Itinerant observer

Groundbreaking NZ anthropologist, Michael Jackson, currently Visiting Professor in World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, has released his memoirs. Titled The Accidental Anthropologist, the book details his nomadic lifestyle since leaving NZ as a young man, particularly his time spent with the Kuranko people of Sierra Leone and the Aboriginal tribes of Australia. “I simply want people to see for themselves that the life of every Sierra Leonean is as complicated, as peculiar, as purposeful and as rich as the lives of New Zealanders and North Americans,” he says in an interview with the NZ Listener. “And you can only do that by having recourse to a lot of particulars that can’t be assimilated into some kind of generalisation about culture or society or community or history – these big categorical boxes we dump everything into.” As well as numerous anthropological and  academic works, Jackson is the author of two novels and six volumes of poetry. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in literature by Victoria University of Wellington in June this year.