11 Facts About Elman Service

1.

Elman Rogers Service was an American cultural anthropologist.

2.

Elman Service was born on May 18,1915, in Tecumseh, Michigan and died on November 14,1996, in Santa Barbara, California.

3.

Elman Service earned a bachelor's degree in 1941 from the University of Michigan.

4.

Elman Service later taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara from 1969 to 1985, when he retired.

5.

Elman Service researched Latin American Indian ethnology, cultural evolution, and theory and method in ethnology.

6.

Elman Service studied cultural evolution in Paraguay and studied cultures in Latin America and the Caribbean.

7.

Elman Service was the Secretary-Treasurer of the American Ethnological Society and a member of the American Anthropological Association.

8.

In 1962, Elman Service published his four classifications of the stages of social evolution and political organizations: band, tribe, chiefdom, and state.

9.

Elman Service developed the "managerial benefits" theory, which states that chiefdom-like society developed because of the apparent benefits of centralized leadership.

10.

Elman Service believed that early civilizations were not stratified based on property and unequal access to resources, but instead based on unequal political power.

11.

Elman Service believed there were no true class conflicts, but only power struggles between the political elite in early civilizations.