Marc Jerome Swartz (31 October 1931 – 14 December 2011) was an American political and cultural anthropologist specializing in eastern Africa.
Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Swartz trained in anthropology in the interdisciplinary Department of Social Relations at Harvard, receiving his PhD in 1958.
[1] Swartz conducted extensive field research among indigenous peoples in highland Tanzania (the Bena), in Kenya (coastal Swahili, and on Chuuk atoll (formerly known as Truk) in the southwestern Pacific Ocean.
Swartz has devoted his professional life to examining how culture affects various facets of human interaction, such as the emergence and maintenance of social status, aggression, sexuality, and medical beliefs.He thought that shared, passed-down, normative, and morally binding common understandings were what characterized human cultures.
To him, culture was what's in your head,” said David K. Jordan, UC San Diego professor emeritus of anthropology and a longtime friend and colleague to Swartz.