Harold Colyer Conklin (April 27, 1926 – February 18, 2016) was an American
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and v ...
who conducted extensive
ethnoecological and
linguistic field research in
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...
(particularly the
Philippines) and was a pioneer of
ethnoscience Ethnoscience has been defined as an attempt "to reconstitute what serves as science for others, their practices of looking after themselves and their bodies, their botanical knowledge, but also their forms of classification, of making connections, e ...
, documenting indigenous ways of understanding and knowing the world.
Early life and education
Conklin was born in
Easton, Pennsylvania in 1926
but moved before the age of one to his father's hometown of
Patchogue, New York. Interested in
Native American culture from an early age, he was adopted by the
St. Regis Mohawk tribe of the
Akwesasne
The Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne ( ; french: Nation Mohawk à Akwesasne; moh, Ahkwesáhsne) is a Mohawk Nation (''Kanienʼkehá:ka'') territory that straddles the intersection of international (United States and Canada) borders and provincial (Ont ...
(Mohawk) Nation in 1939, when he was in eighth grade. While in high school, he pursued his interest in anthropology by serving as a volunteer at the
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inte ...
under anthropology curator
Clark Wissler
Clark David Wissler (September 18, 1870 – August 25, 1947) was an American anthropologist, ethnologist, and archaeologist.
Early life
Clark David Wissler was born in Cambridge City, Indiana on September 18, 1870 to Sylvania (née Needler) an ...
.
Conklin entered the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...
as an undergraduate in 1943, studying with anthropologists
Robert Lowie
Robert Harry Lowie (born '; June 12, 1883 – September 21, 1957) was an Austrian-born American anthropologist. An expert on Indigenous peoples of the Americas, he was instrumental in the development of modern anthropology and has been described a ...
,
Alfred L. Kroeber
Alfred Louis Kroeber (June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first ...
, and
Edward W. Gifford, as well as geographer
Carl O. Sauer
Carl Ortwin Sauer (December 24, 1889 – July 18, 1975) was an American geographer. Sauer was a professor of geography at the University of California at Berkeley from 1923 until becoming professor emeritus in 1957. He has been called "the de ...
. He attended Berkeley for one year before being inducted into the
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...
in July 1944. After serving briefly in
New Guinea and
Leyte, he served with the
158th Infantry Regiment on the island of
Luzon in the
Philippines.
When
World War II came to an end, Conklin continued serving with the Army in the Philippines until his discharge in August 1946. With the support of the Berkeley anthropology department he remained in the Philippines to conduct fieldwork for a year and a half. In 1947, he traveled to
Mindoro and
Palawan for a linguistic and cultural survey, spending time with the
Hanunóo, an upland tribe in Mindoro. In
Manila, he met with the tropical botanist
Harley Harris Bartlett, who instructed him in botanical research and provided him with funds to create an ethnobotanical collection from Palawan.
Conklin returned to Berkeley in 1948 and finished his undergraduate work in 1950. He then started graduate school in anthropology at
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the worl ...
. At Yale he studied with
Floyd Lounsbury (who became his dissertation advisor),
Bernard Bloch, and
Isidore Dyen, among others. His fellow graduate students included
William C. Sturtevant William Curtis Sturtevant (1926 Morristown, New Jersey – March 2, 2007) was an anthropologist and ethnologist. He is best known as the general editor of the 20-volume ''Handbook of North American Indians''. Renowned anthropologist Claude Lévi-Str ...
and
Charles Frake
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was " ...
, who shared his interest in language, culture, and cognition. He conducted fieldwork among the Hanunóo in Mindoro from 1952 to 1954, completing his dissertation in 1955.
Career
In 1955, Conklin accepted a teaching position in anthropology at
Columbia University. There he pursued his research interests in language, culture, cognition, kinship, and folk classification. He continued publishing his analysis of the Hanunóo until 1961, when he moved his research to
Ifugao in northern Luzon, where he would make a series of fieldwork trips for the next two decades.
Conklin joined the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the worl ...
in 1962. At Yale his research areas included the ethnology and ecology of tropical forested areas of the Pacific Basin.
Based on his extensive research, Conklin built one of the largest ethnographic collections from the Philippines at Yale's
Peabody Museum of Natural History
The Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University is among the oldest, largest, and most prolific university natural history museums in the world. It was founded by the philanthropist George Peabody in 1866 at the behest of his nephew Othn ...
, where he was Curator of Anthropology from 1974 until his retirement in 1996. Nearly 1,500 objects that he collected in the Philippines have been acquired by the
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inte ...
.
Conklin died on February 18, 2016, at the age of 89.
Publications
Some of Harold Conklin's publications include:
* (1955a) "Hanunóo Color Categories" ''Southwestern Journal of Anthropology'', Vol. 11, No. 4. pg. 339-344
* (1955b)'' The Relation of
Hanunoo Culture to the Plant World''
* (1956) "Tagalog Speech Disguise" ''Language'', Vol. 32, No. 1. pg. 136-139.
* (1957) ''Hanunoo Agriculture''
* (1959a) "Facts and Comments. Ecological Interpretations and Plant Domestication" ''American Antiquity'', Vol. 25, No. 2. pg. 260-262
* (1959b) "Linguistic Play in Its Cultural Context" Language, Vol. 35, No. 4. pg. 631-636.
* (1963) ''The Study of Shifting Cultivation''. Washington: Technical Publications
* (1967) ''An Ethnoecological Approach to Shifting Agriculture''
* (1980) ''Ethnographic Atlas of
Ifugao: A Study of Environment, Culture, and Society in northern
Luzon''
* (1986) "Symbolism and Beyond. Hanunóo Color Categories" ''Journal of Anthropological Research'', Vol. 42, No. 3, pg. 441-446.
Online material
Conklin, Harold. C (1949) "Bamboo Literacy on Mindoro" ''Pacific Discovery'' Vol 3. Pg 4-11Accessed August 12, 2009
Accessed August 12, 2009
See also
*
Contrast set A contrast set is a bounded collection of items, each of which could fill the same slot in a given schema, syntactic structure, or other linguistic environment. The seven days of the week, the fifty United States, the eight Hawaiian islands, the let ...
*
Ethnobiology
References
External links
"Bibliographical Note: Harold Conklin" Cordillera Northern Luzon Archivesmall>Accessed August 10, 2009
small>Accessed August 10, 2009
small>Accessed August 10, 2009
*
ttp://classes.yale.edu/03-04/anth500b/projects/project_sites/00_Neidel/Biography.htm "Biography" Yale Universitysmall>Accessed August 10, 2009
Review of Conklin, Harold C., (2007) ''Fine Description: Ethnographic and Linguistic Essays''Accessed August 10, 2009
Harold C. Conklin Papers (MS 1956).Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
Michael R. Dove and Patrick V. Kirch, "Harold C. Conklin", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2018)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Conklin, Harold
American anthropologists
Ethnobiologists
1926 births
2016 deaths
People from Easton, Pennsylvania
People from Patchogue, New York
United States Army personnel of World War II
UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni
Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Columbia University faculty
Yale University faculty
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Military personnel from California
American expatriates in the Philippines