More than an institution of higher learning, indeed more than the spirit of a collegiate community and certainly more than a national historic site, the University sustains its existence not in brick and mortar but rather in the generated meanings we attribute to it and in the collective memory of all those who live to experience it. When J. C. Crocker, Professor Emeritus, died here in Charlottesville on September 19th, 2003, we lost yet another vital soul constituting the substantive existence of the University. He had served our community for over thirty years, as international scholar, classroom teacher, and invaluable colleague. A true intellectual and academic, he neither sought the limelight of public fame nor the commercial popularity of copious and vacuous publications. His research and scholarship always held the integrity that comes from the agony and ecstasy of traveling on the rigorous journey of knowledge. He followed the theoretical leads of his arguments even when these often led to conclusions which contradicted his own deeply held moral beliefs. Yes, it is true many of us will remember him being somewhat over-priestly about knowledge. Structuralism had, for example, become almost like a religious faith for him. This fervor, for those who knew him well, had more to do with his personal loyalty to his own renowned teacher Claude Lévi-Strauss than with his belief in the explanatory powers of Structuralism. He always built his arguments on the foundations of credible and long-standing ideas. When testing these and adding to them with his own scholarly contributions he made us in the field of anthropology feel nervous and uncertain about our own conclusions. He was first and foremost a scholar of Amerindian studies. Certainly he romanticized and showed pride in Native American peoples. Yet in his research on

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Amazonian societies, particularly the Bororo, the one he worked most closely with, he was analytical, rational, and brilliant. He never once confused the role of anthropology with the role of the activist. He never once made the mistake of claiming he studied people while exploring the social category of the person. His work on kinship, social organization, shamanism, and religion had its consistent focus upon the limit of the anthropological project—the product of human social relations. Of his many publications, I think we will all remember most his book Vital Souls: Bororo Cosmology, Natural Symbolism, and Shamanism. It is without doubt the most packed and adroit text on the social and religious philosophy of an indigenous South American people.

The lore of our department has it that during the seventies, three bright-eyed and energetic Harvard scholars came here to the University and led the campaign for a separate and sovereign anthropological realm away from sociology. J. C. was one of these “intellectual crusaders.” He with Sapir and Wagner led their followers to Brooks Hall and we have been there ever since. From this domain and under their tillage, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Virginia is today one of the world’s most respected venues for the enterprise of anthropological knowledge. This gift J.C. Crocker endowed to us.

We become the University. We are, in our living and dying here in the community of scholars the very existence of the University. J. C. Crocker, with his recent and sad move into the dominion of the transcendent dead, has helped keep the world of the dead alive in our memories. In so doing, he has also substantially assisted us in maintaining the everlasting presence of our University.

Thank you J. C.
George Mentore