Conrad Phillip Kottak (A.B. Columbia College, 1963; Ph.D. Columbia University, 1966) is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, where he has taught since 1968. In 1991 he was honored for his teaching by the University and the state of Michigan. In 1992 he received an excellence in teaching award from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts of the University of Michigan. And in 1999 the American Anthropological Association (AAA) awarded Professor Kottak the AAA/Mayfield Award for Excellence in the Undergraduate Teaching of Anthropology.
Professor Kottak has done field work in cultural anthropology in Brazil (since 1962), Madagascar (since 1966), and the United States. His general interests are in the processes by which local cultures are incorporated -- and resist incorporation -- into larger systems. This interest links his earlier work on ecology and state formation in Africa and Madagascar to his more recent research on globalization, national and international culture, and the mass media.
The third edition of Kottak's case study Assault on Paradise: Social Change in a Brazilian Village, based on his field work in Arembepe, Bahia, Brazil, from 1962 through the present, was published in 1999 by McGraw-Hill. In a project during the 1980s, collaborating with Brazilian and North American researchers, Kottak blended ethnography and survey research in studying "Television's Behavioral Effects in Brazil." That research is the basis of Kottak's book Prime-Time Society: An Anthropological Analysis of Television and Culture (Wadsworth 1990) -- a comparative study of the nature and impact of television in Brazil and the United States.
Kottak's other books include The Past in the Present: History, Ecology and Cultural Variation in Highland Madagascar (1980), Researching American Culture: A Guide for Student Anthropologists (1982) (both University of Michigan Press), and Madagascar: Society and History (1986) (Carolina Academic Press). The second edition of his Mirror for Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology was published by McGraw-Hill in 1999. Kottak's newest book, co-authored with Kathryn A. Kozaitis of Georgia State University, is On Being Different: Diversity and Multiculturalism in the North American Mainstream, published by McGraw-Hill in 1999.
Conrad Kottak's articles have appeared in academic journals including American Anthropologist, Journal of Anthropological Research, American Ethnologist, Ethnology, Human Organization, and Luso-Brazilian Review. He also has written for more popular journals, including Transaction/SOCIETY, Natural History, Psychology Today, and General Anthropology.
In recent research projects, Kottak and his colleagues have investigated the emergence of ecological awareness in Brazil, the social context of deforestation in Madagascar, and popular participation in economic development planning in northeastern Brazil. Since 1999 Professor Kottak has been active in the University of Michigan's Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life, supported by the Alfred Sloan Foundation. In that capacity, for a research project entitled "Media, Family, and Work in a Middle-Class Midwestern Town," Kottak is now investigating how middle-class families draw on various media in planning, managing, and evaluating their choices and solutions with respect to competing demands of work and family.
Conrad Kottak appreciates comments about his textbook from professors and students. He can be readily reached by e-mail at the following Internet address:
ckottak@umich.edu |
2002 McGraw-Hill Higher Education