Peace, William J.
2004 Leslie A. White: Evolution and Revolution in Anthropology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Notes: xviii, 282 p.: ill.; 24 cm. ISBN: 0803236816Reviewed 8 Sep 2004 by:
Robert Lawless <robert.lawless@wichita.edu>
Department of Anthropology, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas, USAMedium: Written Literature Subject
Keywords:Anthropologists - United States - Biography
Social evolution - United States - Philosophy
Marxist anthropology
Culture - Philosophy
White, Leslie A., 1900-1975
ABSTRACT: A review of the intellectual legacy of Leslie White, this book sheds light on the major political and personal influences on one of anthropology's major theoreticians.
One of my major interests as an undergraduate in Chicago was 20th-century U.S. literature, especially the Chicago School. The works of authors such as Nelson Algren, Sherwood Anderson, Saul Bellow, Theodore Dreiser, James Farrell, Ben Hecht, Ernest Hemingway (and non-Chicago writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe) fascinated me, and I devoured their novels day after day. As an addict of this genre, I soon began reading their biographies; I had thought that knowing something about the writers would bring me closer to an understanding of their fiction. Unfortunately it seemed that many of them had behaved like jerks, and I found that the more I learned about their rebarbative behavior the less I enjoyed their novels. I stopped reading the biographical literature.As a practicing anthropologist, I feel an obligation to know not only the theoretical and methodological works of anthropologists but also something about their lives and the sociocultural context in which they work. Similar, however, to my reaction to the biographies of writers of fiction, I find that occasionally the more information I have on the personal lives of anthropologists the less I am able to focus wholly on their professional writings. This biography of White is one such instance.
Having known White only through his professional work, I have now learned that he had a prickly personality. I had also dismissed rumors about his womanizing, but now I learn that they were true. Should all this lessen my appreciation of his work as an anthropologist? Certainly not. Can I now pretend that I do not know any of this additional information as I reread his works or talk about him in class? Certainly not. Do I regret reading Peace's work. Certainly not.
Peace himself contends that his emphasis is on White's "intellectual and political work rather than on his personal life" (p. xv). The primary context consists of White's political beliefs and activities. To this end Peace delved into White's voluminous papers at the University of Michigan, which, he notes, had "not hitherto [been] seriously analyzed" (p. xv). Peace also read through White's personal and academic journals as well as his unpublished manuscripts and correspondence. And he interviewed many people who knew White. (Peace himself never met White.)
White was born at the beginning of the 20th century, and the first chapter recounts his lonely and unsettled childhood on a farm in Kansas living with an emotionally distant father (the mother left when White was five years old). When White was 16, they moved to Zachary, Louisiana -apparently to deal with the pregnancy of White's unmarried older sister. Upon his graduation from high school White moved out and two years later enlisted in the U.S. Navy.
Although the war ended before he could participate, World War I, the Navy, and San Francisco had a profound impact on White's thinking, causing him to question the capitalist and democratic system of his youth. White also became a lifelong pacifist. And as Peace states, "He was to spend much of his undergraduate and graduate years searching for a discipline that would provide him with the answers to questions such as why do countries go to war" (p. 10). After his sophomore year at Louisiana State University and with the recommendation of his professors, White transferred to Columbia University in 1921, receiving his bachelor's in 1923 and his master's in psychology in 1924. Although Columbia was the center for anthropology in North America, White did not take any anthropology courses and never met Franz Boas or any other anthropologists. Instead he considered psychiatry and history before becoming a "revolutionist" (p. 12) in 1922 while attending meetings of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Still not finding the answers and the activism that he desired, White turned to the New School for Social Research, taking courses between 1922 and 1924 from Alexander Goldenweiser, William I. Thomas, Thorstein Veblen, J. B. Watson, and Frankwood E. Williams. It is here that White first encountered anthropology, especially as it was presented by Goldenweiser, a student of Boas.
Eventually White went to graduate school at the University of Chicago where the preeminent anthropologists were Fay-Cooper Cole and Edward Sapir, both also students of Boas. At that time anthropology and sociology were in one department, and it is an accepted part of anthropological folklore that the splitting of the department was caused by the reluctance of the sociologists to accept White's dissertation, an interpretation that he himself was instrumental in cultivating. As Peace points out, however, "Apparently unbeknownst to White, moves were [already] under way to separate the joint department" (p. 22) even before the occasion of White's oral examination and dissertation proposal.
