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.

    Paul Bohannan died on July 13, 2008 at his home in Visalia, California. At the time of his death, he suffered from Alzheimer's disease, which he had had for several years.

        His books include the following:

    The Tiv of Central Nigeria with L. Bohannan (1953)

    Judgment and Justice Among the Tiv (1957)

    Divorce and After with J. Bernard (1970)

    Africa & Africans  with Philip Curtin (1971)
    Law, Biology and Culture: The Evolution of Law  with Margaret Gruter (1983)

    How Culture Works, New York: Free Press (1995)
 

 

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