Steward, Julian Haynes, 1902-1972

The Puerto Rico Project was an in-depth study of the Island's population organized by Dr. Jaime Benitez, chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, with the assistance of Clarence Senior, director of the University's Center of Social Science Investigations. In early 1947, the proposed study was brought to the attention of Dr. Julian Steward, chair of Columbia University's Anthropology Department.By December 1947 the organization of project goals, research hypotheses and methodology ...

From the description of Records of the Puerto Rico Study 1943-1951 (bulk 1948-1949). (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 694062498

The Puerto Rico Project was an in-depth study of the Island's population organized by Dr. Jaime Benitez, chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, with the assistance of Clarence Senior, director of the University's Center of Social Science Investigations. In early 1947, the proposed study was brought to the attention of Dr. Julian Steward, chair of Columbia University's Anthropology Department.

By December 1947 the organization of project goals, research hypotheses and methodology were underway. The fieldwork phase of the project began in February 1948, coinciding with Operation Bootstrap ("Operación Manos a la Obra"), the Puerto Rico government's ambitious plan to industrialize the Island. Dr. Steward chose many of his graduate students to head fieldwork investigations. This core group included noted leaders in the field of anthropology: Sidney Mintz, Eric R. Wolf, Elena Padilla Seda, Robert A. Manners, John Murra, Raymond Scheele and others. Students from the Universities of Puerto Rico and Chicago also assisted in the study to gain professional training.

In contrast to previous anthropological studies that investigated communities as isolated units, the Puerto Rico Project not only assessed the impact of industrialization among rural communities, but it also produced an analysis of the relationship between those communities and the Island through oral history, labor studies, and comparative surveys of sociocultural patterns.

Fieldwork activities concluded in August 1949, followed by a year of supplemental library research. A preliminary report was published in 1951. Funding from the University of Puerto Rico, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Research Board of the University of Illinois helped to facilitate completion of the final report, published as The People of Puerto Rico: A Study in Social Anthropology .

Sources:

From the guide to the Records of the Puerto Rico Study, Bulk, 1948-1949, 1943-1951, (New York University Archives)