Sidney Mintz Chosen to Deliver Huxley Lecture in London
By Emil Venere

     Department of Anthropology professor Sidney Mintz will join
the ranks of some of the world's leading anthropologists on
Wednesday when he addresses the fellows of the Royal
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, in
London. 
     The lecture, "Enduring Substances, Trying Theories," will be
the highlight of his election as the 1994 Thomas Henry Huxley
Lecturer and Medallist, the institute's highest honor. 
     Dr. Mintz is one of only a handful of Americans to be chosen
for this award, which has been made annually since 1900. In its
history, only six American cultural anthropologists have been
selected to deliver the lecture. It has been even more rare for
any of the honorees to focus their research on the Caribbean.
     The Caribbean has traditionally received relatively little
attention in anthropology in part, Dr. Mintz said, because it is
not easily classified in a typical anthropological category, such
as a primitive or Western culture. Also, historically, cultural
anthropologists have tended to study people of Africa and the
Pacific Islands as well as Native American societies. 
     Dr. Mintz, who was a co-founder of the Hopkins department in
1974, began his first Caribbean fieldwork in Puerto Rico in 1948,
and later worked in Jamaica, Haiti and elsewhere in the region.
He is perhaps best known for his writings on the relation of
sugar production to power and politics in Caribbean countries, as
described in his 1985 book Sweetness and Power: The Political,
Social and Economic Effects of Sugar on the Modern World.