Steven Lee Rubinstein (1962-2012)

The sad news of Dr. Steve Lee Rubenstein’s sudden and unexpected death at the age of 49 took

us all by surprise. In fact, as I write this, months after Steve’s passing, I am still grappling with

the notion that he is gone from this world, as we know it. In some ways, Steve was only at the

beginning of his career with many large ideas still unleashed and yet he had already achieved

more than most do in one lifetime. As friends and colleagues of Steve’s we have spent the last

few months exchanging stories about his extraordinary mind, wit and generosity. Students have

come forth to talk about how much he changed their way of reading texts and seeing the world,

identifying him as the one person from their experience in higher education who actually made a

difference to them, teaching them not only about anthropology but about life. Colleagues, young

and old, have benefitted from his intense and heartfelt academic exchanges, and enjoyed his

constructively critical and magnanimous manner. Steve was an interlocutor par excellence. As

South Americanists we experienced first-hand his commitment to community building by

bringing people and ideas together, never simply promoting himself. We have all watched him

hold court in the lobbies of all the various conferences we attended. Wherever Steve sat became

a magnetic hub, an intellectual watering hole across and beyond our discipline.