Eleanor Leacock
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Eleanor Burke Leacock (July2, 1922April2, 1987) was an American anthropologist and social theorist who made major contributions to the study of egalitarian societies, the evolution of the status of women in society,
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, and the
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.


Early life and education

Leacock was born on July2, 1922, in
Weehawken Weehawken is a Township (New Jersey), township in the North Hudson, New Jersey, northern part of Hudson County, New Jersey, Hudson County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is located on the Hudson Waterfront and Hudson Palisades overlooking ...
,
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, the second of three daughters. Her mother, Lily Mary Battherham, was a mathematician who taught secondary school and her father was the literary critic and philosopher Kenneth Burke. Leacock was raised between the family's apartment in
Greenwich Village Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to the north, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the s ...
, New York and their northern New Jersey 150-acre farm, living half of the year in each place. Living in a social circle that included artists, political radicals and intellectuals prompted into Leacock an ideal "to be scornful of materialist consumerism; to value—even revere—nature; to hate deeply the injustices of exploitation and racial discrimination...and to be committed to the importance of doing what one could to bring about a socialist transformation of society". Leacock attended New York public schools during her childhood until her teenage years, when she got a scholarship to the prestigious private high school
Dalton School The Dalton School, originally the Children's University School, is a private, coeducational college preparatory school in New York City and a member of both the Ivy Preparatory School League and the New York Interschool. The school is located in ...
. Also on scholarship, she started undergraduate courses in anthropology at
Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was founded in 1879. In 1999, it was fully incorporated into Harvard Colle ...
in 1939. At Radcliffe, she was introduced by Carleton S. Coon to the neo-evolutionary thought of V. Gordon Childe and C. Daryll Forde. She also became involved in studying Lewis H. Morgan and
Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...
and in radical student politics. There she also met filmmaker
Richard Leacock Richard Leacock (18 July 192123 March 2011)
The Telegraph (Lon ...
, whom she married in 1941. After curfew violations, Radcliffe authorities asked her to leave and she transferred to
Barnard College Barnard College is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia University in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a grou ...
in 1942. She studied under Gladys Reichard, graduating from Barnard in 1944 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology.


Academic career

After receiving her graduate degree, Leacock traveled to Europe with her first husband while he was shooting films on human geography. It is during this time in Paris that she began researching the social changes in the fur trade amount the Montagnais-Naskapi people. In 1951 Leacock received a grant to conduct fieldwork in
Labrador Labrador () is a geographic and cultural region within the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the primarily continental portion of the province and constitutes 71% of the province's area but is home to only 6% of its populatio ...
, Canada. During this time she brought her one-year-old son with her to Labrador. She used this fieldwork to challenge the idea that private property is universal. She worked at Bank Street College of Education as a senior research associate, from 1958 to 1965, and at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in the social sciences department, from 1963 to 1972. She struggled to get a full-time job during the 1950s due to her outspoken political views. She taught as an adjunct for decades before being appointed, in 1972, as a professor and chair of anthropology at City College (CCNY) and graduate faculty of City University of New York Graduate Center. Although highly qualified, Leacock credited her CCNY appointment to the rise of the
women's movement The feminist movement, also known as the women's movement, refers to a series of social movements and political campaigns for radical and liberal reforms on women's issues created by inequality between men and women. Such issues are women's ...
and social pressure felt by City College to diversify its faculty. Her appointment coincided with the publication of her celebrated introduction to
Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.
Dialectical Anthropology ''Dialectical Anthropology'' is a Marxist peer-reviewed academic journal of anthropology published by Springer Science+Business Media. It was established in 1975 by Stanley Diamond (The New School). Following Diamond's death in 1991, Donald Nonin ...
,'' entitled "Interpreting the Origins of Gender Inequality: Conceptual and Historical Problems" (1983), in which she discussed gender inequalities. Leacock's theories mainly concentrated on the relationships between race, class, gender, sexuality, and religion. And she refuted
biological determinism Biological determinism, also known as genetic determinism, is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, wheth ...
as it relates to race, gender, and class. Leacock's work could be reflected in five areas: women's status in egalitarian societies, race, and gender in schools, culture of poverty studies, women's work in development, and the studies of race, class, and gender in Samoa. Arguing the roles of women in the hierarchical society, she claimed that some features of women become exploitable under the patriarchy system. Leacock interpreted the structure of marriage as the structure of exchange and the division of labor. The exploitation of women's labor within the household is the same. Leacock's career involved four major regions: North America, Europe, Africa, and the Pacific. In these areas she studied various topics including the anthropology of education, women cross-culturally, foraging societies, etc. Leacock died of a
stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...
on April 2, 1987, in
Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...
.


Works and publications

* dissertation,
The Montagnais "Hunting Territory" and the Fur Trade
' (American Anthropological Association (Memoir 78)) * ''Teaching and Learning in City Schools: A Comparative Study'' (NY: Basic Books, 1969) * editor, ''A Culture of Poverty: Critique'' (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1971) * ''Myths of Male Dominance'' (NY: Monthly Review Press, 1981) * ''editor, then-recent edition, Morgan,
Ancient Society
' * editor, then-recent edition, Engels, ''Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State'' * editor with Nancy Lurie, ''North American Indians in Historical Perspective'' (NY: Random House, 1971) * author, essay, "Women's Status in Egalitarian Society: Implications for Social Evolution", ''Current Anthropology'' (1978, volume 19, issue 2)


References


Bibliography

* * * * Leacock, Eleanor (1983). "Ethnohistorical Investigations of Egalitarian Politics in Eastern North America," in ''The Development of Political Organization in Native North America'', ed. Elizabeth Tooker (Philadelphia: The American Ethnological Society), pp. 17–31. * * * *


External links


CUNY Graduate Center Academic Commons Anthropology homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leacock, Eleanor 1922 births 1987 deaths American women anthropologists Barnard College alumni Radcliffe College alumni Columbia University alumni CUNY Graduate Center faculty American socialist feminists People from Weehawken, New Jersey 20th-century American anthropologists