Dossier: Meeting Marit Melhuus

Abstract

The purpose of this dossier is to present to the readers of this magazine, an old friend of the Argentine social anthropology: Marit Melhuus. This Latin American-Norwegian joined Argentina in the middle of the 1970s, when it decided to do fieldwork in the province of Corrientes, in the Argentine north-east, for a master's degree in Social Anthropology in the University of Oslo. His relationship with the country remained, if attenuated, as he accepted the jury of the “Archetti Award” for a master's thesis on Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala and Norway, convened by the Anthropophagy Editorial and the Center for Social Anthropology of the Institute of Economic and Social Development (CAS-IDES, Argentina) in 2006, a year after the death of Eduardo 'Lali' Archetti. Marit, Lali and her partner Kristi-Anne Stølen will integrate the generation of social anthropologists who, such as Santiago Bilbao, Leopoldo Bartolomé, Esther Hermitte, Carlos Herrán and Hebe Vessuri, have highlighted and analysed the sociological and culturally disconcerted sectors of the Argentine interior economics of its production and its forms of political organization, from the patron-client relationships to the associations of small commodity producers.