Steven Rubenstein

{{Infobox person

| name = Steven L. Rubenstein

| image = Steven L Rubenstein, 1988 (cropped).jpg

| caption = Rubenstein in 1988

| alt = Steven Rubenstein in 1988

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1962|6|10}}

| birth_place = New York City, U.S.

| death_date = {{Death date and age|2012|3|8|1962|6|10}}

| death_place = Liverpool, England

| education = BA anthropology, Columbia University and BA philosophy, Jewish Theological Seminary of America (joint program, 1984)
MA anthropology, Columbia University (1986)
PhD anthropology, Columbia University (1995)

| occupation = Reader in Latin American Anthropology, University of Liverpool

| website = [https://web.archive.org/web/20120313191522/http://tulip.liv.ac.uk/pls/new_portal/tulwwwmerge.mergepage?p_template=sml&p_tulipproc=staff&p_params=%3Fp_func%3Dteldir%26p_hash%3DA700620%26p_url%3DLC%26p_template%3Dsml Homepage], University of Liverpool

}}

Steven Lee Rubenstein (June 10, 1962 – March 8, 2012) was an American anthropologist. He was reader in Latin American Anthropology at the University of Liverpool, and Director of Liverpool's Research Institute of Latin American Studies.[https://web.archive.org/web/20120313191522/http://tulip.liv.ac.uk/pls/new_portal/tulwwwmerge.mergepage?p_template=sml&p_tulipproc=staff&p_params=%3Fp_func%3Dteldir%26p_hash%3DA700620%26p_url%3DLC%26p_template%3Dsml "Steven Rubenstein"], Department of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies, University of Liverpool, accessed March 9, 2012.

Forsdick, Charles. [http://soclas.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/message-from-the-head-of-clas-remembering-dr-steve-rubenstein/ "Message from the Head of CLAS: Remembering Dr Steve Rubenstein"], Cultures, Languages, and Area Studies at the University of Liverpool, March 14, 2012.
[http://www.slas.org.uk/SteveRubenstein_Obituary.html "Dr Steven Rubenstein"], Society for Latin American Studies, March 11, 2012.
Chernela, Janet. [https://archive.today/20130223103457/http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/05/01/steven-rubenstein "In Memoriam Steven Rubenstein"], Anthropology News, May 2012.

Beginning in the 1980s, Rubenstein worked with the Shuar people of Ecuador, documenting and analyzing practices of healing, the circulation of shrunken heads, and the ways in which the Shuar reacted to colonization and increasing incorporation into Ecuadorian society.{{Cite journal | last = Rubenstein | first = Steven L. | title = Steps to a political ecology of Amazonia | journal = Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America | volume = 2 | issue = 2 | pages = article 2 | publisher = Digital Commons | date = 2004 | doi = 10.70845/2572-3626.1013 | url = http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol2/iss2/2/ | url-access = subscription }} [http://www.liv.ac.uk/soclas/research/publications/srubenstein/rubenstein.pdf Pdf.] He frequently used life histories of individual Shuar people as a way to understand the political conditions facing the community. He was also known for his application of reflexive and autoethnographic methods when writing about experiences of intimacy and vulnerability in ethnographic fieldwork.{{Cite journal | last = Henry | first = Marsha | title = If the shoe fits: Authenticity, authority and agency feminist diasporic research | journal = Women's Studies International Forum | volume = 30 | issue = 1 | pages = 70–80 | doi = 10.1016/j.wsif.2006.12.009 | date = January–February 2007 }} In his last work, he used the psychological theory of Jacques Lacan to analyze the ways in which the Shuar use the hallucinogen Ayahuasca.{{Cite journal | last = Rubenstein | first = Steven L. | title = On the importance of visions among the Amazonian Shuar | journal = Current Anthropology | volume = 53 | issue = 1 | pages = 39–79 | doi = 10.1086/663830 | date = February 2012 | jstor = 10.1086/663830 | s2cid = 144980353 }}

Rubenstein was the author of Alejandro Tsakimp: A Shuar Healer in the Margins of History (2002), based on his life history interviews with a Shuar shaman, and co-editor with Kathleen S. Fine-Dare of Border Crossings: Transnational Americanist Anthropology (2009). He was also a Wikipedia editor and administrator, under the username Slrubenstein. Since registering his account in December 2001 he made more than 30,000 edits to articles about anthropology and related fields.{{Cite journal | last = Peluso | first = Daniela | title = Steven Lee Rubenstein (1962–2012) | journal = Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America | volume = 9 | issue = 2 | pages = article 13 | publisher = Digital Commons | date = 2012 | url = http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol9/iss2/13/ }} [http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1145&context=tipiti Pdf.]