In 1925 White experienced his first fieldwork, a brief period with the Menominee in Wisconsin. According to Peace, "White was tremendously impressed by the culture and family structure of what he called aboriginal American culture" (p. 34). He left Chicago the next year for the U.S. Southwest to study the Pueblos, "a step he regarded as one of the most significant episodes in his academic career. For White this trip forged a definite commitment to anthropology" (p. 34).
Peace devotes Chapter 2 to White's "Fieldwork in the Southwest". Although he wrote ethnographies of most of the Keresan Pueblos, that is, Acoma, San Felipe, Santa Ana, Santa Domingo, and Zia, his first visit was to Acoma, despite the reservations of his financial and intellectual mentor, Elsie Clews Parsons; Acoma was considered fairly impenetrable. Parsons soon came to admire his ability to establish rapport. (Today the governor of Acoma, as well as the lieutenant governors and other officials, can be contacted by email, and the Pueblo of Acoma -also known as Sky City -has an Internet website.)
Since I am not a 'Southwestologist', I did not read White's ethnographies until some time after I had become acquainted with his theoretical works. I was, indeed, very favorably impressed with these meticulously crafted ethnographies that were, obviously, derived from systematic, patient questioning of informants -ethnographies that have a high degree of accuracy despite the fact that White was not allowed to live in the Pueblo or participate in its ceremonies and did not learn the language. Peace spends about seven pages on White's fieldwork methods suggesting that his surreptitious meetings with informants would not pass muster by today's ethical standards (which is ironic since White excoriates Boas's fieldwork in one of his more intemperate writings, the 1963 The Ethnography and Ethnology of Franz Boas). It should be noted that White's style of fieldwork was not at all uncommon at the time. At any rate, with considerable encouragement from Sapir, White received his Ph.D. in 1927 for a dissertation done under the direction of Cole titled Medicine Societies of the Southwest.
In Chapter 3 Peace details White's little-known involvement with the Socialist Labor Party and socialist evolutionary theory pointing out, "Without an appreciation of White's political commitments it is not possible to appreciate the reasons he embraced evolutionary theory and forcefully argued it had a place in the discipline" (p. 69). In 1929 White spent about six weeks in the Soviet Union and "was enthusiastic about the developments in Russia and spoke widely about his experiences" (p. 70). And the next year he gave a paper at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science titled "An Anthropological Appraisal of the Russian Revolution" containing rather provocative language about the eventual triumph of socialism over capitalism that was front-paged by The New York Times and by Pravda.
The attention he received did not, however, contribute to his popularity with the administration at the University of Michigan, where he had taken a position in 1930 (interestingly replacing Julian Steward, who had been there for two years). Although he retained his position, he became isolated from the other faculty members as much for his attitude as for his beliefs. Some hint of this attitude can be gleaned from the journals that Peace liberally quotes, for example, "I have, and have had for years, a profound, if not bitter contempt a feeling of loathing and hatred. I despise the cheapness and shallowness of what passes for learning. . . . It is only rarely that I can read an article or book on social science that I can even stomach" (p. 82). Peace covers White's stormy years at the University of Michigan in Chapter 5.
In 1931, White began writing for the Weekly People, the publication of the Socialist Labor Party, under the pseudonym John Steel, and "between 1931 and 1946 White published 31 letters, articles, and miscellaneous notes in the Weekly People" (p. 92). As Peace laments, "White's association with the SLP is not mentioned in any of his obituaries nor are any of his articles in the Weekly People listed in the published bibliography of his work" (p. 70). Peace does the significant service of listing a selection of these publications (pp. 276-277).
Many of these writings dealt with, as Peace terms it, "social(ist) evolutionary theory" (p. 91); in White's "work cultural evolution and socialism were intricately interwoven" (p. 91). Anthropological folklore locates the beginnings of White's vitriolic anti Boasianism at the University of Buffalo where he had his first anthropology position from 1927 to 1930. Since this was Iroquois territory, White felt obliged to read the ethnographic works of the classic unilinear evolutionist Lewis Henry Morgan. He had been told by his Boas-trained professors that Morgan was a worthless speculative philosopher, but to his amazement he discovered that Morgan was a brilliant scholar. Although White himself told just such a story, Peace does not comment on this alleged epiphany but instead states simply that White's socialist writings contained pointed references to Morgan and evolutionary theory beginning in 1931.
