Norwegian anthropologist (1928?2016)
Thomas Fredrik Weybye Barth
(22 December 1928 ? 24 January 2016) was a Norwegian
social anthropologist
who published several
ethnographic
books with a clear formalist view. He was a professor in the Department of Anthropology at
Boston University
, and previously held professorships at the
University of Oslo
, the
University of Bergen
(where he founded the Department of Social Anthropology),
Emory University
and
Harvard University
. He was appointed a
government scholar
in 1985.
[1]
[2]
[3]
Biography and major works
[
edit
]
Barth was born in
Leipzig
, Germany to Thomas Barth, a professor of geology, and his wife Randi Thomassen. They also had a daughter. Barth and his sister grew up in Norway in an academic family. Their uncle was
Edvard Kaurin Barth
, a professor of zoology.
[1]
Fredrik Barth developed an interest in
evolution
and human origins. When his father was invited to give a lecture at the
University of Chicago
, the younger man accompanied him and decided to attend the university, enrolling in 1946.
[4]
He earned an MA in paleoanthropology and archaeology in 1949.
[5]
After receiving his MA, Barth returned to Norway, keeping a connection to Chicago faculty. In 1951 he joined an
archaeological
expedition to Iraq led by
Robert Braidwood
. Barth stayed on after the expedition was over, and conducted ethnographic population studies with the
Kurdish
population. He spent a year at the
London School of Economics
(LSE) writing up this data, and in 1953 published his first book,
Principles of Social Organization in Southern Kurdistan.
[4]
: 2?3
Barth had originally planned to submit the manuscript of his
Principles of Social Organization
as his Ph.D. dissertation, but was unsuccessful in doing so. He continued graduate study, moving to
Cambridge
, England to study with
Edmund Leach
, whom he had previously worked with at the LSE. For his PhD, Barth conducted fieldwork in
Swat, Pakistan
; his completed dissertation was published in 1959 as
Political Leadership among Swat
Pathan
. Shortly afterwards he was part of a UNESCO study of pastoral nomadism, which focused on the
Basseri
in what is now Iran. From this work, he published the 1961 monograph
Nomads of South Persia
.
[4]
: 3?6
In 1961, Barth was invited to the
University of Bergen
to create an anthropology department and serve as the chair. This important and prestigious position gave him the opportunity to introduce British-style
social anthropology
to Norway. The only other existing anthropology program, at the
University of Oslo
, was older and connected to the university's
ethnographic
museum (now the
Museum of Cultural History
). It was based in Victorian folklore and museum approaches. By founding the department at Bergen, Barth hoped to create a modern, world-class department with an approach similar to those found in England and the United States.
[4]
: 7
Barth remained at Bergen from 1961 to 1972. During this time his own work developed in two key ways. First, he developed research projects inside Norway (and published a study entitled
The Role of the Entrepreneur in Social Change in Northern Norway
in 1963). Second, he began writing more purely theoretical works that secured his international reputation within anthropology. These included
Models of Social Organization
(1966) and especially the small, edited volume,
Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference
(1969). Barth's introduction to
Ethnic Groups and Boundaries
became his most well-known essay and "ended up among the top 100 on the social science citation index for a number of years.".
[4]
: 10
In 1974 Barth moved to
Oslo
, where he became professor of social anthropology and the head of the city's Museum of Cultural History. During this period, anthropology was changing.
Marxism
and interpretive approaches were becoming more central, while Barth's focus on strategy and choice was being taken up by economics and related disciplines.
[4]
: 9
Barth shifted to studying meaning and ritual as developed in ethnic groups, and conducted research in
Papua New Guinea
, where he conducted fieldwork with the
Baktaman
. He published several works from these studies, namely the
Ritual and Knowledge among the Baktaman of New Guinea
(1975). He also continued studies in the Middle East, conducting fieldwork in
Oman
with his wife
Unni Wikan
. This resulted in his 1983 volume
Sohar: Culture and Society in an Omani Town
.
Barth received a state scholarship from the Norwegian government in 1985. He left the country to accept two positions in the United States?at
Emory University
from 1989 to 1996, and
Boston University
from 1997 to 2008.
[6]
: 7
By this time, Barth and his wife "felt we had both done our share of physically strenuous fieldwork" and decided to begin an ethnographic project in
Bali
.
[4]
: 14
He developed an interest in the anthropology of knowledge at around this time, an interest which he explored in his book
Balinese Worlds
(1993). More recently, he has also conducted research in
Bhutan
.
Barth was a member of the
Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
.
[7]
In 1997 he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
.
[8]
Personal life
[
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]
Barth was married 1949?1972 to Mary ("Molly") Allee (27 April 1926 ? December 1998),
[9]
and he was married again 30 January 1974 to
Unni Wikan
, professor of social anthropology at the
University of Oslo
, Norway.
[6]
: 7
His sister Tone Barth (25 January 1924 ? 10 October 1980) was married 1945?1963 to
Terkel Rosenqvist
(1921?2011), also an academic,
[10]
and she was married again in 1963 to the Norwegian politician for the Conservative Party
Vidkunn Hveding
(1921?2001). Barth died in Norway on 24 January 2016 at the age of 87.
