Michael Jackson (anthropologist)
Michael D. Jackson (born 1940) is a New Zealand poet and anthropologist. He has taught at Massey University, the Australian National University, Indiana University Bloomington, and the University of Copenhagen, and he is a distinguished professor of world religions at Harvard Divinity School.
Jackson founded existential anthropology, a field that uses ethnography and draws on phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, and pragmatism to explore the human condition from multiple perspectives. He emphasizes that ethnographers are never neutral observers; meaning arises from conversations and events in which the researcher’s own biases, emotions, and assumptions are part of the process.
His books cover well-being in poor societies (Life Within Limits), the relationship between religious experience and extreme life situations (The Palm at the End of the Mind), and the balance between egocentric and sociocentric modes of being (Between One and One Another; The Other Shore). He has conducted fieldwork among the Kuranko of Sierra Leone (1969), the Warlpiri of Australia’s Northern Territory (1989–1991), and the Kuku Yalangi on the Cape York Peninsula (1993–1994). His poetry has appeared in Poetry NZ and the Poetry Archive.
Education: Bachelor of Arts from Victoria University of Wellington; Master of Arts from the University of Auckland; Doctor of Philosophy from Cambridge University.
Awards: 1981 New Zealand Book Award for Poetry for Wall; 1982 Katherine Mansfield Fellowship; 1995 Montana New Zealand Book Award for Pieces of Music.
Selected works include Latitudes of Exile: Poems 1965–1975; The Kuranko: Dimensions of Social Reality in a West African Society; Wall: Poems 1976–1979; Allegories of the Wilderness; Pieces of Music; Dead Reckoning; The Palm at the End of the Mind; Life Within Limits; Between One and One Another; The Other Shore; Being of Two Minds; Lifeworlds; Road Markings; The Genealogical Imagination; Worlds Within and Worlds Without; Friendship.
See also Philosophical anthropology.
This page was last edited on 1 February 2026, at 20:56 (CET).