Albert Piette

Who is Albert Piette?

Albert Piette is an anthropologist. He is born on April 18, 1960 in Namur. He is a Professor at Paris West University Nanterre La Défense.

His researches concern the questions of observation and selection of data. His fields are especially in the religious world.In most of his books, he describes and analyses details and ordinary forms in situations of everyday life. He builds an existential anthropology, especially focusing on minor modes of human presences, in order to understand collective life and the differences between humans and other animals.

In his recent books, from the notions of phenomenography, ontography and ontology, Albert Piette elaborates anthropology as an empirical and theoretical science, different from sociology and ethnology. It would have its own methods of observation, phenomenography and ontography, and its own objects to observe, describe and analyse: humans’ existences and non-human’s existences around people. Piette’s anthropological world is filled with Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, apes and monkeys, gods and institutions, existences and presences, activity and passivity, instants and evolution.