UB scholars' essays in reference work

It features 340 essays by 310 scholars recognized as among the world's most respected authorities in their field. Six are faculty members in the UB Department of Anthropology, one is a faculty member in the UB Department of Sociology, and four, including the project's co-editor, are alumni of UB's graduate program in anthropology.

Library Journal, citing works in the past decade that have filled significant gaps in anthropological reference literature, praises the publication as "the icing on the cake." Booklist notes that the work "defines the field of cultural anthropology, covering all approaches, methods, concepts and topics" of significance in the last decade of the 20th century.

UB anthropologists who contributed to the encyclopedia are Professor David Banks, who wrote the entry on colonialism; Associate Professor Donald Pollack, whose entries cover person and self and ethnopsychiatry, and Associate Professor Phillips Stevens, Jr., who contributed the entry on magic.

Also included are Professor Emeritus William Stein, whose entry is on patronage, Associate Professor Ann McElroy, who contributed the essay on medical anthropology, and Professor Barbara Tedlock, who wrote the essay on diasporas.

UB alumni among the contributors are David Levinson, the book's co-editor, who received his doctorate from UB in 1979 and is the author of three articles; Deborah Crooks of the University of Kentucky, who received her doctorate from UB in 1992 and authored a piece on biocultural anthropology, and William Divale of York College, CUNY, who received a doctorate from UB in 1974 and wrote on kin groups, residence and dissent.

Gay Kang, who received his doctorate from UB in 1978 and is an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, co-authored the entry on alliance, conflict and exogamy with Tai S. Kang, UB professor of sociology.

Tedlock and Keith Otterbein, UB professor of anthropology, are members of the project's 24-member editorial board.

The four-volume encyclopedia is published by the Human Relations Area Files, the renowned nonprofit foundation at Yale University dedicated to facilitating the cross-cultural study of human behavior, culture and society. Levinson is the vice president of the Human Relations Area Files. He co-edited the book with Melvin Ember.