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Faculty
Tom Fricke
Tom Fricke is a Professor of Anthropology and a Senior Research Scientist in the Institute for Social Research, both at the University of Michigan. He is the founding director of CEEL. His 1984 Ph.D. in Anthropology is from the University of Wisconsin, Madison for a dissertation on family and household economy in a remote, but rapidly changing, community in the Nepal Himalaya. Since that early fieldwork, Tom's work has continued to focus on social and cultural transformations in family and work. He conducts research that is both classically ethnographic and also collaborative and mixed method in settings that include Nepal, Pakistan, Taiwan, and the United States.
Tom's CEEL research focuses on family and work issues as they impinge on cultural expressions of morality, personhood, and character. With a background in both English Literature and Anthropology, he has a special interest in approaches that bring together ethnographic and literary documentary approaches to everyday life. This comes out most clearly in his recently published article from CEEL research in a North Dakota farming and ranching region, "Next year country" in the Spring 2003 issue of DoubleTake Magazine. 
Tom's publications span the range from formal and quantitative to more literary depictions of human experience. He has written on topics such as fieldwork methods, formal demography, marriage and family, and work and family change. Some of these publications include Himalayan Households: Tamang Demography and Domestic Processes, (Expanded edition, 1994, Columbia University Press), Anthropological Demography: Toward a New Synthesis (co-edited with David I. Kertzer, 1997, University of Chicago Press), "Marriage change as moral change: Culture, virtue, and demographic transition," in the edited volume The Continuing Demographic Transition (1997, Oxford University Press).
When he's not in his office at the Department of Anthropology or at the Institute for Social Research, Tom is likely to be found in his kayak on the Huron River just outside of Ann Arbor.
