A Walk on the Wild Side: The Idea of Nature Revisited

Delivered on March 18, 2006. Michael D. Jackson is an anthropologist, and has carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Sierra Leone and Aboriginal Australia. The author of numerous books of anthropology, including the prize-winning At Home in the World, he has also published three novels and six books of poetry. His most recent books are In Sierra Leone and Existential Anthropology. Michael Jackson's work has been strongly influenced by critical theory, American pragmatism, and existential-phenomenological thought, and in his ethnographies he has sought to show how reflection and research can engage with the everyday issues, exigencies and struggles that characterize human life in every society, irrespective of their historical and cultural differences. Michael Jackson has taught in his native New Zealand, Australia, the United States (Indiana University), and Denmark (University of Copenhagen), and was recently appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor in World Religions at Harvard Divinity School.