White, Leslie A. (1900–1975)

Leslie A. White was an American anthropologist well-known for his theories of sociocultural evolution, studies of the Pueblo peoples, and his neo-evolutionary stance. He revived and expanded the theory of evolution in anthropology, especially in terms of the origin and development of sociocultural [Page 1428]aspects during the emergence of our species over millions of years. In doing so, his sweeping temporal orientation supplemented the merely structural and functional approaches to cultural anthropology that were offered during the first half of the 20th century. It was no coincidence that White's major work, The Evolution of Culture, was published in 1959, the year that celebrated the centennial of the appearance of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. White's own cultural perspective encompassed a technological focus that spanned from the Stone Age, through the coming of agriculture, to the emergence of civilization and the Fall of Rome.

Born in Salida, Colorado, on January 19, 1900, White grew up in rural farming communities in Kansas and Louisiana and joined the U.S. Navy in 1918. Initially interested in the physical sciences, White was affected deeply by his involvement in World War I, and began studying psychology at the University of Louisiana and then later at Columbia University in New York where he earned his BA (1923) and MA (1924). Comcidentally, this was the same university where Franz Boas, his foremost opponent, was teaching, and it would be under one of Boas's pupils that White's interest in anthropology would be nurtured.

White earned his Ph.D. in sociology/anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1927; during this time he was able to spend some time among the native peoples of America such as the Menominee, Winnebago, and finally the Pueblo. Afterward, White taught at the University of Buffalo, N.Y. until 1929, then the University of Michigan, where he taught until 1970. His remaining years were spent at the University of California at Santa Barbara until his death on March 31, 1975, in Lone Pine, California.

Though he initially wrote in the Boasian tradition, White became enamored of the works of Lewis Henry Morgan, Herbert Spencer, and Sir Edward Burnett Tylor. These three writers all appealed to White's own views of sociocultural evolution. White would write some of his later works specifically on Lewis Henry Morgan, including Excerpts from the European Travel Journal of Lewis Henry Morgan (1937) and Pioneers in American Anthropology: The Bandelier-Morgan Letters (1940), which earned him a reputation as one of the world's leading scholars on Morgan. At the time, these were not the most popular anthropologists for students of the Boasian tradition because of their reliance on assumptions and judgments made without benefit of measurable information. White revitalized their ideas into what was characteristic of a neo-evolutionist.

His theory of sociocultural evolution relies on the importance of technology. without technology, there would be no social systems. In fact, White measured progress not by the level of technology that was being used, but rather by the amount of energy per capita that was being produced by the technology. In this way, White was not merely echoing the evolutionists of the 19th century, but rather updating them.

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