Unni Wikan

Norwegian anthropologist

Unni Wikan (born 18 November 1944) is professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, Norway. She has served as visiting professor at the University of Chicago (2011), Harvard University (1999–2000), Goethe University, Frankfurt (2000), London School of Economics (1997), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris (1996). She has also been a visiting scholar at Harvard University (1995), guest lecturer at Harvard (1987), guest lecturer at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel (1983) and visiting assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University (1977).

Wikan has worked as a consultant to UNICEF and the World Food Programme in Bhutan from 1989 to 1994, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation in Palestinian areas in 1999, and United Nations Development Program in Yemen (2004). 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. 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 (Egypt, Oman, Yemen, Indonesia, Bhutan, Scandinavia) and her research has resulted in ten books being published. Her works have been translated into Japanese, Arabic, Kurdish, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, German, and Italian. 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." She is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.