Paul James Bohannan

1920-2007

    Paul Bohannan was born in 1920 in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1951, he earned his Ph.D. at University of Oxford. He was a Don at Oxford and then taught at Princeton University. From 1959 to 1975, he taught at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. He was drawn to Northwestern when their anthropology department began focusing on African ethnography. While there, he helped reinforce the study of Economic Anthropology within the department. From there, he went to the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Southern California. He has also been the President of the African Studies Association. In 1960, Bohannan won the August Volmer Research Award of the American Society for Criminology for his study African Homicide and Suicide. He has researched and written books about the Tiv and African people. Bohannan retired from the University of Southern California in 1987.

    Bohannan died on July 13, 2007 at his home in Visalia, California, at the time of his death he had Alzheimer's disease which he had for several years.

    His books include the following:
 

-  Gruter, Margaret & Bohannan, Paul. Law, Biology and Culture: The Evolution of Law. Ross-Erickson, Santa Barbara, CA, 1983

- Glazer, Mark, High Points in Anthropology, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988
 

- Bohannan, Paul & Curtin, Philip. Africa & Africans, Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1995
 

- Bohannan, Paul. How Culture Works, New York: Free Press, 1995
 

- Van der Elst, Dirk. Culture As Given, Culture As Choice, Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1999

 

References

Biography.com, http://www.biography.com, (Dec, 1999)

Ethnographics Publications,  http://www.usc.edu/dept/elab/publications/tiv.html, (Dec, 1999)

Former Link, http://www.nwu.edu/anthropology/identity.htm, (Dec, 1999)

Web Pals, http://www.pals.msus.edu, (Dec, 1999)

Written By: Erin Potter

Edited By: David Gardner 2007.