PBH: A Cautionary Profile

            Born in California (he claims  boyhood years’ of experiential deprivation in Glendale (LINK#pbh )  led to  his decision to escape into anthropology),  Professor Hammond's university education began in Latin America, first in Puerto Rico, where he  initially flunked economics and zoology but  picked up pretty good Spanish; later in Mexico (LINK# ), where he says he  learned more anthropology backpacking in  Chiapas, Vera Cruz and Morelos than he ever did at his college in Mexico City. Still later he studied in Europe, at the Sorbonne (LINK# );  fear of  further flunking, he says, drove him quickly to  reasonable  fluency in Parisian French.  

 PBH returned to the U.S. for doctoral work in African Studies and Anthropology at Northwestern University (LINK# )on Chicago's North Shore. (But Evanston’s elusive suburban charms compelled  him to commute 90 minutes daily from a bootlegged dorm roomon the "South Side", at the University of Chicago.)

Later, as a Fellow of the Ford Foundation (LINK# ) (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 (LINK# pbh), 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 (LINK# ), Technology in the Culture of a West African Kingdom , a book on the Mossi  which surprised him by creating the flattering -- but highly dubious -- impression that he understood the problematics of economic development not only in Haute Volta, but also everywhere else in the Third World.  

PBH's  later field work, funded by the National Science Foundation (LINK# ),  was on ethnic identity conflict in the Southeastern U.S., working among Indians who had the audacity to defy white folks’ definition of who was (and was not) a "real" Indian.

 In addition to repeatedly generous support from UCLA's Office of Instructional Development (LINK# ), , from the Ford Foundation and the National Science Foundation,  Professor Hammond’s work has also been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (LINK# ). (Wenner Gren paid for a USSR  trip that  seriously muffled -- but failed  to  entirely extinguish -- Dr. Hammond's  neo-Marxist propensities.)

PBH  has held faculty appointments at the University of Pittsburgh (LINK# ),  a terrific first teaching position offered to him during a quick  breakfast meeting in NYC (set up by his Old Boy Network); at Indiana University(LINK# ), another great  teaching job ( landed thanks again  to his O.B.N.) but Bloomington’s  surrounding cornfields made him  uneasy;  his last academic appointment before going  to UCLA was at The Johns Hopkins University(LINK# ).

PBH is currently an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at UCLA (LINK# pbh)  (where he's been happily teaching and  learning from his students ever since l981).   

Away from the Academy Dr. Hammond  has served as Executive Director of the Division of Behavioral Sciences at  the  National Research Council/National Academy of Science (LINK# ) in Washington, D.C. He resigned after one year, in protest over NAS/NRC  involvement in the Viet Nam War; ( fortunately he had the security of two book contracts to fall back on!) Later, as a faculty member in  the Department of Psychiatry at the George Washington University School of Medicine (LINK# )  and at the Hillcrest Children's Center, PBH worked with  pediatric residents in child psychiatry, traumatizing them with the requirement to  visit the inner city homes, schools  and neighborhoods of their  African American patients (so as  to  assess the relevance of  children's  culture  for  effective diagnosis and the prescription of  realistic treatment).

PBH  has also  been a frequent consultant on Africa to the National Geographic Society (LINK# ) , great graphics and mind numbing apolitical texts ( for neither of which he takes responsibility). He also has worked as a consultant at Washington D.C.'s Board on Science and Technology for International Development, which once allowed for a memorable  interview in Manila with Imelda Marcos (who inexplicably made him a parting gift of placemats and a very large chandelier); he subsequently worked as a consultant to U.S.A.I.D., the United States Agency for International Development LINK# ),  where he learned some  important   lessons  observing   bureaucrats at work and play at  home and abroad;  he also served  on the staff of the World  Bank (LINK# ), an agency of the United Nations, where he first came to seriously appreciate  the significance of  greedy Third World elites, well pressed trousers , and the perils of arguing with 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 (LINK# pbh ) ); and established and directed  both the UCLA Applied Anthropology Program, where he and his students explored the  professional alternatives to opening an Anthropology Store; and the Lusophone Africa Research Group, there, with his  faculty and student colleagues,  he  explored  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. ( 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 (LINK# )pbh, and later in Portugal.