Smith, Sheldon 1940-

PERSONAL:

Born October 15, 1940, in Trinidad (now Trinidad-Tobago); U.S. citizen; son of Merlin Eugene (a foreign-service officer) and Josephine Montes Smith; married Fern Elizabeth Meyer; children: Monica J., Ethan E. Ethnicity: "American-Spanish." Education: George Washington University, B.A., 1963; University of Oregon, M.A., 1968, Ph.D., 1972. Politics: "Centrist-Independent." Religion: "No institutional connection."

ADDRESSES:

Home—312 S. 20th, La Crosse, WI 54601. Office—Department of Sociology and Archaeology, University of Wisconsin—La Crosse, La Crosse, WI 54601. E-mail—smith.shel@uwlax.edu.

CAREER:

Writer, anthropologist, and educator. Umqua Community College, Roseburg, OR, instructor, 1968-69; University of Wisconsin—La Crosse, began as instructor, became professor of anthropology and archaeology, 1969—, and director of Institute of Latin American Studies. Conference presenter.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fellow of National Endowment for the Humanities, 1979, 1982, 1991.

WRITINGS:

Anthropology: A Human Systems Ecology Approach, Volume 1: Prehistoric World, Volume 2: Culture and Community, Copley Publishing (Acton, MA), 1986.

(Editor, with Ed Reeves, and contributor) Human Systems Ecology, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1989.

World in Disorder: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Global Issues, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1993.

World in Disorder 1994-1995: An Anthropological and Interdisciplinary Approach to Global Issues, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1995.

(With Philip Young) Cultural Anthropology: Understanding a World in Transition, Allyn & Bacon (Boston, MA), 1998.

Latin America in Transition: The Influence of Culture on Ecology, Power, and Diversity, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 2003.

Contributor to books, including The Politics of the Small Community, edited by Richard Crockett, Western Illinois University Press (Macomb, IL), 1981. Contributor to periodicals, including Journal of American Culture.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sheldon Smith told CA: "My background is a little unusual and explains my sense of direction within anthropology. I grew up in the Foreign Service and originally planned to follow my father's footsteps in that career. However, at the George Washington University I became interested in anthropology and have pursued that professional interest to date. In the last several years I have combined my anthropological training with my earlier focus on international affairs and have attempted to translate those interests into the classroom in the form of globalization studies.

"I suppose I have always thought of myself as a writer, which is the other side of being a reader. But writing and reading are only preliminary to trying to write a book such as Latin America in Transition: The Influence of Culture on Ecology, Power, and Diversity. This and my other books were driven by the same need. Writing a book and having it succeed requires more than an ability to write, and that is the motivation to push oneself mightily. I have been driven by a compelling need to write about the world from a nonideological point of view. Driving my agenda is the Economist magazine, which I began reading to prepare for a course I teach called ‘Contemporary Global Issues,’ and before it another course called ‘Anthropology and Global Issues,’ which I began teaching in the early 1980s.

"Some might call me naïve for using the Economist as my ‘objective’ criterion for writing, but I am comfortable with my perspective. As a budding social scientist back in graduate school, I felt as though I had taken a Hippocratic Oath toward honesty which, as a teacher, I was neglecting. In trying to find books that I could use, I found myself with a problem in that what I read in the Economist was nowhere to be found in social science, or history for that matter. There were and are many fine writers, many much better than I'll ever be, but they seemed, and seem, stuck in the radical 1960s. I turned my hand to writing. It turned out to be much harder than I thought to succeed in writing about the world around me, because social science theory became more and more postmodern as my world became more and more global. I finally chose to write from the point of view of economic history, particularly the theoretical approach developed by Douglas North of Washington University in St. Louis, and the human ecology approach of John W. Bennett of the same institution. These are two tough-minded theoreticians, and I find I am happy with how I have been able to write about the complex events we are trying to understand."