Louis Charles Faron

Louis Charles Faron

Louis Charles Faron, 89, distinguished anthropologist, passed away on September 24, 2012 in Sarasota, FL. After service in World War II from 1943–46, Louis earned his AB in history and philosophy from Columbia College in 1949 and a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University in 1954. He was a student of Julian H Steward at Columbia University and a member of Steward’s team of researchers who carried out almost two years’ fieldwork in Chancay Valley, Peru, where he subsequently returned for additional research.

However, the work which established him as an ethnographer of merit was among the Mapuche peoples of Chile, with whom he worked for twelve months between 1952 and 1954. This research resulted in publications that not only greatly expanded the published record on the Mapuche, but served to make him the leading scholarly authority on them. In the first volume in a trilogy of monographs he wrote on the Mapuche, Mapuche Social Structure, hedescribes the ecological basis and social structure of Mapuche reservations and the nature of their linkages. His second book, Hawks of the Sun, considers Mapuche notions of morality and their ritual concomitants, the dimensions of the supernatural world, the rituals of death and fertility, shamanism, sorcery, symbolic values, and constancy and change in ritual and belief. He completed his trilogy with The Mapuche Indians of Chile, which focused on change and stability. His final published monograph, From Conquest to Agrarian Reform, was as much a work of history as it was an ethnographic study, and discussed ethnicity, ecology, and economy in the Chancay Valley from 1533 to 1964. His more than fifty published articles also offered rich ethnographic insights. Much of this research was carried out with the support of the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the Doherty Foundation, among others. In 1970–71, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.

Faron’s teaching career began at the University of Illinois–Urbana where he was a research associate to Julian Steward and co-authored Native Peoples of South America with him. Subsequent teaching at California State University at Los Angeles, and the University of Pittsburgh led him to the State University of New York at Stony Brook where in 1964 he founded the department of anthropology, recruited several eminent anthropologists, and served as its chair until 1971. He retired in 1986 as emeritus professor in anthropology and moved to Sarasota, after a career spanning almost four decades. A well loved and respected teacher to several generations of students, Faron was highly regarded by those whom he mentored.

He instilled in his students the passion for and importance of fieldwork, his first love. Many novice fieldworkers were excited to go to the field knowing that he welcomed their correspondence and they knew they could rely on his advice and guidance.

Among his survivors are his wife, Sally, his daughter Amy Faron Levy (Brad), four grandchildren and three great grandchildren. (Seymour Dubrow, David Hicks and Ann Marie Powers)

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2013/01/09/louis-charles-faron/