Culture

Abstract

Sapir is so well remembered for his work in linguistics that his role in cultural anthropology, represented by a much smaller number of publications, has been overshadowed. It is clear, however, that he hoped to make a major contribution to anthropological theory and to the social sciences in general, and that many of his contemporaries looked to him to do so. When Ruth Benedict invited him to address a symposium on anthropological theory in 1938, the invitation reflected Sapir's reputation as cultural anthropologist, and the increasing interest theoretical issues in anthropology and other social sciences had come to have for him in the preceding dozen years. Unfortunately, by 1938, Sapir was too ill to take up the invitation. Many of his ideas remained unpublished at the time of his death in 1939. Although the bibliography of his published writings reflects the importance these subjects held for him in the late 1920's and throughout the 1930's, this output does not represent the sum of what he had planned to produce.