Eleanor Burke Leacock 1922-1987 |
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Kathryn Borman remembers: "I have fond memories of Eleanor Leacock (called "Happy" by her friends).I invited her to be a participant at the very first symposium I orchestrated at the University of Cincinnati, aware of her very fine work on urban education...a very warm and soft spoken individual who wore dark glasses because of eye problem. This was in 1977, I believe, and she must have been in her 50's. She had been married to a well known visual anthropologist and like many women academics at the time accompanied him into the field, neglecting her own work and raising the children (4). She told me how she had learned the importance of parental involvement in the schools through the volunteer work she had done in her children's schools in Manhattan. I also remember that she was a close friend to other women anthropologists who were working on education at the time and I know that the younger women, including me, Margaret LeCompt, Judith Goetz Preissle, and Elaine Simon among others really admired these women. She wrote a chapter for my first edited book based on her presentation, 'The Socialization of Children in Changing Society', published in 1979." Much appreciation to Dr. Kathryn Borman who generously shared her memories of Leacock with us.
Links of Interest *Inuit
Sources: Borman, Kathryn Gailey, Christine
Ward Sutten, Constance, ed.
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Eleanor Burke Leacock, a cultural anthropologist, was
known not only for her ethnographic study of the
peoples of the Northeastern region,
but for her analysis concerning
egalitarian societies and cultural evolution through her
studies of the Innu. Born during the Depression to parents who encouraged Eleanor and her sister to pursue their artistic and intellectual interests, Leacock developed a distaste for materialism and to eschew racism, sex, and socioeconomic discrimination. Her parents provided a stimulating environment of artists, writers, and political radicals revolutionary thinkers whose discussion of the ideology of Karl Marx opened the doors for Leacock to approach the field of anthropology from a Marxist and feminist perspective. At Barnard, Leacock studied under Amanda Reichard. Eleanor received her doctorate in 1952 from Columbia, but she did not get her first full time job teaching anthropology at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute until 1963. In 1972, as chair at the City College of New York, Leacock rebuilt the Department of Anthropology and remained until her death in 1987. She received many honors during this time, among them was the New York Academy Science Award for the Behavioral Sciences in 1983, becoming the first woman to receive this distinction.
Eleanor Burke Leacock devoted her research and writings to human emancipation. We celebrate her for her contributions to feminist anthropology, her research of racism in the school system, and her dedication in fighting race, sex and class discrimination.
Selected Works by Eleanor Burke Leacock: 1954 The Montagnais "Hunting Territory" and the Fur Trade. American Anthropologist Memoir 78. 1958 Social Stratification and Evolutionary Theory. Ethnohistory 5(3):193-209. 1963 Introduction. Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society. E.B. Leacock, ed. Pp. i-xx. New York: Meridian Books. 1971a Culture of Poverty: A Critique. New York: Simon and Schuster.
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