Thomas Fredrik Weybye Barth (born 1928) is a
NorwegianNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
social anthropologistSocial Anthropology is one of the four or five branches of anthropology that studies how contemporary human beings behave in social groups. Practitioners of social anthropology investigate, often through long-term, intensive field studies , the social organization of a particular person: customs,...
who has published several
ethnographicEthnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
books with a clear formalistic view. He is
professorA professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
in the Department of Anthropology at
Boston UniversityBoston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
, and has previously held professorships at the
University of OsloThe University of Oslo , formerly The Royal Frederick University , is the oldest and largest university in Norway, situated in the Norwegian capital of Oslo. The university was founded in 1811 and was modelled after the recently established University of Berlin...
, the
University of BergenThe University of Bergen is located in Bergen, Norway. Although founded as late as 1946, academic activity had taken place at Bergen Museum as far back as 1825. The university today serves more than 14,500 students...
(where he founded the Department of Social Anthropology),
Emory UniversityEmory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...
and
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
.
He is well-known among anthropologists for his transactional analysis of politic processes in the
Swat ValleySwat is a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, located close to the Afghan-Pakistan border. It is the upper valley of the Swat River, which rises in the Hindu Kush range. The capital of Swat is Saidu Sharif, but the main town in the Swat valley is Mingora...
of northern
PakistanPakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
and his study of microeconomic processes and entepreneurship in the area of
DarfurDarfur is a region in western Sudan. An independent sultanate for several hundred years, it was incorporated into Sudan by Anglo-Egyptian forces in 1916. The region is divided into three federal states: West Darfur, South Darfur, and North Darfur...
in
SudanSudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
. The latter has been regarded as a classical example of formalistic analysis in
economic anthropologyEconomic anthropology is a scholarly field that attempts to explain human economic behavior using the tools of both economics and anthropology. It is practiced by anthropologists and has a complex relationship with economics...
. During his long career he has also done acclaimed studies based on field works in
BaliBali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...
,
New GuineaNew Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
, and several countries in the Middle East, thematically covering a wide array of subjects.
Barth was the editor of
Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969) in which he outlines an approach to the study of ethnicity which focuses on the on-going negotiations of boundaries between groups of people. Barth's view is that such groups are not discontinuous cultural isolates, or logical a prioris to which people naturally belong.
Barth wants to part with anthropological notions of cultures as bounded entities, and ethnicity as primordialist bonds, replacing it with a focus on the interface between groups.
Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, therefore, is a focus on the interconnectedness of ethnic identities. Barth writes (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." Furthermore, Barth accentuates that group categories - i.e. ethnic labels - will most often endure even when individual members move across boundaries or share an identity with people in more than one group.
The interdependency of
ethnic groupAn ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...
s is a pivotal argument throughout both the introduction and the following chapters in Barth's edited book. As interdependent, ethnic identities are the product of continuous so-called ascriptions and self-ascriptions, whereby 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.
Barth is a member of the
Norwegian Academy of Science and LettersThe Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway.-History:The University of Oslo was established in 1811. The idea of a learned society in Christiania surfaced for the first time in 1841. The city of Throndhjem had no university, but had a learned...
. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the
American Academy of Arts and SciencesThe American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 1997.
Barth is married to
Unni WikanUnni Wikan is a Norwegian professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo and is the second wife of the well-known Norwegian social anthropologist Fredrik Barth...
, professor of social anthropology at the
University of OsloThe University of Oslo , formerly The Royal Frederick University , is the oldest and largest university in Norway, situated in the Norwegian capital of Oslo. The university was founded in 1811 and was modelled after the recently established University of Berlin...
, Norway. He is the son of professor of geology Tom Barth and nephew of professor of zoology Edvard Kaurin Barth. From 1945 to 1963 he was a brother-in-law of
Terkel RosenqvistTerkel Nissen Rosenqvist was a Norwegian chemist and metallurgist.He was born in Aker. His parents were businessman Einar Rosenqvist and Julia Marija Kos . His brother was Ivan Th. Rosenqvist. From 1945 to 1963 he was married to Tone Barth, the sister of Fredrik Barth...
, who was married to Barth's sister.
Selected bibliography
- Balinese worlds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. ISBN 0226038335
- Cosmologies in the making : a generative approach to cultural variation in inner New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ISBN 0521342791
- Sohar, culture and society in an Omani town. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. ISBN 0801828406
- Ritual and knowledge among the Baktaman of New Guinea. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1975. ISBN 0300018169
- Ethnic groups and boundaries. The social organization of culture difference. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969. ISBN 9780045720194
- 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.
External links