Unni Wikan

Who is Unni Wikan?

Unni Wikan is professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, Norway. She has served as visiting professor at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, Goethe University, Frankfurt, London School of Economics, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. She has also been a visiting scholar at Harvard University, guest lecturer at Harvard [1987, guest lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel and visiting assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Wikan has also worked as a consultant to UNICEF and the World Food Programme in Bhutan from 1989 to 1994, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation in Palestine in 1999, and United Nations Development Program in Yemen.

For almost ten years, Wikan has campaigned to change Norwegian policies towards immigrants, arguing that generous welfare and a policy of multicultural tolerance are creating a culture of welfare dependence, and destroying self-respect. A reviewer of her book "Generous Betrayal: Politics of Culture in the New Europe" claims that she used invalid methodology, not giving "a far more complex social reality" its due. "'Unsympathetic readers" might see it as a "racist polemic."