Sverker Finnström receives the Margret Mead Award

The anthropologist Docent Sverker Finnström, now employed at the Hugo Valentin Center at Uppsala University has since 1997 conducted recurrent fieldwork in war-torn Uganda, with a focus on how young adults, born into civil war, understand and attempt to control their moral and material circumstances.  For his book about the civil war in Uganda, ”Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda” he is the first Scandinavian to receive the prestigious Margret Mead Award.  In this book, Finnström presents stories told him by his informants, people who have managed to survive unbelievably difficult and violent conditions. His work has not stopped there. In his own words: “My ambition with my book was to revisit Ugandan political history, including its colonial past, in addition to scrutinizing the often destructive international interventions of today, to be able to better understand the conflict in Uganda and how globalization is always locally emplaced. I tell a story of a global war, with battles that however are always locally fought.”

The Margret Mead Award was established in 1979 and is presented annually by the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology to a younger researcher for a particular accomplishment, such as a book, film, monograph or service which interprets anthropological data and principles in a way which makes them meaningful for a broadly interested public.