Sidney Mintz | |
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Born | Dover, New Jersey, United States | November 16, 1922
Died | December 27, 2015[1] | (aged 93)
Alma mater | Brooklyn College (B.A.) Columbia University (Ph.D.) |
Spouse | Jacqueline Wei Mintz |
Awards | Huxley Memorial Medal (1994) AAA Distinguished Lecturer (1996) Franz Boas Award for Exemplary Service to Anthropology (2012) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Economic anthropology, Food history |
Institutions | Yale University Johns Hopkins University |
Thesis | Cañamelar: The Contemporary Culture of a Rural Puerto Rican Proletariat (1951) |
Doctoral advisors | Ruth Benedict • Julian Steward |
Notable students | Samuel Martinez |
Website | sidneymintz |
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Anthropology |
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Social and cultural anthropology |
Sidney Wilfred Mintz (November 16, 1922 – December 27, 2015) was an American anthropologist best known for his studies of the Caribbean, creolization, and the anthropology of food. Mintz received his PhD at Columbia University in 1951 and conducted his primary fieldwork among sugar-cane workers in Puerto Rico. Later expanding his ethnographic research to Haiti and Jamaica, he produced historical and ethnographic studies of slavery and global capitalism, cultural hybridity, Caribbean peasants, and the political economy of food commodities. He taught for two decades at Yale University before helping to found the Anthropology Department at Johns Hopkins University, where he remained for the duration of his career. Mintz's history of sugar, Sweetness and Power, is considered one of the most influential publications in cultural anthropology and food studies.[2][full citation needed][3][full citation needed]