In 2012, Rubenstein died unexpectedly at his home in Liverpool at the age of 49.{{Cite web |last=SALSA |date=2014-01-18 |title=Steven (Steve) Rubenstein In Memoriam: 1962-2012 |url=https://www.salsa-tipiti.org/news/in-memoriam/steven-steve-rubenstein-1962-2012/ |access-date=2023-09-02 |website=Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America |language=en-US}}

Education and career

Rubenstein was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Ken and Fran Rubenstein.{{Cite web |title=Deaths RUBENSTEIN, STEVEN LEE |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A04E4DF1E3AF935A25750C0A9649D8B63 |access-date=2023-09-02 |website=New York Times |language=en}} He graduated from The Wheatley School in Old Westbury, New York in 1980. He received BA degrees in anthropology from Columbia University and in philosophy from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, both in 1984 as part of a joint program, and an MA in anthropology from Columbia in 1986. He obtained his PhD in anthropology in 1995, also from Columbia, where he studied with Michael Taussig, Eric Wolf, Morton Fried, Robert Murphy and Libbet Crandon-Malamud. The title of his thesis was "Death in a Distant Place: The Politics of Shuar Shamans of the Ecuadorian Amazon," based on fieldwork in the Morona-Santiago Province in Ecuador between 1988 and 1992.{{cite web

|last = Rubenstein

|first = Steven L.

|title = Steven Rubenstein Curriculum Vitae

|publisher = University of Liverpool

|url = https://liverpool.academia.edu/StevenRubenstein/CurriculumVitae

|access-date = March 12, 2012

|url-status = live

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120406231931/http://liverpool.academia.edu/StevenRubenstein/CurriculumVitae

|archive-date = April 6, 2012

}} ()

For his thesis, see Rubenstein, Steven Lee. [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/34754770 "Death in a distant place; or, The politics of Shuar shamanism"], Columbia University, 1995. His approach to studying the indigenous cultures of South America was highly influenced by Taussig's work.

Between 1993 and 1996, Rubenstein taught at the City University of New York, the New York School for Social Research, and Georgetown University, before obtaining a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University's Society for the Humanities (1996–1997). Prior to his appointment as Reader in Latin American Anthropology at the University of Liverpool in 2006, he taught for eight years at Ohio University as assistant then associate professor (1997–2005).

He was actively involved in SALSA, the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America, serving on the executive board, as editor of book reviews for its journal, Tipití, and as a conference organizer.Chernela, Janet. [http://archives.binhost.com/pipermail/aaasec_slaca/2012-March.txt "In Memory: Steven (Steve) Rubenstein 1962-2012"], Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America, forwarded to AAA SLACA [Society for Latin American And Caribbean Anthropology] ListServ, March 11, 2012. In 2008, he was appointed to the editorial board of the journal Cultural Anthropology. In 2008–2009 he was a fellow of the National Humanities Center.[http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/fellowships/ffellows3.htm Register of fellows] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130618074233/http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/fellowships/ffellows3.htm |date=June 18, 2013 }}, National Humanities Center, accessed March 26, 2012. SALSA named the Steven Lee Rubenstein memorial Scholarship in his honor.{{Cite web|url=http://www.salsa-tipiti.org/conferences/steven-lee-rubenstein-memorial-scholarship/|title = Steven Lee Rubenstein Memorial Scholarship 2019|date = January 4, 2019}}

Selected publications

;Books

with Fine-Dare, Kathleen S. (eds) (2009) Border Crossings: Transnational Americanist Anthropology. University of Nebraska Press.
(2002) Alejandro Tsakimp: A Shuar Healer in the Margins of History. University of Nebraska Press.

;Book chapters

(2009) [https://books.google.com/books?id=1Kohdzvns9gC&pg=PA119 "Crossing Boundaries with Shrunken Heads"], in Fine-Dare and Rubenstein, op. cit.
with Fine-Dare, Kathleen S. (2009) "The Lizard's Dream," in Fine-Dare and Rubenstein, op. cit.
(2006) [https://books.google.com/books?id=wRPe12ljfOQC&pg=PA235 "A Head for Adventure"], in Vivanco, Luis A. and Gordon, Robert A. (eds). Tarzan Was An Eco-Tourist ... and Other Tales in the Anthropology of Adventure. Berghahn Books.

