[2] During World War II, Wagley’s familiarity with Brazil’s agriculture industry led him to urge the US government to channel aid to Latin America to facilitate rubber production.
During this time, he conducted long trips in the Amazon Basin, researching specifically among the Tapirapé of central Brazil and with the Tenetehara people in the eastern portion of the country.
Also teaching in Columbia at the time was Julian Steward, another former student of Boas’ and whose idea of areal studies greatly impacted a new shift in American anthropology.
[4][5] Wagley would borrow expound on the concept of area studies in an influential paper presented at one of the first social science meetings devoted to the Caribbean region.
With the idea of “culture sphere,” the work of Wagley, along with Steward, Sidney Mintz, Eric Wolf, and others, helped construct a much more comparative approach for Caribbean studies.