In a lecture published last summer in the journal Human Organization, Ralph Bolton ’61 reflected on the touchstones that brought him success during his decades-long career as an applied anthropologist.
Interdisciplinary preparedness. Collaboration across disciplines. Respect for traditional knowledge and local understandings. Serendipity. To name four.
Lastly, he wrote, “Empathy.”
“Empathy is the glue that holds society together, making it possible to imagine and work toward improving the human condition,” he concluded, quoting Frans de Waal, a psychology professor at Emory University.
Bolton, professor emeritus of anthropology and a leading researcher in HIV transmission, died December 3.
He was 86.
A Pennsylvania native who took an interest in other cultures as a child, Bolton studied anthropology under the late Charles Leslie at Pomona and majored in international relations. He graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1961.
Bolton volunteered to serve in the then-nascent Peace Corps after graduating, an opportunity “to see the world,” he would later write. He was assigned office work in Peru but convinced his superiors to let him live and work in an indigenous, Quechua-speaking community to cut his teeth as an anthropologist.
After serving four years in the Peace Corps, Bolton began doctoral studies in anthropology at Cornell University, studying intra-village wealth disparities and health outcomes, coca chewing, and expressions of hostility, conflict and aggression within the Andean villages in South America.
“Our analysis of conflicts contradicted the work of many anthropologists working in the Andes, who promoted the romanticist illusion of Andean villages as havens of cooperation and solidarity,” he wrote in Human Organization.
Bolton joined the Pomona faculty as assistant professor of anthropology in 1971.
“I will never forget the stories he told or the leather vests he wore,” a former student recalled.
“He was one of those professors and one of those classes that everyone had to take. And he was so worth it,” recalled another.
“He had heart and smarts! The world is better because of him,” a third added.
The onset of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s commanded Bolton’s attention, and across two decades, he published myriad articles on risk factors and prevention messaging. His papers shed light on the concept of promiscuity, the alleged role of alcohol in risky sex, the messages presented in words and images in AIDS posters from around the world, and the alleged role of place in sexual encounters in risky behavior.
“I was guided in this work not only by the urgency of preventing transmission through risk reduction approaches,” Bolton wrote in Human Organization, “but also by the need to respect and protect the gay community’s hard-earned freedom to enjoy satisfying intimate lives without fear.”
In 2005, Bolton and a group of friends and anthropologists established the Chijnaya Foundation, which works to raise standards of living in rural communities on the Peruvian Altiplano.
Bolton retired from Pomona in 2013 and continued his mission of bringing health, education and economic development to the Andes.
Early last year, the Society for Applied Anthropology gave Bolton the prestigious Bronislaw Malinowski Award, which, according to the organization, “is given each year to an outstanding individual who has dedicated their career to solving human challenges through the social science.”
“Applied anthropology is more crucial than ever,” Bolton wrote in Human Organization. “Adhering to the basic principles on which our discipline is founded—respect for the equality and rights of people everywhere—we need to find new ways to search for solutions to seemingly intractable problems.”
“This is the new reality to which you, as applied anthropologists and citizens, will need to adapt,” he added. “Your work will be more important than ever before.”