Scenes from the High Desert

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. Virginia Kerns considers the intellectual and emotional influences of Steward's remarkable career, exploring his 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. 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-centred structure of mid-twentieth-century American anthropology.

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.