Unni Wikan

Unni Wikan (born 18 November 1944 in Harstad) is a Norwegian professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo and is the second wife of the well-known Norwegian social anthropologist Fredrik Barth. She has also served as visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University (1977, assistant professor), Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel (1989) École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris (1996), London School of Economics (1997) Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt (2000), and guest lecturer at Harvard University in 1995, visiting scholar in 1987 and visiting professor in 1999-2000.

Wikan has also worked as a consultant to UNICEF and the World Food Programme in Bhutan from 1989 to 1994, and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation in Palestine in 1999).

For almost ten years, Wikan has campaigned to change Norwegian policies towards immigrants, arguing that generous welfare and a policy of multicultural tolerance are creating a culture of welfare dependence, and destroying self-respect. A reviewer of her book "Generous Betrayal: Politics of Culture in the New Europe" claims that she used invalid methodology, not giving "a far more complex social reality" its due. "'Unsympathetic readers" might see it as a "racist polemic."

She has argued that far from being a racist, she has significant empathy for the lives of many of the Muslim men she has portrayed in her most recent books. In a well-known case in Norway (The Anooshe case) she argued that the state had not taken into account the social expectations of immigrant men, and this had led to rootless men whose social expectations were not met or even acknowledged, arguing that violence is a product of immigrant conditions when host country laws conflict with the “unwritten social rules” of immigrant societies.

Wikan has performed field work in a number of countries, and her research has resulted in nine books being published. Her works have been translated into Japanese, Polish, Swedish, Danish, Russian and Turkish.

Wikan was awarded the 2004 Fritt Ord Award "for her insightful, outspoken and challenging contribution to the debate on value conflicts in the multi-cultural society."

In 2001 debate about the culture of rape amongst Muslim immigrants in Norway, she said that Norwegian women are 'blind and naive' towards non-Western immigrants. "I will not blame the rapes on Norwegian women. but Norwegian women must understand that we live in a Multicultural society and adapt themselves to it." "Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes." For example, by not inviting into their homes Muslim men with little knowledge of Norwegian culture.

She is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Writings

• Life Among the Poor in Cairo (Tavistock 1980) ISBN 9780422769808
• Behind the Veil in Arabia: Women in Oman (Johns Hopkins Univsity Press, 1982; paperback, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991) ISBN 9780226896830
• Managing Turbulent Hearts: A Balinese Formula for Living (University of Chicago Press, 1990) ISBN 9780226896809
• Tomorrow, God Willing: Self-Made Destinies in Cairo (University of Chicago Press, 1996) ISBN 9780226898353
• Generous Betrayal: Politics of Culture in the New Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2002) ISBN 9780226896854
• For ærens skyld - Fadime til ettertanke (In English, For the sake of honour: Reflections on Fadime, 2003)
• Mot en ny underklasse (In English, Towards a new Norwegian underclass)
• In Honor of Fadime: Murder and Shame (University of Chicago Press, 2008) ISBN 9780226896861 Read an excerpt.

External links

• University of Oslo bio web page on Wikan

Awards
Preceded by Berge Furre	Recipient of the Fritt Ord Award 2004	Succeeded by Nina Witoszek