Harold Conklin is a well-known professor at Yale University. He grew up in Manhattan. He was first educated in public schools near Long Island. Thanks to a lot of hard work and dedication he was accepted first at University of California at Berkeley, then Yale. He earned his Ph.D. at Yale there in 1955.
Since school he has worked in many places. He was on the anthropology facility at Columbia University from 1954-1962. Then from 1962 to the present he was worked out of Yale. He has been many places, studying things from farming to the people that farm. Conklin is best known for his studies of shifting cultivation. Most of those studies occurred in the Philippines, where he also studied the Ifugao people. He is especially interested in ethnology and ecology of tropical forested areas and of Pacific Basin. Again, most of his ethnography has been done in areas such as the Philippines and Malaysia.
In 1963 he wrote a book entitled The Study of Shifting Cultivation. This is one of his many publications. In total he has written about ten or so books. Conklin is a master of ecological description with maps. He likes to use detailed topographic maps that show land use along with village boundaries. Others in his field say that he sets the standards for such maps.
Harold Conklin has been at Yale University since 1962. He just recently retired from his spot atop the Anthropology division. On May 18, 2000 Anthropologists from around the country came to his retirement party. Until his retirement, Conklin had been the Curator of Anthropology. In years before, Conklin had served as Chair of the Anthropology Department, and Director of Graduate Studies.
References:
Conklin, Harold. The Study of Shifting Cultivation. Washington: Technical Publications, 1963.
http://www.yale.edu/anthro/people/faculty/hconklin.html
Former Link, http://www.anthro.annualreviews.org/ (October 2006)
Written by: Adam Sexter