Elman Rogers Service

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Elman Rogers Service (born May 18, 1915 — died November 14, 1996) was an American neo-evolutionary cultural anthropologist, famous for his contribution to the development of modern theory of social evolution.

Life

Elman Service was born on May 18, 1915 in Tecumseh, Michigan. Due to the Great Depression his high school closed in 1933, shortly before his final year. Service somehow managed to graduate and wanted to continue to study at the University of Michigan. Lack of money, however, prevented him from pursuing his dreams. He instead found the job in a southern California aircraft factory, and after earning enough money he finally enrolled to the University of Michigan. The social tragedy of the Depression and his own experiences of hardship inevitably influenced Service’s decision to turn to social sciences. His later focus in his career, in studying the origins and institutionalization of inequality and the problem of injustice, can be understood in this light. Furthermore, in mid-1930s Service joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain to fight fascism. It was during this experience, and his friendship with an anthropologist whom he met during those years, that Service decided to dedicate his career to anthropology.

After he returned to United States in 1938 he continued with his studies at Michigan, graduating with a Bachelor Degree in English literature in 1941. He continued with the graduate studies at the University of Chicago in 1942, but then decided to join the U.S. army in WWII. He served in France in a mapping unit.

Upon the end of the war Service entered Columbia University. The Columbia Anthropology Department at the time was divided into two camps – one that advocated comparative approach, headed by Julian Steward and his students, and the other that was formed of Boasian followers and grouped around Ruth Benedict, espousing cultural relativism. Service and a number of other students, among them Stanley Diamond, Morton Fried, Robert Manners, Sidney Mintz, and Eric Wolf, supported Steward, forming a group they called the Mundial Upheaval Society (M.U.S.). They met regularly, held weekly seminars and discussed each others papers, and grew to become a rather popular society. Service received his Ph.D. in 1950 with a thesis on Guarani acculturation and a year of fieldwork in Paraguay.

Service began teaching at Columbia in 1949, and remained there till 1953. From there, he went back to the University of Michigan to teach from 1953 to 1969. He later taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara from 1969 to 1985, when he retired. He is remembered as a great lecturer and an eloquent writer. His published numerous books and articles, many of which passed through several editions. He served as the Secretary-Treasurer of the American Ethnological Society and a member of the American Anthropological Association.

By the end of his career Service’s sight deteriorated, leaving him nearly blind. He died in 1996 in Santa Barbara, California. He was survived by his wife Helen Stephenson, a fellow anthropologist, who was a great help in his work. They were married for more than 50 years.

Work

Elman Service researched Latin American Indian ethnology, cultural evolution, the evolution of political institutions and theory and method in ethnology. He studied cultural evolution in Paraguay and Mexico, and several other cultures in Latin America and the Caribbean. His major fieldwork was systematized in his work Tobati: Paraguayan Town (1954), which he wrote with his wife Helen. These studies led to his theories about social systems and the rise of the state as a system of political organization.

Service argued that early societies were based on kin-relationships and blood lineage, therefore not needing any official government. Tribe elders usually led other members of the society. Once government was developed as a leading body of society, ruling elites took over the power and the social inequality became institutionalized. In his integration theory, he explains that early civilizations were not stratified based neither on property nor unequal access to resources. They were only stratified based on unequal political power. He believed that in early civilizations there were no true class conflicts (as suggested by e.g. Marxists), but only power struggles between and within the political elites.

Service defined four classifications of the stages of social evolution which are also the four levels of political organizations: band, tribe, chiefdom, and state. He developed the "managerial benefits" theory that states that chiefdom-like society developed because it was apparently beneficial for all its members, and because of the centralized leadership. The leader provides benefits to the followers, which, over time, become more complex, benefiting the whole chiefdom society. This keeps the leader in power, and allows the bureaucratic organization to grow. Benefits offered by ruling groups, according to Service, outweighed the exploitative nature of the rule in the early civilizations, enabling their peaceful growth. Some critics to this object that the peace within the society was achieved rather through coercion, the cost paid by the ruled class. These contrasting views are known as the integrationist and conflict position, and are still being debated.

Legacy

Service’s proposal of “chiefdom” as the missing link between tribe and state provided important theoretical concept of the development of early societies. Archeological excavations in Service’s time mostly supported his ideas, and archeologists overwhelmingly embraced his concept as the theoretical framework for their work. For example, Sanders' and Price's 1968 synthesis of Mesoamerican prehistory was one of the first applications of Service’s evolutionary theory.

Service gave cultural evolution theory a new boost, after years of stagnation under prevailing anti-evolutionism milieu that dominated mid-20th century anthropology. He can thus be regarded as one of the most influential cultural anthropologists on the time..

Bibliography

  • Service, Elman R. 1954. Tobati: Paraguayan Town. University of Chicago Press
  • Service, Elman R. 1955. Indian-European relations in colonial Latin America. American Anthropological Association.
  • Service, Elman R. 1958. A Profile of Primitive Culture. Harper & Row Publishers.
  • Service, Elman R. 1966. The Hunters. Prentice Hall.
  • Service, Elman R. 1970. Cultural Evolutionism: Theory in Practice. International Thomson Publishing. ISBN 0030804655
  • Service, Elman R. 1971 (original work from 1962). Primitive Social Organization (2nd edition). Random House. ISBN 0394316355
  • Service, Elman R. 1975. Origins of the State and Civilization. W. W. Norton & Co. Inc. ISBN 0393092240
  • Service, Elman R. 1978. (original work from 1963). Profiles in Ethnology (3rd edition). Addison Wesley Publishing Company. ISBN 0060459123
  • Service, Elman R. 1985. A Century of Controversy, Ethnological Issues from 1860 to 1960. Academic Press. ISBN 0126373825
  • Service, Elman R. & M.D. Sahlins. 1960. Evolution and Culture. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0472087762

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Rambo, Terry A. & Gillogly, Kathleen. 1991. Profiles in Cultural Evolution: Papers from a Conference in Honor of Elman R. Service. University of Michigan Museum. ISBN 0915703238

External Links

Credits

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