Scott Atran
| Scott Atran | |
|---|---|
| Born |
February 6, 1952 New York City, New York |
| Residence | France |
| Nationality | American, French |
| Fields | Anthropology, psychology, cognitive science |
| Institutions |
École pratique des hautes études Cambridge University Oxford University Hebrew University of Jerusalem University of Michigan John Jay College of Criminal Justice Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique École Normale Supérieure |
| Doctoral advisor | Margaret Mead |
Scott Atran (born February 6, 1952) is an American and French anthropologist who is a Director of Research in Anthropology at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, Research Professor at the University of Michigan, and cofounder of ARTIS International and of the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at Oxford University in England. He has studied and written about terrorism, violence and religion, and has done fieldwork with terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists, as well as political leaders.
Atran was born in New York City in 1952 and he received his PhD in anthropology from Columbia University. While a student he became assistant to anthropologist Margaret Mead at the American Museum of Natural History. In 1974 he originated a debate at the Abbaye de Royaumont in France on the nature of universals in human thought and society, with the participation of linguist Noam Chomsky, psychologist Jean Piaget, anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Claude Lévi-Strauss, and biologists François Jacob and Jacques Monod, which Harvard's Howard Gardner and others consider a milestone in the development of cognitive science.
Atran has experimented on the ways scientists and ordinary people categorize and reason about nature, on the cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion, His work has been widely published internationally in the popular press, and in scientific journals in a variety of disciplines. He has briefed members of the U.S. Congress and the National Security Council staff at the White House on the The Devoted Actor versus the Rational Actor in Managing World Conflict, on the Comparative Anatomy and Evolution of Global Network Terrorism, and on Pathways to and from Violent Extremism. He was an early critic of U.S. intervention in Iraq and of deepening involvement in Afghanistan.
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