Nigel Frederick Barley (born 1947) is a British anthropologist known for his books based on his anthropological field work, which have been treated as travel writing. His first book The Innocent Anthropologist (1983), was an account of field work in Cameroon and was positively reviewed.

He later conducted field work in Indonesia. Since 2003 he has expanded his writing career. He divides his time between the United Kingdom and Indonesia. His book Not a Hazardous Sport (1989) was about his research in Tana Toraja. He has since written numerous other works, including fiction. He wrote a historical novel Island of Demons (2009), loosely based on the German artist Walter Spies, who lived for most of his career in Bali.

Biography

Barley was born in Kingston upon Thames in 1947. He gained his bachelor's degree in modern languages at Cambridge University, and his doctorate in social anthropology at Oxford University. He worked for some years as an academic at London University, teaching anthropology. He served for most of his career at the British Museum, from 1980 to 2003, as an assistant keeper of Ethnography. During this period, he also conducted anthropological field work in distant locations. ^[1][2]

Barley wrote some travel books about his time in anthropological research. His first memoir, The Innocent Anthropologist (1983), gave a popular account of anthropological field work among the Dowayo people of Cameroon.^[3] He next worked as an anthropologist in Indonesia. His first book based on his time there was the humorous Not a Hazardous Sport (1989), describing his experiences in Tana Toraja in the mountains of central Sulawesi.^[4] He has written on many other subjects including Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore,^[5] and Sir James Brooke, the "white rajah" of Sarawak.^[6]

He has been twice nominated for the Travelex Writer of the Year Award. In 2002, he won the Foreign Press Association prize for travel writing.^[2]

Reception

The Innocent Anthropologist

The journalist and author Ryszard Kapuscinski wrote that whereas "modern literature", as represented by works nominated in French literary awards, largely failed to talk about people from other cultures, Barley's Innocent Anthropologist, like Colin Thubron's Behind the Wall and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines did "show us the modern cultures, ideas and behaviour of people who live in different geographical latitudes and who believe in different gods from us", even if these books were not considered to be "real literature" by some within the literary elite.^[7]

Anthropologist Tony Waters described Innocent Anthropologist as a memorably written account. In a review in Ethnography, he said that it is the book he recommends to students for an understanding of "field work, ethnography, and cultural anthropology."^[3] Waters says he truly admires the book as it gives a realistic idea of field experience, but "Oddly, I find few anthropologists who have read it, much less heard of it."^[3]

Not a Hazardous Sport

Tim Hannigan, reflecting on Not a Hazardous Sport in the Asian Review of Books, wrote that British travel writing has had a "preeminent court jester"^[4] in each generation, from Robert Byron in the 1930s, Eric Newby in the 1950s, and Redmond O'Hanlon in the 1980s.^[4] But in his view, Barley's writing has survived the test of time "in a postcolonial world"^[4] far better than O'Hanlon's, not least because, as an anthropologist, his observations on the people he wrote about were underpinned by "professional fieldwork ... proper language training and research".^[4] Hannigan found Barley's prose "effortlessly jaunty .. with an air of permanent good-natured amusement. But there's also the faintly discernible trace of inexplicable melancholy common to the best of British comic travel writing".^[4] All in all, Hannigan considered it an excellent travel book, both a "vicarious journey", entertaining, and valuable for steering the reader "away from complacency".^[4]