The Explorations of Edmund Snow Carpenter: Anthropology Upside Down

Edmund Snow Carpenter (1922-2011), shaped by an early encounter with Marshall McLuhan, was a renegade anthropologist who would plumb the connection between anthropology and media studies over a thoroughly unconventional career. As co-conspirators in the founding of the legendary journal Explorations (1953-59), Carpenter and McLuhan established the groundwork for media studies. After ten years teaching anthropology at the University of Toronto, hosting radio and television shows on the CBC, and doing major research in the Arctic, Carpenter left Toronto and became an itinerant anthropologist. He took up a position in Papua New Guinea, where he countered anthropological practice by handing his camera to the Papuans. Carpenter’s marriage to the artist and heiress Adelaide de Menil made him a truly independent scholar. With the support of the Rock Foundation, founded by de Menil, he collected ethnographical art, curated exhibitions, and edited the materials for a twelve-volume study of social symbolism based on the massive archives created by Carl Schuster. Richard Cavell shows Carpenter - austere, generous, and unpredictable - to also be unwavering in working throughout his career within the framework established by Explorations. The anthropological impetus for media studies has largely been forgotten. This study restores that memory, tracing Carpenter’s work in media and in anthropology over a lifetime of cultural achievements and intellectual convolutions.

Richard Cavell is professor of media studies at the University of British Columbia.