criss-crossec! the cliscipline. An c!
he was acutely sensitive to the gaps in our unclerstancling of
Process in the genesis en c! clecline of specific sociocultural
~ .
phenomena. -nay, ne was appropriately cynical about the
uses of admonition clivorcec! from the exercise of power.
Stewart! is generally creclitec! with introducing a few con-
ceptual terms de nova into the anthropological lexicon for
example, "multilinear evolution" en c! "levels of sociocultural
integration." His name is also associated with the refine-
ment en c! popularization of other concepts now wiclely em-
ployed in anthropology, such as the "search for regulari-
ties," "cultural causality," en c! the significance of "the larger
context," i.e., forces en c! influences from outside the locus
of research that must be reckoned with as significant deter-
minants of local change ancI/or persistence.
He persuaclec! most of his colleagues to replace the stulti-
fying "culture area" concept with the concept of "culture
type." And he participated in a generally successful revolt
against the restrictions of historical particularism en c! the
perversion of cultural relativism from methodological too!
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J
rULIAN HAYNE S STEWARD
333
to an immutable principle of identification. He also fought
to keep anthropology within the "sciences," for he saw its
mission as the search for explanation rather than the hope-
less pursuit of immutable truths.
In 1952 Stewart! was awarclec! the Viking Func! Mecial in
General Anthropology, a distinction Alfrec! Kroeber hac!
preclictec! a couple of years earlier when he referrer! to
Stewarcl's outstanding contributions to anthropology en c!
aciclec! that he believer! Stewart! to be the "finest teacher in
our fielc! in the past 20 years." In 1954 he became one of
the earliest scholars outside the h are! sciences to be electec!
to the National Academy of Sciences. In 1956-57 Stewart!
went to Japan as director of the Kyoto American Studies
Seminar. In 1960-61 he was appointed a fellow of the Cen-
ter for Advance c! Stucly in Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto.
An c! when the University of Illinois establishec! its own Cen-
ter for Acivancec! Stucly, Stewart! was one of the four initial
appointees (anc! the only social scientist) out of a faculty
numbering about 4,000.
By way of commemorating Steward's sixtieth birthday,
twenty-six of his colleagues en c! former students honoree!
him with a Festschrift: Process and Pattern in Culture (1964~.
An c! in 1969 a group of graduate students from the Univer-
sity of Illinois anthropology department launched a twice-
yearly publication, The Steward Anthropological Society Journal.
Because Stewart! was cliligent in the use of empirical ciata
in his theoretical formulations, a few critics have labeler!
his results inductive or empirical generalizations. Although
he was uncommonly sensitive at times, he consiclerec! these
charges vacuous, remarking that it was self-eviclent that no
theory springs fuliblown out of a ciataTess vacuum. Stewart!
user! the empirical ciata clerivec! from his own research en c!
that of others as a catalyst for the imaginative leap that
wouic! offer an explanation that went "beyonc! the facts." In
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B I O G RA P H I C A L
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short, he sail! he conic! construct theory in the only way
possible by affirming the inescapable value of facts but
not bincling the scope of explanation exclusively to those
facts.
NOTES
1. During the war the Office of Naval Research funded a num-
ber of projects designated "Studies of Culture at a Distance." These
were generally defined as culture and personality studies and did
indeed attempt to characterize national cultures by exposing the
dominant patterns or the ethos of each country as revealed in the
course of interviews with expatriate citizens of these nations then
living in the United States. Ruth Benedict, Sula Bennett, Margaret
Mead, and others associated with Columbia were participants in
these activities, which, unlike Steward's program, did not involve
fieldwork.
2. The British anthropologist Max Gluckman used the term "so-
cial field" to describe the same phenomenon, notably in a couple
of essays, "Malinowski's Sociological Theories," first published in
the late 1940s.
FURTHER READINGS
Stewarcl's papers, inclucling copies of an extensive corre-
sponclence (1926-73), are in the University of Illinois Ar-
chives. Brief biographical entries may be fount! in Who Was
Who (vol. 5), the InternationalDictionary of Anthropology (1991),
en c! the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (vol.
18~. A complete bibliography of Stewarcl's work appears as
an appendix to his Obituary, Manners, Robert A. en c! lane
C. Steward, American Anthropologist (75:886-903~. A substan-
tial but slightly less exhaustive bibliography, since it appearec!
in 1964, is in Process and Pattern in Culture: Essays in Honor
Of Julian Steward, ed. Robert A. Manners, pp. 418-24.
Of a number of bibliographical essays honoring Steward,
four, in particular, are noteworthy for the personal infor-
mation they provide along with striking analytical and criti
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J
rULIAN HAYNE S STEWARD
335
Cal insights cleating with his work: "Julian Haynes Steward"
in Portraits in American Archeology: Remembrance of Some Dis-
tinguished Americans, Gordon R. Willey, 1988, pp. 21 8-41,
"Julian H. Steward: A Contributor to Fact en c! Theory in
Cultural Anthropology" in Process and Pattern in Culture: Es-
says in Honor of futian H. Steward, Demitri B. Shimkin, pp. I-
17, "Julian Stewarcl's Writings en c! the Essays: A post hoc
Articulation," ibid., pp. 18-25, "Introduction: The Anthro-
pological Theories of Julian H. Steward," by Robert Murphy
in Evolution and Ecology: Essays on Social Transformation, futian
Steward, ecI. Jane C. Stewart! en c! Robert T. Murphy, 1977,
pp. I-39. This posthumous publication and Steward's A Theory
of Culture Change (1955) together contain some of Stewarcl's
more noteworthy essays, cullec! with care by Stewart! him-
self in the 1955 publication en c! with respect en c! insight in
the 1977 book of selections arranger! by his wife en c! one of
his most clistinguishec! students.
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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
In addition to the several titles referred to in the body of this piece,
at least a few more of Steward's many papers demand inclusion in
order to document the significance of his contributions to anthro-
pological thought and method. These have been chosen with stud-
ied arbitrariness (from a body of more than 200 publications) and
are presented in chronological order.
1937
The economic and social basis of primitive bands. In Essays on An-
thropology in Honor of Alfred Louis Kroeber, ed. R. H. Lowie, pp. 311-
50.
1938
Ecological aspects of southwestern society. Anthropos 32:87-104.
1941
Basin Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups. Bureau of American Eth-
nology, Bulletin 120.
1943
Determinism in primitive society? Scientific Monthly 53:491-501.
1947
Acculturation and the Indian problem. America Indigena 3:323-28.
1951
American culture history in the light of South America. Southwestern
Journal of Anthropology 3:85-107.
1956
Level of sociocultural integration: an operational concept. South-
western Journal of Anthropology 7:374-90.
1969
Cultural evolution. Scientific American 194:69-80.
Limitations of applied anthropology: the case of the American In-
dian New Deal. Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society 1:1-17.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
cultural regularities
