Frederik Barth - from Fieldwork to Theory

A portrait of the Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth.

He was one of the most important contemporary representatives of his discipline whose reputation both as a fieldworker and a theoretician has been renowned for more than four decades. Barth carried out fieldwork in the Sudan, Oman, Pakistan, New Guinea, Bali and Bhutan.

In the film, Barth talks, at times together with his wife Unni Wikan, to Peter Loizos (London School of Economics) and also to Lone Abenth-Sperschneider on his personal life and academic career, the importance of his fieldwork for his theoretical findings, the development of Norwegian anthropology, his cooperation with Unni Wikan and many other topics of interest for anthropologists. Impressions from teaching students in Bergen and lecturing at the Museum of Ethnography in Oslo, as well as glimpses of his personal environment in Oslo round off the film to a vivid portrait of a remarkable anthropologist.

The film is a part of the IWF series on the history of anthropology.