Peter B. Hammond, Ph.D. UCLA
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PBH: A Cautionary Profile, and Work Still(!) in Progress 

Born in California, (he credits fourteen boyhood years’ of experiential deprivation in Glendale with his decision to escape into anthropology), Professor Hammond's university education began in Latin America, first in Puerto Rico,  (he initially flunked economics and zoology but then picked up pretty good Spanish); later in Mexico, (where he learned more anthropology backpacking in  Chiapas, Vera Cruz and Morelos than he did at college in Mexico City). Still later he studied in Europe, at the Sorbonne,  (fear of  further flunking drove him quickly to useful if grudging  fluency in Parisian French). PBH returned to the U.S. for doctoral work in African Studies and Anthropology at Northwestern University; (Evanston’s elusive suburban charms compelled  him to commute 90 minutes daily from a dingy bootlegged dorm room  at the University of Chicago).

As a Fellow of the Ford Foundation, (after having amazingly survived  his pre doctoral prelims, etc.), Professor Hammond’s first ethnographic field research  was on technological innovation and culture change in Francophone West Africa, (specifically, among Mossi farmers in what were then the two  poor French colonies of Haute Volta, now Burkina Faso, and the Soudan Francais, now called Mali. The result, among other publications, was Yatenga, a book on the Mossi which surprised him by creating the flattering -- but highly dubious -- impression among some readers that he understood the problematics of economic development not only in Haute Volta, but also everywhere else in the Third Word! ).  

 

Here he is in Yatenga with the farmers possesive kids 

 
PBH's  later field work, funded by the National Science Foundation,  was on ethnic identity conflict among Indians in the Southeastern U.S., (working with  Indians who audaciously defied white folks’ including the Bureau of Indian Affiars, definition of who was (and was not) "a real"  Indian.) In addition to repeatedly generous support from UCLA's Office of Instructional Development , Professor Hammond’s work has also been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. (Wenner Gren paid for a USSR  trip that  seriously muted  -- but failed  to  entirely extinguish -- Dr. Hammond's   somewhat vulgar neo-Marxist propensities.)   
PBH  has held faculty appointments at the University of Pittsburgh,  (a terrific first teaching position offered to him during a quick  breakfast meeting in NYC set up by his Old White Boy Network); at Indiana University, (another great  teaching job,  landed thanks to his O.W.B.N.  But Bloomington’s  surrounding cornfields made him  uneasy); and subsequently at The Johns Hopkins University, (where, armed with a grant  from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Hammond  did his Southeastern U.S. research  on Non-Federally Recognized Indians). PBH is now an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at UCLA (where has  been happily learning from his students [The Chowder Marchers] [Here he is with one of the Chowder Marchers, Dr. Sheilah Clarke-Ekong at her UCLA graduation], enthusiastically teaching and occasionally  jousting with his colleagues ever since l981. 

 Away from the Academy Dr. Hammond has served as Executive Director of the Division of Behavioral Sciences/ National Research Council/National Academy of Science in Washington, D.C., (resigning after one year in protest over NAS’ involvement in the Viet Nam War and also  because he had the security of two book contracts!); and  taught in the Department of Psychiatry at the George Washington University School of Medicine,  (traumatizing  his mostly white  middle class pediatric residents in child psychiatry,  by forcing them to visit the inner city homes, schools  and neighborhoods of the black kids they were treating; so as  to  assess the relevance of children's  culture  for their effective diagnosis and realistic treatment).     

PBH  has also  been a frequent consultant on Africa to the National Geographic Society, (great graphics and mind numbing apolitical text, for neither of which he takes responsibility). He also has worked as a consultant to the Board on Science and Technology for International Development, (which allowed for a memorable  interview in Manila with Imelda Marcos who inexplicably made him a parting gift of six placemats and a chandelier); with U.S.A.I.D., (the United States Agency for International Development, where he learned many a a startling  lesson about  fun among the bureaucrats at home and abroad);  and on the staff of the World  Bank, an agency of the United Nations. (At the Bank he came to seriously appreciate  the significance of  greedy Third World elites, well shined shoes, and the perils of disputing the arguments of  conservative economists  with high IQs).   
At UCLA Professor  Hammond co-founded and served as co-chair of the University's Development Studies Program (with his amiable colleague and occasional ideological adversary, Dr. Richard Sklar); and established and directed  both the UCLA Applied Anthropology Program, (where he and his students explored professional alternatives to opening an Anthropology Store); and the Lusophone Africa Research Group, (where, with faculty and student colleagues, he investigated research possibilities and potential pitfalls  in the "PALOPs,” the five Portuguese speaking countries in Africa; as well as in Macau, Dieu, East Timor, and Brazil. Subsequently Dr. Hammond’s strange obsession with learning Portuguese was finally satisfied during three summers of ethnographic field research in the West  African Republic of Cabo Verde [here he is filming on the Cape Verdean island of Santiago] , and later in Portugal.

 
More recently, ,  PBH has chaired the Chancellor's Task Force on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Studies which led to the establishment of UCLA's  LGBT Studies Program. Concern with the topic of social inequality, one of Dr. Hammond’s long standing interests, was reflected in the title of his Fall 2000 undergraduate seminar, “STIGMA! The Anthropology of the Dangerous “Other." His other current interest is in same sex erotic behavior, with initial ethnographic study  in North Africa (Morocco), the Middle East (Turkey)  and the Caribbean (Cuba) [Here he is in an informal moment with an informant in Santiago de Cuba]. In the Spring of 2001 he will teach an Honors Collegium course entitled  “The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality: Homosexualities”.  (To avoid alarming parents of his students, and future employers, he's put the ‘homosexualities” part of the seminar  title last, where it won't show up on transcripts).  

“Masculinities” is the title of the other  new course he is developing. (PBH and his students will check out the old anthropological issue of testosterone vs.socialization as it relates to understanding why boys and men cause so much trouble in the world).

Peter B. Hammond  is a recipient of the Office of Instructional Development’s  Mortar Board Award for Excellence in Teaching, as well as  the Thais-Williams Professional Achievement Award from Lambda, the University’s Gay and Lesbian Alumni Association. (To the amazement of many, and to the undoubted chagrin of those few he has reluctantly flunked),  PBH received UCLA's Luckman Medal for Distinguished Teaching in 1996 [Here he is with his wife and daughter and a rented tuxedo waiting to receive the award].

Five books and some sixty journal articles and book chapters are the product of Professor Hammond’s research and teaching interests. So far --  (For a take his theroretical approach check out the first chapter, "People, Society and Culture. of his text, AN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY, [6.5 MB PDF file] (even as he becomes  ever more absorbed with maintaining oxygen flow to his brain:  PBH still uses the words of Booth, The New Yorker' cartoonist, to insistently ask the cultural anthropologists most basic question "what the hell is going on!")