Lauriston Sharp

Lauriston Sharp (March 24 1907 – December 31 1993) was a Goldwin Smith Professor of Anthropology and Asian Studies at Cornell University.

Student years

Sharp was born in 1907 in Madison, Wisconsin. His father was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sharp attended ths same institution, studying for a B.A. While majoring in philosophy, Sharp went on various summer treks to archaeological sites in Arizona and Utah. These expeditions sparked his interest in the concrete, culturally informed anthropologist's perspective on human nature, in contrast to the more abstract, universalizing view of a philosopher.

Academic career

After graduating with his B.A. in 1929, Sharp identified anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies as his career focus. He encountered Berber culture while on an expedition to Algeria in 1930 with the Beloit-Logan Museum. He then moved to Austria to study Southeast Asian Ethnology under Robert Heine-Geldern, receiving the Certificate in Anthropology from the University of Vienna in 1931. He enrolled in the PhD program at Harvard University in 1932 and completed his thesis in 1937, after two years of fieldwork studying Australian Aborigines.

Professor Sharp began teaching at Cornell in 1936; he was the university's first appointment in anthropology. He remained devoted to Cornell, teaching at, and remaining connected with the university for 56 years. He remained active as the Goldwin Smith Professor Emeritus, even after his formal retirement in 1973. During an appointment at the State Department in 1945 and 1946, Sharp was an Assistant Division Chief for Southeast Asian Affairs. Upon returning to Cornell, he oversaw the expansion of the anthropology program, making it a leading centre for graduate training and research. This was in line with Sharp's vision of anthropology, emphasising an applied orientation and an area studies focus, including research centers in South and Southeast Asia and North and South America.

In 1947, Professor Sharp launched the Cornell-Thailand Project, a groundbreaking initiative to collated baseline data in a comprehensive study of a farming village (Bang Chan) on the outskirts of Bangkok. Sharp also founded and was the first director between 1950 and 1960 of Cornell's Southeast Asia Program, recruiting a multidisciplinary faculty, developing a strong language program and creating the genesis of what has become the foremost library resource on South East Asia. He was also concerned that scholars from the areas studied receive training in such programs, in addition to hundreds of Western scholars. He went on to chair the Cornell Faculty Committee, which in 1961 saw the creation of the University's Center for International Studies. Aside from realizing Sharp's longtime dream of Southeast Asian research, the Thailand project also marked the start of a productive collaboration with Lucien and Jane Hanks. This continued in the Bennington-Cornell Project started in 1963, which entailed a broad regional survey of the upland and lowland peoples of northern Thailand. His wife Ruth Burdick Sharp, contributed her acquired expertise in anthropology and ceramics to this project.

Despite his health problems which impeded his field research difficult after his retirement, Sharp maintained his activity at Cornell and abroad, working with his research documents on Thailand as well as on Australian Aborigines.

Publications and organisation

Sharp's professional career spanned wide geographical areas. As a scholar-researcher, he had direct exposure to indigenous cultures on four continents. Several of his publications became classics in their fields: "Steel Axes for Stone-Age Australians" (1952), "People Without Politics" (1958), and "Cultural Continuities and Discontinuities in Southeast Asia" (1962). A number of his coauthored works exhibited his multidisciplinary research and interest in culture change, such as "Siamese Rice Village" (1953) and "Bang Chan: Social History of A Rural Community in Thailand" (1978). Sharp had a reputation for being passionate in passing on his experiences to future generations.

Sharp was president of the Association for Asian Studies from 1961 to 1962. He was a founding member of the Society for Applied Anthropology and a founding trustee of the Asia Society. He served on the governing boards of the American Anthropological Association and the Siam Society. He received many awards, including the Bronislaw Malinowski Award of the Society of Applied Anthropology. He won Guggenheim, Fulbright, and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships. Upon retiring, he was presented with a two-volume festschrift, one celebrating his contributions to studies of cultural change and applied anthropology, the other recognizing his contributions to Thai studies.

He died at the age of 86 at his Ithaca, New York home on December 31 1993.

References

*cite journal| first= A. Thomas |last=Kirsc|year=1994 |month=November |title=Obituary: Lauriston Sharp (1907-1993) |journal=Journal of Asian Studies |volume=53 |issue=4 |pages=pp. 1358–1359. |accessdate= 2007-11-07