Social Anthropology Latin America Ralph Leon and 12 similar items

Social Anthropology of Latin America Essays in Honor of Ralph Leon Beals. Edited by Walter Goldschmidt Harry Hoijer. Published 1970 by the University of California, Latin America Center. Hardcover, no dj, 309 pp., 8vo. Ralph Leon Beals, who was born on July 19, 1901 and died on February 24, 1985, devoted his life to the field of anthropology as an active member of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), Latin American Research and the UCLA community. His main contribution to anthropology is his detailed ethnological investigation of the cultures in Latin America. His major interests rest in the process of cultural change, otherwise known as acculturation, as well as the theory of cultural relativism. The background of Ralph Beals was surrounded with concern of social order. His mother's father was a volunteer in the Civil War because he opposed slavery. His father, Leon Beals, prosecuted not only the sellers but also the prominent members of the community who supported liquor. His mother, Elvina S. Blickensderfer, was a woman of great moral strength and high intelligence. She ran for political office a number of times and used her son as an example of her motherly domestic and feminine qualities. He has written that, "Marxian ideas were a common subject of dinner table conversation". Beal's family had a small variety store in Pasadena and later in Oxnard. At 17, Ralph accompanied his brother Carleton on a trip to Mexico, which consequently affected his later career. He then entered the progressive A to Zed school, operated by the parents of his future wife, Dorothy, where he found his way into the study of anthropology. During the period of his graduate work, his two sons and daughter, Genevieve, who died in 1941, were born. Beals's dissertation on the ethnic history of the Indians of northern New Mexico prompted him into the Latin American field and placed him among the pioneers of modern Mexican ethnography. He studied "tribes" rather than communities and he was also interested in sociological matters such as the status implication of religious cargo and the character of boundary-maintenance mechanisms. One of the groups that he looked at were the Tarascans whom he concluded had a European origin in their culture. His earlier work had consistently placed great emphasis on the economic infrastructure of the social order. Beals's final field research brought him back to Mexico, and the study of the markets of Oaxaca, with the focus on economics. He says that reciprocity and redistribution are like that of Western societies. Throughout all of his research in Latin America, there is an undercurrent of concern with conditions in society and the future of native peoples. Among his involvements in Latin American studies, mention should be made of his being technical advisor to the U.S. Delegation to the 4th and 6th Assemblies (Mesas Redondas) of the Pan American Institute of History and Geography. He also received an honorary professorship at the Faculty of Medicine at a university in Chile and became an Honorary Patron for the Reorganization of the Ethnographic Section of the Museo Nacional de Antropologia in Mexico City. Condition: Ex-Libris exterior and interior markings. Book is complete, and intact with sturdy binding. Interior pages are in fine condition. Cover is in very good to fine condition.