15 Facts About Eleanor Leacock

Eleanor Burke Leacock was an anthropologist and social theorist who made major contributions to the study of egalitarian societies, the evolution of the status of women in society, Marxism, and the feminist movement.

Eleanor Leacock's mother, Lily Mary Battherham, was a mathematician who taught secondary school and her father was the literary critic and philosopher Kenneth Burke.

Eleanor Leacock was raised between the family's apartment in Greenwich Village, New York and their northern New Jersey 150-acre farm, living half of the year in each place.

Eleanor Leacock attended New York public schools during her childhood until her teenage years, when she got a scholarship to the prestigious private high school Dalton School.

Eleanor Leacock became involved in studying Lewis H Morgan and Karl Marx and in radical student politics.

Eleanor Leacock studied under Gladys Reichard, graduating from Barnard in 1944 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology.

In 1951 Eleanor Leacock received a grant to conduct fieldwork in Labrador, Canada.

Eleanor Leacock used this fieldwork to challenge the idea that private property is universal.

Eleanor Leacock worked at Bank Street College of Education as a senior research associate, from 1958 to 1965, and at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in the social sciences department, from 1963 to 1972.

Eleanor Leacock struggled to get a full-time job during the 1950s due to her outspoken political views.

Eleanor Leacock taught as an adjunct for decades before being appointed, in 1972, as a professor and chair of anthropology at City College and graduate faculty of City University of New York Graduate Center.

Eleanor Leacock's appointment coincided with the publication of her celebrated introduction to Friedrich Engels' The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State.

Eleanor Leacock interpreted the structure of marriage as the structure of exchange and the division of labor.

Eleanor Leacock's career involved four major regions: North America, Europe, Africa, and the Pacific.

Eleanor Leacock died of a stroke on April 2,1987, in Hawaii.