;Papers

(February 2012) {{Cite journal | title = On the importance of visions among the Amazonian Shuar | journal = Current Anthropology | volume = 53 | issue = 1 | pages = 39–79 | doi = 10.1086/663830 | jstor = 10.1086/663830 | year = 2012 | last1 = Rubenstein | first1 = Steven Lee | s2cid = 144980353 }}
(March–June 2008) {{Cite journal | title = Comment: Interrogating the neo-pluralist orthodoxy in American anthropology | journal = Dialectical Anthropology | volume = 32 | issue = 1–2 | pages = 97–106 | jstor = 29790812 | last1 = Rubenstein | first1 = Steven L. | year = 2008 | doi = 10.1007/s10624-008-9052-y | s2cid = 144039015 }}
(2007) {{Cite journal | title = Circulation, accumulation, and the power of Shuar shrunken heads | journal = Cultural Anthropology | volume = 22 | issue = 3 | pages = 357–399 | url = http://www.culanth.org/?q=node/57 | doi = 10.1525/can.2007.22.3.357 | year = 2007 | last1 = Rubenstein | first1 = Steven LEE | url-access = subscription }}
(2005) {{Cite journal | title = La conversión de los Shuar | journal = Íconos: Revista de Sciencias Sociales | volume = 22 | pages = 27–48 | language = fr | url = http://www.liv.ac.uk/soclas/research/publications/srubenstein/Shuarconversion.pdf }}
(Summer 2004) {{Cite journal | title = Fieldwork and the erotic economy on the colonial frontier | journal = Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society | volume = 29 | issue = 4 | pages = 1041–1071 | doi = 10.1086/382629 | jstor = 10.1086/382629 | year = 2004 | last1 = Rubenstein | first1 = Steven L. | s2cid = 144458172 }} [https://www.academia.edu/179430/Fieldwork_and_the_Erotic_Economy_on_the_Colonial_Frontier Downloadable copy.]
(2004) {{Cite journal | last = Rubenstein | first = Steven L. | title = Steps to a political ecology of Amazonia | journal = Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America | date = December 2004 | volume = 2 | issue = 2 | pages = article 2 | publisher = Digital Commons | doi = 10.70845/2572-3626.1013 | url = http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol2/iss2/2/ | url-access = subscription }} [http://www.liv.ac.uk/soclas/research/publications/srubenstein/rubenstein.pdf Pdf.]
(June 2004) {{Cite journal | title = Shuar migrants and shrunken heads face to face in a New York museum | journal = Anthropology Today | volume = 20 | issue = 3 | pages = 15–18 | doi = 10.1111/j.0268-540X.2004.00268.x | year = 2004 | last1 = Rubenstein | first1 = Steven L. }}
(2001) {{Cite journal | title = Colonialism, the Shuar Federation, and the Ecuadorian state | journal = Environment and Planning D: Society and Space | volume = 19 | issue = 3 | pages = 263–293 | doi = 10.1068/d236t | year = 2001 | last1 = Rubenstein | first1 = Steven | bibcode = 2001EnPlD..19..263R | s2cid = 146787349 }} [https://liverpool.academia.edu/StevenRubenstein/Papers/93875/Colonialism_the_Shuar_Federation_and_the_Ecuadorian_State Downloadable copy.]
(2001) {{Cite journal | title = Zen Marxism revisited: Tierney and false dualisms in anthropology | journal = Anthropology News | volume = 41 | issue = 2 | pages = 7–8 | publisher = AnthroNiche of Douglas W. Hume | url = http://anthroniche.com/darkness_documents/0330.htm }}
(March 1993) {{Cite journal | title = Chain marriage among the Shuar | journal = The Latin American Anthropology Review | volume = 5 | issue = 1 | pages = 3–9 | doi = 10.1525/jlca.1993.5.1.3 | year = 2008 | last1 = Rubenstein | first1 = Steven Lee }}
(1986) {{Cite journal | title = Understanding magic | journal = Faces | publisher = Cobblestone Press | url = https://cobblestonepub.com/product/cobblestone/ }}

References

External links

[http://soclas.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/steve-rubenstein-interviewed-on-radio-4/ Rubenstein interviewed about his work with the Shuar], Questions, Questions, BBC Radio 4, January 24, 2011.
[http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=156508577 "Obituary: Steven Rubenstein"], placed in The New York Times, March 16, 2012, www.legacy.com.
{{Cite journal | last = Peluso | first = Daniela | title = Steven Lee Rubenstein (1962–2012) | journal = Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America | volume = 9 | issue = 2 | pages = article 13 | publisher = Digital Commons | date = 2012 | url = http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol9/iss2/13/ }} [http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1145&context=tipiti Pdf.]
{{Wikipedia person user link|Slrubenstein|Steven Rubenstein}}

Category:1962 births

Category:2012 deaths

Category:Academics of the University of Liverpool

Category:Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni

Category:American cultural anthropologists

Category:Ohio University faculty

Category:Academics from Brooklyn

Category:People from Old Westbury, New York

Category:Jewish Theological Seminary of America alumni

Category:Jewish anthropologists

Category:Jewish American social scientists

Category:American Wikimedians