As Peace summarizes, "White was clearly taken with the importance Morgan placed on the role property relations had in determining the nature of all aspects of social organization" (p. 94). White saw Morgan's scheme as providing a framework within which all manner of societal change could be coordinated into an understandable sequence of events that not only explained the past but predicted the future and gave meaning to social activism. "Influenced by Morgan, White's evolutionary scheme considered the following: the importance of technology in determining property relations, the evolution of property ownership from primitive communism to private property, the democratic nature of primitive communities with an absence of slavery, and the primary influence of property as an initiator of change in other aspects of social organization" (p. 94).
By 1935 White had decided that he needed "to branch out from his evolutionary writings for the Weekly People" (p. 99) and bring his message to anthropology. Chapter 4 is devoted to showing how White "committed himself to waging battle with the entire discipline . . ., for he was convinced he knew the truth" (p. 99). The standard accounts date the beginnings of this battle to the American Anthropologist's publication in 1943 of "Energy and the Evolution of Culture", which proposed to measure evolution by the amount of energy per capita per year harnessed and put to work. Other things being equal, then, culture evolves as the productivity to human labor increases. Peace suggests, however, that two other articles presaged this battle, that is, "Science Is Sciencing", published in 1938 in Philosophy of Science (which reappeared in revised form as Chapter 1 of White's 1949 The Science of Culture) and "A Problem in Kinship Terminology", published in 1939 in American Anthropologist. In fact, White wrote that he thought of "Science Is Sciencing" as the "background for a more direct and immediate assault upon the anti-evolutionists in contemporary American anthropology" (p. 100). The article was an entreaty for anthropologists to use rigorous scientific methods. In "A Problem in Kinship Terminology" White "lamented", in the words of Peace, "that there was a paucity of theory in anthropology alongside a plethora of data" (p. 104). White stated that the solution lies in the application of the principles of evolution. White also joined battle with the Boasians with his paper (of which no copy exists) delivered at the 1939 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (pp. 105-107).
The reaction of anthropologists seemed to be more conditioned by White's explicit, negative, and polemic anti-Boasianism rather than by his positive presentation of societal evolutionism. As essentially a branch of the European diffusionists, the Boasians were, certainly, clearly committed to a total rejection of evolutionary theory. An oft-quoted passage from a review of Robert Lowie's Culture and Ethnology by Boas's colleague Berthold Laufer shows this commitment: "The theory of cultural evolution, to my mind is the most inane, sterile and pernicious theory ever conceived in the history of science (a cheap toy for the amusement of children)" (p. 115). In view of such a mind-set White's inflammatory writings seem understandable. Nevertheless, among anthropologists "there was a general belief that White's critiques of Boas were becoming obsessive" (p. 116).
Peace quotes from White's letters to A. L. Kroeber and George Foster saying that he was no more obsessive in his critique of Boas's work than were those in Boas's defense. In Kroeber's letter he wrote, "I am firmly convinced by some 20-odd years of observation and reflection that [Boas] was quite muddle-headed, incapable of creative imagination, and philosophic synthesis, and at many points directly opposed to the spirit and procedure of science. I believe I can adduce enough evidence to convince any impartial observer that he has done American anthropology a great injury and that it will take a long time to recover from his effects upon it" (p. 117).
Although often ostensibly defeated in battle, White won the war. Unfortunately he apparently had neither the sapience to recognize his victory nor the personality to accept it graciously. The last two chapters of Peace's book cover the denouement of White's career and are chapters that I found to be profoundly saddening. Chapter 6 is aptly titled "White Presses Needlessly On" and focuses on his squabbles with the leading evolutionists, V. Gordon Childe and Steward, and on White's acrimonious split with the Socialist Labor Party. Peace suggests that Steward, in particular, tried to distance himself from White for political rather than scientific reasons (pp. 178-179); to be identified with White was to be placed with Morgan and by extension with Marx and Engels -and such were dangerous company during the miasma of the Cold War, McCarthyism, and FBI surveillance. (It might be profitable to read this book in conjunction with Virginia Kerns's 2003 Scenes from the High Desert: Julian Steward's Life and Theory.)
White's break with the Socialist Labor Party came about in 1959 with a highly politicalized and critical review of his work published in the Weekly People. This was also the year of the Darwin centennials and may be used as a marker for the widespread acceptance in anthropology of the concept of societal evolution. Nevertheless, "After 1959 he became his own worst enemy. Despite the fact that his work began to reach a much wider audience, particularly younger scholars, he was unable to change his [pugnacious and alienating] writing style" (p. 206).
