eric wolf has left

From:   Harald E.L. Prins, Kansas State University
        prins@abc.ksu.ksu.edu


In response some queries about "Who was Eric Wolf," I offer the
following
sketch. Son of an Austrian soldier who became POW in Siberia during WWI,

and a Russian woman exiled with her family in the same area, Eric was
born in Vienna in 1922. Eric's youth was decidedly multicultural. Not
only
did he hear about Latin America from his father who had traveled
there for business before the War, but from his mother he heard
fascinating tales about her own father who had lived not only among
Russians, but also Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and even Siberian Tungus.

And although Eric grew up in the city, he spent his summers in the Alps
where he became intrigued by local peasants dressed in exotic costumes
and
speaking local dialects.

In 1933, the year that the Nazis came to power in Germany, Eric's family

went to Sudetenland (now Czech Republic) where his father had been
appointed manager of a textile factory. He not only read the usual
German
classics, but also Karl May's fascinating adventure stories of the
American
Wild West and the Arabian Desert. In 1938, his father saw the Nazi
writing
on the wall and sent his sixteen-year old son to England where he
finished
high school.  However, having declared war against Germany after the
invasion of Poland, the English considered Eric a foreigner belonging to
an
enemy nation and sent him to an alien internment camp north of
Liverpool.
That is where he met other Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe,
including Norbert Elias (who had just published his magnum opus "Ueber
den Prozess der Zivilisation: Soziogenetische und Psychogenetische
Untersuchungen" in Basel, a magnificent work which only decades later
was translated into English). In that camp, Eric also had his first
serious encounters with Marxist theory.

Because he had family in New York, he was allowed to leave England. In
New
York, he first studied biochemistry. Having taken a course in
anthropology
under Hortense Powdermaker (who had studied under Malinowski at the
London
School of Economics in the 1920s), Eric switched majors. In 1942, before

completing his undergraduate degree, he enlisted in the 10th Mountain
Division and fought in the Alps. Knowing that dangerous terrain well, he

won a Silver Star for bravery in combat. After the war, he returned to
the
US and completed his Bachelor degree in 1946, and entered Columbia
University on the GI Bill. Studying under Julian Steward and Ruth
Benedict,
he formed part of a brilliant cohort of graduate students (including
Stanley Diamond, Sidney Mintz, Elman Service), all of whom veterans with

socialist/communist leanings.

For his doctoral research he went to study a coffee hacienda in Puerto
Rico
and completed his doctorate at Columbia in 1951. He followed Steward
initially to the University of Illinois-Urbana, made fieldtrips to
Mexico
and wrote several important articles on peasants as well as a book
titled
"The Sons of Shaking Earth" (1959). After teaching stints at the
University
of Virginia, Yale University, and U Chicago, he became a professor at U
Michigan. There he wrote a very important little book simply titled
"Anthropology" (1964), and deepened his comparative historical interest
in
peasants.

After a 1966 book titled Peasants, he published a famous study titled
Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (1969), which appeared during the
height of the Vietnam War. He was firmly opposed to that war and
organized the first teach-in against the war (with his friend and
fellow anthropologist Marshall Sahlins). There had been none before, but

there were many afterwards, also on other campuses in the country. He
became also active within the American Anthropological Association,
where
he helped found the Committee on Ethics. In that capacity, he helped
expose
CIA-funded anthropological research in Thailand. In 1971, he accepted a
distinguished professorship at Lehman College in the Bronx, where his
anthropology classes were filled with working class students from
Puerto Rico and other islands in the Caribbean. He was also member of
the PhD Program at the Graduate School of the City University of New
York,
where he continued to attract many outstanding students.

Having published numerous other articles and several other books,
including
a seminal work titled "Europe and the People Without History" (1982), he

received a MacArthur "genius" award in 1990. A year later, three
scholarly
sessions were organized at the annual meetings of the American
Anthropological Association, exploring the influence of Wolf's work on
the
field of anthropology. Out of these sessions came a volume, edited by
two
of Wolf's former students, Jane Schneider and Rayna Rapp, and titled
"Articulating Hidden Histories: Exploring the Influence of Eric R. Wolf"

(U California Press, 1995). He was also honored by several major
universities, including the University of Vienna and the University of
Amsterdam, which granted him with honorary doctorates.

A few years ago, he was first diagnosed with cancer. Yet, he found the
energy to complete his last book "Envisioning Power: Ideologies of
Dominance and Crisis" (U California Press, 1999), which he dedicated to
the
memory of the Catholic family in former Czechoslowakia which risked its
own
life to hide Eric's parents. Eric is survived by his wife and fellow
anthropologist Sydel Silverman and two sons from an earlier marriage.
But
his enormous scholarly output in a dozen books and about one hundred
articles and essays he has either authored or co-authored, edited or
co-edited, does not represent the full measure of his exemplary life as
a
humanist.  For that, I believe, one would have had to see and hear him
in
person. Still, this brief review should give some idea of a life very
well
lived.

There will be an Eric R. Wolf Fund for Student Research at the
Anthropology Program, The Graduate School, City University of New
York (33 West 42nd Street, NY 10036). There will also be a memorial
service for Eric.