TAX, SOL

TAX, SOL (1907–1995), U.S. anthropologist. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Tax received a Ph.B. from the University of Wisconsin (1931) and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1935. He joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1940, where he taught until his retirement in 1974. He was appointed chairman of the anthropology department in 1955 and served as dean of the adult education extension school from 1962 to 1968. He served as editor of American Anthropologist (1952–55). In 1957 he founded the international journal Current Anthropology, which he edited until 1974. He served as director of the Fox Indian Project in Iowa (1948–62). He did fieldwork among the Mescalero Apache (1931), the Guatemalan Indians (1934–41), and the Chukas Indians of Mexico (1942–43). In 1961, Tax coordinated the American Indian Chicago Conference, which assembled 700 Native Americans from more than 80 tribal groups at the University of Chicago. They prepared a Declaration of Indian Purpose, which sought to present a unified position on the relation of native people to the American government. In the 1960s and 1970s, Tax's work included research in developing countries and the former Soviet Union. Tax was an acknowledged head of the "action anthropologists," a school that holds that the task of the field worker is not just to undertake research but also to assist in the acculturation of the native populations he studies. He repeatedly called for the improvement of living conditions on American Indian reservations in accordance with the Indians' own desires and aspirations. In another vein, Tax organized a conference on the military draft in 1968, bringing together military leaders and political figures to discuss the issue of the draft and its alternatives. Tax was president of the American Anthropological Association (1958–59). He also served as director of the Smithsonian Institution's Center for the Study of Man; served on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO; and served on President Johnson's special task force on American Indian Affairs. Tax was a consultant for the U.S. Office of Education; the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs; the National Institute of Mental Health; and the Smithsonian Institution. In 1962 he received the Viking Fund Medal and Award from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.   Among his books are Acculturation in the Americas (1952), Penny Capitalism: A Guatemalan Indian Economy (1953), The Evolution of Man (1960), Acculturation in the Americas (1967), Heritage of Conquest (1968), and Cultures beyond the Earth (1975). The books he edited include An Appraisal of Anthropology Today (1954), Evolution after Darwin (1960), The Draft (1967), The People vs. the System (1968), and Horizons of Anthropology (1977). -ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Representative Papers of Sol Tax, 1937 – 1977 (1977); R. Hinshaw (ed.), Currents in Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Sol Tax (1979); R. Rubinstein (ed.), Fieldwork: The Correspondence of Robert Redfield & Sol Tax (1991). (Ephraim Fischoff / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)