Fredrik Barth

Fredrik Barth Weybye Thomas ( born December 22, 1928 in Leipzig) is a Norwegian ethnologist, mainly dealing with the political anthropology of stateless societies.

Life

As the son of Norwegian parents born in Leipzig, grew up in Germany, the USA and - during the Second World War - in Norway, Barth in 1946 went again to the United States, where he studied in Chicago paleontology and cultural anthropology. He accompanied his 1951 Archeology Professor Robert Braidwood to the excavations of Jarmo in Iraq and joined it his first ( unplanned ) field research at the Kurds.

Subsequently, Barth study with a Norwegian scholarship to the London School of Economics. The local professor Raymond Firth makes him aware of Edmund Leach. Barth goes to Cambridge and writes Principles of Social Organization in Southern Kurdistan. In 1954 he is on field research in Northern Pakistan in the Swat region. After completing his doctorate at Cambridge in 1957, he remains within the framework of a UNESCO project on about the sedentarization of nomads in the Basseri in Iran. 1959 makes Barth Political Leadership among Swat Pathans first attention. Two years later, following the now equally classic monograph on the Basseri: Nomads of South Persia. The Basseri Tribe of the Khamseh Confederacy.

Further research trips led Barth, who was from 1961 to 1972 Professor of Social Anthropology in Bergen from 1973 to 1985 in Oslo, later also in the USA, China, in the Sudan and to Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. Since 1974 he is married to Unni Wikan, in turn, a well-known anthropologist.

Work

While Barth in political leadership, the importance of individual strategies, including the manipulation of values ​​, it turns into a regional caste system in terms of social change, he is interested in the Basseri nomads for the segmentary system as a political order. Barth distinguishes between political systems in which the individual players have some choice in order to develop bonds and loyalties to each other (as in Swat ), and those where this is not possible. So in his understanding is an existing company, the result of many individual decisions ( choices ), which by specific structural requirements ( frameworks, both fixed and variable conditions ), however, limits are set. In Ethnic Groups and Boundaries he puts the issue raised by his teacher Leach discussion of the concept of "ethnic group " continues and proves the incongruity of " Ethnos " and "culture". A socio- cultural system may include multiple ethnicities and emerge structural similarities, which are then received by his relatives as belonging together and be handed down in contrast to the neighbors the "others".

Works (selection)

  • Balinese worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
  • Cosmologies in the making: a generative approach to cultural variation in inner New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
  • Sohar, culture and society in to Omani town. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.
  • Ritual and knowledge among the Baktaman of New Guinea. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1975.
  • Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969.
  • Models of social organization. London, Royal Anthropological Institute, 1966.
  • Nomads of South - Persia; Basseri the tribe of the Khamseh Confederacy. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1962.
  • Political leadership among Swat Pathans. London: The Athlone Press, 1959.
Field work Kurdish people Integrated Authority File
350274
de