Gregory Forth

Gregory L. Forth is a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta. He earned his PhD from University of Oxford in 1980. Beginning in 1986, Forth was a professor at the University of Alberta for over thirty years.^[1][2] Forth is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.^[3]

As a social anthropologist, Forth's position is both structuralist and interpretivist.^[4] He is known for his contributions to ethnoscience.^[4]

Forth has conducted fieldwork in eastern Indonesia, and has worked with the Kéo and Nage of Flores island.^[3]

In November 2020, his book A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path: Animal Metaphors in Eastern Indonesian Society won the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year.^[5]

In February 2023, Forth suggests in his book, Between Ape and Human: An Anthropologist on the Trail of a Hidden Hominoid, based on stories told by natives of Flores, Indonesia, that the diminutive humanoid Homo floresiensis could still be alive in Indonesia, citing indigenous accounts of the folk creature ebu gogo or the lai ho'a.^[6][7]

Publications

• Rindi: an ethnographic study of a traditional domain in eastern Sumba. Brill. January 1, 1981. ISBN 978-90-24-76169-2.
• The language of number and numerical ability in Eastern Sumba. Centre for South-East Asian Studies. 1985.
• Space and place in Eastern Indonesia. University of Kent at Canterbury, Centre of South-East Asian Studies. 1991.
• Beneath the volcano. KITLV Press. 1998. ISBN 978-90-6718-120-4.
• Dualism and hierarchy. Oxford University Press. 2001. ISBN 978-0-19-823424-1.
• Nage birds. Routledge. 2003. ISBN 978-0-415-31827-3.
• Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia: An Anthropological Perspective. Routledge. December 10, 2008. ISBN 978-0710313546.