Stanford 1967-1972

In those years Stanford Anthropology was forgiving of a pretty broad range of personal intellectual styles, and not much hung up on rigor. Bay Area vibes, but Stanford-Rich-Laid Back-Entitled vs.Berkeley Cutting Edge-Radical-Counterculture (Genteel Hippie, not UrbanScuffle Hippie), attuned to broad-spectrum spirituality, Cannabis > Acid. SRI and Hoover Institution. The Farm. About to spawn Silicon Valley, and to people its startups. Venture capital not far away in time... the compost in which Apple grew

Further context for the 1970s in anthropology can be found in 1974 as a key year in anthropology Alex Golub, at Savage Minds (2014)

...anthropology didn't really start morphing until 1968, which was a good year for anyone to morph into anything they like. Academics being what they are, the spirit of '68 wasn't actually published until 1972. This was a time of incredible growth and change.

...This was a time of enormous intellectual excitement, and of horizon widening. But it wasn't necessarily a time of cosmopolitanism or the reading of 'theory'. Geertz led off his 'Thick Description' essay citing Cassirer and Langer, authors who (unfortunately) would have no real influence in the future of anthropological theory.

My own orientation gravitated toward the spatial and geographical, under the influence of G William Skinner, and toward Systems, and Ecology avant la lettre, mostly informed by Whole Earth Catalog mindspaces. Cartographic serendipity led me first to Nova Scotia and then to Agriculture.

In retrospect I see myself as floundering through those graduate school years pretty cluelessly, missing a lot of what I now wish I'd had the wit to attend to and write about, and being tiresomely arrogant about what was and wasn't interesting and germane to what I thought I was doing...