Fredrik Barth, 1928–2016

January 28, 2016

The Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology is saddened to hear of the passing, on 24th January 2016, not long after his 87th birthday, of the distinguished Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth

Fredrik Barth was one of the most productive and original social anthropologists of his generation. After early training in the USA and the UK, he returned to Norway where he founded the Institute at Bergen and exerted a lasting global influence through publications such as "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries" (ed. 1969). Fredrik Barth was a remarkably versatile field researcher and a creative theoretician. Although he is less well known as an historian of the discipline, he delivered five lectures on the British School as part of a series "Four Traditions in Anthropology" to mark the inauguration of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in its permanent buildings in 2002. (The lectures were later published in: Fredrik Barth, Andre Gingrich, Robert Parkin and Sydel Silverman. 2005. One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French and American Anthropology. The Halle Lectures. Chicago: Chicago University Press.)

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