Gregory Forth

{{Short description|Anthropologist}}

Gregory L. Forth is a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta. He earned his PhD from University of Oxford in 1980. Beginning in 1986, Forth was a professor at the University of Alberta for over thirty years.{{cite journal |last1=Forth |first1=Gregory |title=Animals, Witches, and Wind: Eastern Indonesian Variations on the "Thunder Complex" |journal=Anthropos |date=1989 |volume=84 |issue=1/3 |pages=89–106 |jstor=40461676 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40461676 |access-date=15 December 2022}}{{cite book |title=Between Ape and Human |url=https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Between-Ape-and-Human/Gregory-Forth/9781639361434 |date=3 May 2022 |isbn=9781639361434 |access-date=15 December 2022 |last1=Forth |first1=Gregory |publisher=Pegasus Books }} Forth is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.{{cite web |title=Gregory Forth |url=https://sites.google.com/a/ualberta.ca/gregforth/ |website=University of Alberta Department of Anthropology |accessdate=15 August 2018}}

As a social anthropologist, Forth's position is both structuralist and interpretivist.{{cite journal |last1=Corbey |first1=Raymond |title=The folk zoology of Southeast Asian wildmen |journal=International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter |date=Winter 2009 |volume=52 |url=https://iias.asia/sites/default/files/IIAS_NL52_31.pdf |accessdate=16 August 2018}} He is known for his contributions to ethnoscience.

Forth has conducted fieldwork in eastern Indonesia, and has worked with the Kéo and Nage of Flores island.

In November 2020, his book A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path: Animal Metaphors in Eastern Indonesian Society won the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year.{{cite web|url=https://www.thebookseller.com/news/let-it-flow-dog-pissing-edge-path-wins-42nd-diagram-prize-1227080|title=Let it flow: A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path wins 42nd Diagram Prize|publisher=The Bookseller|date=27 November 2020|accessdate=27 November 2020}}

In February 2023, Forth suggests in his book, Between Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid, based on stories told by natives of Flores, Indonesia, that the diminutive humanoid Homo floresiensis could still be alive in Indonesia, citing indigenous accounts of the folk creature ebu gogo or the lai ho'a.{{cite web |last1=Ly |first1=Laura |title=Everything old is new again |url=https://www.woablog.com/2015/02/everything-old-is-new-again/ |accessdate=16 August 2018 |website=Work of Arts |archive-date=16 August 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180816025635/https://www.woablog.com/2015/02/everything-old-is-new-again/ |url-status=dead }}{{cite news |last=Hamks |first=Micah |title=A Humanlike 'Living Fossil" Cold Still Be Alive In Indonesia, This Anthropologist Says |url=https://thedebrief.org/a-humanlike-living-fossil-could-still-be-alive-in-indonesia-this-anthropologist-says/ |date=15 February 2023 |work=TheDebrief.org |accessdate=16 February 2023 }}

Publications

  • {{Cite book |title=Rindi: an ethnographic study of a traditional domain in eastern Sumba |date=January 1, 1981 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-24-76169-2}}
  • {{Cite book |url=https://openlibrary.org/works/OL672433W/The_language_of_number_and_numerical_ability_in_Eastern_Sumba |title=The language of number and numerical ability in Eastern Sumba |publisher=Centre for South-East Asian Studies |year=1985}}
  • {{Cite book |url=https://openlibrary.org/works/OL672435W/Space_and_place_in_Eastern_Indonesia |title=Space and place in Eastern Indonesia |publisher=University of Kent at Canterbury, Centre of South-East Asian Studies |year=1991}}
  • {{Cite book |title=Beneath the volcano |publisher=KITLV Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-90-6718-120-4}}
  • {{Cite book |title=Dualism and hierarchy |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-19-823424-1}}
  • {{Cite book |title=Nage birds |publisher=Routledge |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-415-31827-3}}
  • {{Cite book |title=Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia: An Anthropological Perspective |date=December 10, 2008 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0710313546}}

References

{{reflist}}