Thomas Fredrik Weybye Barth

Professor Fredrik Barth was a Norwegian social anthropologist who has published several ethnographic books with a clear formalistic view. He was a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Boston University, and had 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 well-known among anthropologists for his transactional analysis of politic processes in the Swat Valley of northern Pakistan and his study of microeconomic processes and entrepreneurship in the area of Darfur in Sudan. The latter has been regarded as a classical example of formalistic analysis in economic anthropology. During his long career he had also done acclaimed studies based on field works in Bali, New Guinea, and several countries in the Middle East, thematically covering a wide array of subjects.