Fredrik Barth
| Fredrik Barth | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | Thomas Fredrik Weybye Barth 22 December 1928 Leipzig, Germany |
| Died | 24 January 2016 (aged 87) Norway |
| Nationality | Norwegian |
| Fields | Anthropology |
| Institutions |
Boston University University of Bergen |
| Alma mater |
University of Chicago (M.A.) Cambridge University (Ph.D.) |
| Doctoral advisor | Edmund Leach |
| Spouse | Unni Wikan |
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 has 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.
Barth was born in Leipzig 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. 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. He earned an MA in paleoanthropology and archaeology in 1949.
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.
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.
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