User:Kdiederichs/ThomasWidlok

Thomas Widlok (born 29th June 1965) is a german anthropologist with international training and an international career in the social sciences and humanities. He is best known for his ethnographic work with San of southern Africa and for his comparative work on sharing.

Career

Widlok is currently professor of anthropology at the University of Cologne. Until 1989 he studied ethnology, philosophy and catholic theology at the Universities of Münster and Cologne in Germany. In 1994 he finished his dissertation in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science . After his degrees he worked at a number of universities and research institutions before becoming permanent lecturer for anthropology at the University of Durham (UK) in 2006. In 2008 he was appointed Professor for Pacific Anthropology at Radboud University Nijmegen. Since 2013 he is Professor for Anthropology of Africa at the University of Cologne where he also completed his Habilitation in 2004.

Widlok spent several years of field research in southern Africa (mainly Namibia) and Australia. He specialized in hunter-gatherer research and published widely on the language, society and culture of the ≠Akhoe Hai//om „San“ of northern Namibia as well as on antoher Khoisan-speaking group in the Namib Desert (the ≠Aonin Topnaar). He has also conducted ethnographic research in aboriginal Australia.

His PhD entitled „The Social Relationships of Changing Hai//om Hunter-Gatherers in Namibia“ was supervised by James Woodburn and based on this thesis he published an ethnographic monograph „Living on Mangetti“ in 1999. As a PhD student Widlok was a member of the Cognitive Anthropology Research Group initiated by Stephen Levinson at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen that investigated the relation between culture, language and cognition in spatial relations. Since then he has worked in a number research projects on ritual dynamics, property relations and equality, human mobility, and on the anthropology of causality and time. His most recent books are a comparative study of sharing and an edited volume on interdisciplinary anthropology. Since 1990 he is married to the art-psychotherapist Dagmar Widlok.

Selected Publications

2019. The situationality of human –animal relations. Perspectives from anthropology and philosophy. Bielefeld: transcript [edited jointly with Thiemo Breyer]

2017. “The anthropology of the economy of sharing.” London: Routledge.

2005. "Property and Equality. Vol. 1 Ritualisation, Sharing and Egalitarianism." New York: Berghahn. [edited jointly with Wolde Tadesse].

2005. "Property and Equality. Vol. 2 Encapsulation, Commercialisation and Discrimination." New York: Berghahn. [edited jointly with Wolde Tadesse].

2001. "Symbolic Categories and Ritual Practices in Hunter-Gatherer Experiences" African Studies Monographs. Kyoto: Center for African Area Studies. [edited jointly with Kazuyoshi Sugawara].

1999. "Living on Mangetti. Hai//om 'Bushmen' autonomy and Namibian independence." Oxford: Oxford University.

References

Birgitte Refslund Sørensen (2001) Review of “Thomas Widlok "Living on Mangetti. Hai//om 'Bushmen' autonomy and Namibian independence." Folk. Journal of the Danish Ethnographic Society. 43: 301-4

Weblinks

https://gssc.uni-koeln.de/thomas_widlok.html

http://afrikanistik.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/widlok.html