Thayer Scudder, Date of Birth, Place of Birth
TweetThayer Scudder
American anthropologist
Date of Birth: 04-Aug-1930
Place of Birth: New Haven, Connecticut, United States
Profession: anthropologist
Nationality: United States
Zodiac Sign: Leo 
About Thayer Scudder
- Thayer Scudder (born 1930, New Haven, Connecticut), an American social anthropologist, is an Anthropology Professor Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology.
- Educated at Harvard University (AB 1952, PhD 1960), he did a postdoctorate in African Studies, Anthropology and Ecology at the London School of Economics, followed by positions with the Rhodes-Livingston Institute for Social Research in Northern Rhodesia 1956-1957 and again in 1962-1963, and a post at the American University in Cairo in 1961-1962.
- He joined the Caltech faculty in that year.
- His work on socioeconomic issues and infrastructure development associated with river basin development, forced relocation, and refugee reintegration has made him a world leader in these fields.
- Large dams are one of the world’s most controversial, divisive and expensive development issues, and Scudder is the world's leading expert on dams and relocation effects.
- His 2005 book "The Future of Large Dams" covers aspects of large dams and development including economics, politics, environmental risk, energy, agriculture, and human displacement and resettlement.
- He has undertaken studies on sustainable resource use in Africa, India, Nepal, Jordan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and the United States, and served on a number of independent review panels for dam projects in Africa and Asia.
- He is a former commissioner on the World Commission on Dams. In addition to expertise and special interest in regional development, irrigated and rainfed agriculture, pioneer settlement, community-based natural resource management, and impacts of large-scale river basin development projects on low income populations, Scudder has focused on systematic long-term studies of low income human communities.
- The most classic of his long-term studies has been carried out with anthropologist Elizabeth Colson among the Gwembe Tonga of Zambia.Author Jacques Leslie devotes a third of his narrative nonfiction book Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005) to a portrait of Scudder.
- The section includes a visit to the Zambian resettlement village where many Gwembe Tonga now live and follows Scudder as he inspects dam projects in Lesotho and Botswana.
Read more at Wikipedia