Born in Buffalo, NY, October 9, 1921. A.B, University of Buffalo, 1949; Ph.D.,
Cornell University, 1955. Worked in various universities but the longest was at State
University of New York at Buffalo (1965-94). Currently Adjunct Professor of Anthropology,
Texas Tech University.
Served in U.S. Army, 1941-45, overseas in North Africa and
Italy. Interest in anthropology developed while I was in South Pacific as a sailor on a
70-foot ketch in 1939. Interest in Peru developed when I was assigned, as a Teaching
Assistant, to Professor Allan R. Holmberg, as a freshman graduate student in 1949.
Holmberg helped me get grants to do ethnography in Peru, 1951-52. Hualcan, the
community I lived in then, was the substance of my dissertation which got me
certification to work as an anthropologist. It put a roof over my head, food in my and
my family's mouths, clothes on our backs. If it hadn't been for the Hualcainos, I'd be in
prison or on welfare. I owe them my life.
Peruvian research includes the Andean communities of Hualcán and Vicos, the exercise of psychiatry in Peru, and the life and ideas of José Carlos Mariátegui, a very influential Peruvian intellectual of the 1920s.
Books by William W. Stein (U. S. Library of Congress Online Catalog)
Deconstructing development discourse in Peru : a meta-ethnography of the modernity project at Vicos / William Stein. 2003
Vicisitudes del discurso del desarrollo en el Perú : una etnografía sobre la modernidad del Proyecto Vicos / William Stein; prólogo, Nelson Manrique ; traducción, Maruja Martínez. 2000
Dance in the cemetery : Jose Carlos Mariategui and the Lima Scandal of 1917 / William W. Stein ; with a foreword by Gonzalo Portocarrero Maisch. 1997
Hospital psiquiátrico peruano / William Stein. 1996
Peruvian psychiatric hospital / William W. Stein. 1995
Caso de los becerros hambrientos y otros ensayos de antropología económica / William W. Stein. 1991
Mariátegui y Norka Rouskaya : crónica de la presunta "profanación" del Cementerio de Lima en 1917 / William W. Stein ; [traducción de Jessica McLauchlan]. 1989
Levantamiento de Atusparia : el movimiento popular ancashino de 1885 : un estudio de documentos / William W. Stein ; [traducción de Jessica McLauchlan]. 1988
Peruvian contexts of change / edited by William W. Stein. 1985
Hualcán : life in the highlands of Peru / by William W. Stein. 1975
Changing Vicos agriculture [by] William W. Stein. 1972
