Professor Carter received his MA from the University of Rochester and his PhD from Cambridge University. He has done fieldwork in India on rural politics, kinship and marriage, households and personhood. He has studied the cultures of children in India and the United States. He is currently doing fieldwork in a family planning clinic in the United States. His research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, and the National Geographic Society.

Among his principal publications are Elite Politics in Rural India (Cambridge University Press, 1974), "A Comparative Analysis of Systems of Kinship and Marriage in South Asia" (the 1974 Curl Prize Essay of the Royal Anthropological Institute), "Hierarchy and the Concept of the Person in Western India" (1982), "Household Histories" (1984), "Agency and Fertility: For an Ethnography of Practice" (1995), "Cultural models and reproductive behavior" (1998), and "What Is Meant, and Measured, by 'Education'?" (1999). He is currently working on a book tentatively titled Vital Events: Toward an Anthropology of Population Processes.

Professor Carter is Chair of the Committee on Demography and Anthropology of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.

1973 Curl Prize, Royal Anthropological Institute.
1993- Editor, Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures (1993-present).
1997-2002 Chair, Committee on Demography and Anthropology, International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.

Research Overview

Professor Carter has done fieldwork in India on rural politics, kinship and marriage, households and personhood. He has studied the cultures of children in India and the United States. He is currently doing fieldwork in a family planning clinic in the United States. His research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, and the National Geographic Society.

Research Interests

• rural politics
• kinship and marriage
• households and personhood

Selected Publications

Books

• The Production and Circulation of Population Knowledge. Edited Volume. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Household Institutions and Population Dynamics (with Robert S. Merrill). Washington, DC: Agency for International Development.
• Elite Politics in Rural India: Political Stratification and Political Alliances in Western Maharashtra. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Selected Articles

• "Legitimate Tangential Participation: Toward an Ethnography of Family Planning Counseling. In The Production and Circulation of Population Knowledge (Anthony Carter, ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• What Is Meant, and Measured, by "Education"? In Critical Perspectives on Schooling and Fertility in the Developing World (Caroline Bledsoe, John B. Casterline, Jennifer A. Johnson-Kuhn and John G. Haaga, eds.). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
• Cultural models and reproductive behavior. In New Approaches to Anthropological Demography (Alaka Basu, ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Agency and fertility: for an ethnography of practice. In Situating Fertility (Susan Greenhalgh, ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (1995)
• Household dynamics and land transactions in Western Maharashtra. In Countryside, City and Society in Maharashtra (D. Attwood et al., eds.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Household histories. In Households: Comparative and Historical Studies of the Domestic Group (R. Netting et al., eds.). Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Sex of offspring and fertility in South Asia: demographic variance and decision procedures in 'joint family' households. Journal of Family History 9:273-290.
• Kintype classification and concepts of relatedness in South Asia. American Ethnologist 11:81-95.
• The acquisition of social deixis: children's usages of 'kin' terms in Maharashtra, India. Journal of Child Language 11:179-201.
• Hierarchy and the concept of the person in Western India. In Concepts of Person (Á. Östör et al., eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Caste 'boundaries' and the principle of kinship amity: a Maratha caste purana. Contributions to Indian Sociology 9:123-38.
• A comparative analysis of systems of kinship and marriage in South Asia (Curl Prize Essay, 1973). Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute, pages 29-54.

Teaching

List of Current Courses

• ANT 218: Birth and Death: The Anthropology of Vital Events

Teaching

List of Past Courses

• ANT 101Q: Cultural Anthropology Quest Course
• ANT 205: Theories and Debates in Anthropology
• ANT 246: Families, Households and Gender
• ANT 278: Birth and Death II: Making Population Healthy