[11]
Main ideas and contributions
[
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]
He was well known among anthropologists for his
Transactionalism
analysis of political processes in the
Swat Valley
of northern Pakistan, and his study of micro-economic processes and entrepreneurship in the area of
Darfur
in
Sudan
. The latter has been regarded as a classical example of
formalist
analysis in
economic anthropology
. During his long career, Barth has also published acclaimed studies based on field works in
Bali
,
New Guinea
, and several countries in the Middle East, thematically covering a wide array of subjects.
[2]
Ethnicity
[
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]
Barth has been an influential scholar on the subject of ethnicity. Andreas Wimmer wrote in 2008, "The comparative study of ethnicity rests firmly on the ground established by Fredrik Barth in his well-known [1969] introduction to a collection of ethnographic case studies."
[12]
As the editor of
Ethnic Groups and Boundaries
(1969), Barth outlined an approach to the study of
ethnicity
that focused on the ongoing negotiations of boundaries between groups of people. Barth's view was that such groups were not discontinuous cultural isolates, or logical
a prioris
to which people naturally belong.
Barth parted with anthropological notions of cultures as bounded entities, and ethnicity as primordial bonds. He focused on the interface and interaction between groups that gave rise to identities.
[2]
Ethnic Groups and Boundaries
, which he edited, concentrates on the interconnections of ethnic identities. Barth writes in his introduction (p. 9):
... categorical ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of mobility, contact and information, but do entail social processes of exclusion and incorporation whereby discrete categories are maintained
despite
changing participation and membership in the course of individual life histories.
He emphasizes the use by groups of categories - i.e. ethnic labels - that usually endure even when individual members move across boundaries or share an identity with people in more than one group.
The inter-dependency of
ethnic groups
is a pivotal argument throughout both the introduction and the following chapters. As interdependent, ethnic identities are the product of continuous so-called ascription (Cf.
Ascriptive inequality
) and self-ascription, Barth stresses the interactional perspective of social anthropology on the level of the persons involved instead of on a socio-structural level. Ethnic identity
becomes
and is maintained through relational processes of inclusion and exclusion.
[2]
Literature
[
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]
- Biographies
- Selected bibliography
- Balinese worlds.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
ISBN
0-226-03833-5
- Cosmologies in the making : a generative approach to cultural variation in inner New Guinea.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
ISBN
0-521-34279-1
- Sohar, culture and society in an Omani town.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.
ISBN
0-8018-2840-6
- Ritual and knowledge among the Baktaman of New Guinea.
Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1975.
ISBN
0-300-01816-9
- Ethnic groups and boundaries. The social organization of culture difference
. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969.
ISBN
978-0-04-572019-4
(Reissued Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 1998)
- Models of social organization
. London, Royal Anthropological Institute, 1966.
- Nomads of South-Persia; the Basseri tribe of the Khamseh Confederacy.
Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1962.
- Political leadership among Swat Pathans
. London : The Athlone Press, 1959.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Rosvold, Knut A. (9 August 2012).
"Fredrik Barth Biography"
.
Store Norske Leksikon
(in Norwegian).
Kunnskapsforlaget
. Retrieved
27 October
2013
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Siverts, Henning (13 February 2009).
"Fredrik Barth Extended Biography"
.
Norsk Biografisk Leksikon
(in Norwegian).
Kunnskapsforlaget
. Retrieved
27 October
2013
.
- ^
Jenkins, Richard (2016). "Fredrik Barth: an ethnographer's ethnographer and a theorist's theorist: Fredrik Barth: an ethnographer's ethnographer and a theorist's theorist".
Nations and Nationalism
.
22
(3): 411?414.
doi
:
10.1111/nana.12231
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
Barth, Fredrik (2007). "Overview: Sixty Years of Anthropology".
Annual Review of Anthropology
.
36
: 1?16.
doi
:
10.1146/annurev.anthro.36.081406.094407
.
- ^
Anderson, Astrid (2012).
Fredrik Barth: A Bibliography
. Oslo: Universitetsbiblioteket, Oslo. p. 7.
- ^
a
b
Anderson, Astrid (2012).
Fredrik Barth: A Bibliography
. Oslo: Universitetsbiblioteket i Oslo.
- ^
"Gruppe 2: Kulturfag og estetiske fag"
(in Norwegian).
Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
. Archived from
the original
on 27 September 2011
. Retrieved
28 October
2009
.
- ^
"Book of Members, 1780?2010: Chapter B"
(PDF)
. American Academy of Arts and Sciences
. Retrieved
18 May
2011
.
- ^
Siverts, Henning (13 February 2009).
"Fredrik Barth Extended Biography"
.
Norsk Biografisk Leksikon
(in Norwegian). Oslo:
Kunnskapsforlaget
. Retrieved
27 October
2013
.
- ^
Steenstrup, Bjørn, ed. (1973).
"Rosenqvist, Terkel"
.
Hvem er hvem?
(in Norwegian). Oslo: Aschehoug. p. 470
. Retrieved
2 June
2011
.
- ^
"Fredrik Barth er død"
.
www.dn.no
. 25 January 2016.
- ^
Wimmer, Andreas (2008). "The Making and Unmaking of Ethnic Boundaries: A Multilevel Process Theory".
American Journal of Sociology
.
113
(4): 970?1022.
doi
:
10.1086/522803
.
ISSN
0002-9602
.
S2CID
3178127
.
External links
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