Also 1959 the death of White's wife Mary, "started a downward spiral in White's personal and professional life that spun increasingly out of control" (p. 208), as Peace chronicles in Chapter 7. In addition to tolerating White's infidelities, his wife edited and typed his manuscripts, collected reviews of his works, cooked, shopped, and maintained their home. White had a strict dependency on her and seemed to have an emotional bond with her that he lacked with anyone else. According to Peace, "White never came to terms with Mary's death or his actions during their marriage. He was treated for depression after her death, took antidepressants, and saw a psychiatrist intermittently for almost two years" (p. 210). Then in 1964 he entered into an ill-advised second marriage, which in serious trouble within months and which was dissolved in 1967. Meanwhile, White's brother and sister died of cancer.
Always a heavy drinker, White spent much of the time after his wife's death in an alcoholic haze. Then in 1966 after crashing his car into a tree and being booked and jailed for driving while intoxicated, he joined Alcoholics Anonymous. White became devoted to the organization and "attended at least two AA meetings week for the rest of his life" (p. 214). White concluded that the AA "was the most democratic or egalitarian organization the world had ever seen" (p. 215).
After 1959 White produced little of interest to anthropologists. As Peace states, "He should be remembered for what he wrote earlier in his career. The reworking of his old ideas later in his career is reflective of a tired and embittered man" (p. 217). All anthropologists working in the Pueblos appreciate his ethnographic work, and many have come to appreciate his theoretical contributions. In Totems and Teachers Robert Carneiro wrote, "Leslie White was, without question, one of the intellectual leaders of contemporary anthropology. But he was more than this. He was one of the major instruments by means of which anthropology became a full fledged science. When he entered it, anthropology was dominated by a negative and critical particularism. When he left it, it had become a positive, expanding, and generalizing discipline. And this transformation was due in no small part to White's own efforts. He gave anthropology powerful concepts and invigorating theories. In a word, he gave it propulsion" (1981:210).
As the department at the University of Michigan grow into international stature, "partly because of White and partly in spite of him", (pp. 216-222), he "increasingly withdrew from interactions with faculty members. He distanced himself from those who shared similar views [and] his polemics became increasingly mean-spirited" (p. 222). He was openly contemptuous of the epigones who now embraced evolutionism, and he refused to accept the increasingly popular term neo-evolutionism. He, nevertheless, "actively courted and energized many graduate students" (p. 224). Despite his background in social activism, however, the counter-cultural movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s did not interest him. Peace writes, "In White's estimation student protesters often came from affluent or at least middle-class families, and he believed the protest movement had less to do with political unrest than with the rejection of middle-class norms and family, religious, and sexual mores" (p. 226).
Toward the end White apparently became an extremely pessimistic curmudgeon "convinced that humankind would destroy itself in a nuclear war" (p. 227). By the time he retired in 1970 he seemed to have no friends left in Ann Arbor; despite his forty years of service to the university nobody organized a farewell party. He did leave volumes of unpublished papers, some of them more than 2,500 pages long. None of these has been analyzed.
White died in 1975, and Peace writes, "White's final years were lonely and sad. [After his retirement] White taught part-time at San Francisco State College, Rice University, and the University of California at Santa Barbara. His responsibilities were limited, as was his teaching schedule. White had no serious commitments to these schools" (p. 229) but taught at them simply to help his financial situation.
Thoroughly researched and clearly written, Peace's book is an outstanding and long-needed addition to the list of biographies of influential anthropologists. Certainly Chapter 3 on White's little known writings for the Socialist Labor Party is revelatory. Anthropologists are indebted to Peace for detailing White's Marxist connections, his interest in social activism, and the foundations for his resurrection of Morgan and societal evolution. And despite the fact that the personal lives of anthropologists may deviate from our expectations, it is, indeed, our duty to comprehend the sort of contextualization that Peace has so successfully elucidated.
To cite this review, the American Anthropological Association recommends the following style:
Lawless, Robert
2004 Review of Leslie A. White: Evolution and Revolution in Anthropology. Anthropology Review Database. September 8. Electronic document, http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=2420, accessed November 22, 2009.© Anthropology Review Database
(available online: http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/)