Orin Starn’s first experience with a culture different from that of his parents came when his father, a historian of the Italian Renaissance, moved the family to Florence. Orin went to public elementary school there, learning about Catholicism, cigarettes and girls. Orin did everything he could to avoid getting a university education, including dropping out of two different colleges in the 1970s before wandering onto a Native-American reservation and working as a janitor and cook. His natural inquisitiveness about other people, their communities, rituals and customs, sent him back to school and into anthropology because it was the path of least resistance. As he learned about anthropology, his love for the science grew, and eventually he decided he wanted to be a part of a generation of anthropologists combining intensive study with engagement and action. He has since turned his anthropologist’s eye on political unrest in the Andes and Native-American issues in the United States. His newest book is called “The Passion of Tiger Woods: An Anthropologist Reports on Golf, Race, and Celebrity Scandal” (Duke University Press/2012) He reads tonight at The Regulator Bookshop in Durham, but first he joins host Frank Stasio to talk about sports, the cultures of sports and the new age of anthropology.
Meet Orin Starn
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