Frederick C. Gamst

Frederick C. Gamst is Professor Emeritus. He has a long-term involvement in and contributions to industrial and organizational ethnology within the broader field of the anthropology of work. His specializations comprise the social and industrial relations and social organizations of railroad work. He has 42 years firsthand experience with the railroad industry, as an operating employee, trade union officer, university researcher, and professional consultant--in North America, Australasia, China, Europe, and Africa. From the Society of the Anthropology of Work of the American Anthropological Association, he received its 1995 Conrad Arensberg Award for his development of the anthropology of work, industry, and organizations. Gamst's activities in the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, and Djibouti) include over three decades of extensive basic research, applied work, professional service including election and campaigning monitoring (in war-torn Oromia, of the 23 million Oromo), publications, and technical reports. In the Horn, he has studied interplay of the social organization, economy, and cultural patterns of agrarian peoples and their problems of development--among the Amhara, Falasha/Beta Esrael, and Qemant. And he has studied the adaptations to change of one of Africa's few foraging peoples, the Wayto hippopotamus hunters of Tana. Gamst has published over 100 articles, chapters, proceedings, and shorter works; produced more than 100 consulting reports and technical papers on the railroad industry and related matters; prepared numerous reviews; and has written or edited 12 books, monographs, and documentaries. His biographical information is found in Who's Who in the East, Who's Who in America, and Who's Who in the World, and Harvard Business School's Profiles in Business and Management: An International Directory of Scholars and Their Research. Gamst has just retired from the Anthropology Department to a ranch in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

He may be reached by e-mail fcgamst@aol.com.