Julian Haynes Steward, an American anthropologist best known for his role in developing theories of cultural ecology, is an early graduate of this institution and undertook a career in anthropology.
[7] According to the history of the department, it was a groundbreaking period when the foundational structure of administrative units focused on Asia, including area studies programs, were established.
[8] Lauriston Sharp led the work in Thailand, and shortly thereafter, Morris Opler began a study on disease transmission in India.
[8] The long-term nature of these projects allowed several students to start their work with one of the research centers, continue through their graduate studies, and, in some cases, join the faculty as experienced colleagues.
Skinner's research was cut short by the arrival of the People's Liberation Army, which confiscated his notes, but the experience became the basis of his later work on spatial modelling.
A copy of his field notes on village life in and around Gaodianzi and pre-revolution Chengdu were later discovered and published in 2017 as Rural China on the Eve of Revolution: Sichuan Fieldnotes, 1949–1950.
Particularly, according to Lauriston Sharp, research and training seminars conducted by faculty and graduate students at Cornell "during 1949 and 1950 indicated positively the importance of the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia for any realistic assessment on a regional basis of the economic and political situation in a major portion of the Far East" (a geographical term no longer used within the academia for its negative implications of Orientalism).
"[9] It was to seek an answer to this question that the Department commissioned Skinner to conduct a survey of the Chinese in Southeast Asian when he emerged in Hong Kong in late August, 1950, after spending almost all of the previous twelve months in western China.
[11] In Part I, he analyzed the organization of premodern Chinese marketing systems, demonstrating how periodic marketplaces connected villages into cohesive networks and linked them to higher-level urban centers.
[11] Skinner's work not only redefined the study of agrarian marketing systems but also highlighted their integration with broader social, political, and cultural dynamics, inspiring further research across the globe.
Particularly, he wanted to examine and understand how kinship systems and household organization affect economic and demographic behavior in various places, including China, Japan, and France.
[11] Although he has published countless articles and books on China, he has written abundant materials on the family systems in Meiji Japan, and many of these academic works are unpublished.