Richard B. Lee

RICHARD BORSHAY LEE is a University Professor Emeritus of Anthropology. He received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. at the University of California Berkeley. He has held academic appointments at Harvard and Rutgers, and visiting positions at Columbia, Australian National, and Kyoto Universities. He has guest lectured at over sixty institutions in countries around the world as disparate as Australia, Cuba, France, Vietnam, Japan, Germany, Italy, South Africa, the U.K. and Russia.

His research interests include human rights and indigenous peoples, ecology and history, human evolutionary theory, AIDS and medical anthropology, and the peoples and cultures of Africa.

He is internationally known for his studies of hunting and gathering societies, particularly field-work among the the Ju/'hoansi-!Kung San of Botswana and Namibia. His research findings and theories have argued that sharing and cooperation, not competition and aggression, have been the key to our success as a species. Of equal importance have been his writings on the impact of global capitalism on the fate of the world’s indigenous peoples.

In 1996, shifting to medical anthropology, he launched an AIDS training and capacity building program in southern Africa, in a region that was experiencing the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the world. U of T’s partnership with the University of Namibia (1996-2014) placed Namibian and Canadian students in internships in clinics, social agencies, youth programs, and women’s centres. The program trained over 150 Canadian students, and an equivalent number of Namibians; many of whom, from both cohorts have gone on to careers in medicine, public health, and academic research.

His 1979 book The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society was listed by the journal, American Scientist, as one of the 100 most important works in science of the 20th century (American Scientist 87(6):543, Nov. 1999). 

Books

1968    Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore, eds. Man the Hunter. Chicago:  Aldine Publishing Co.

1974    Joseph B. Jorgenson and Richard B. Lee eds. The New Native Resistance: Indigenous People's Struggles and the Responsibility of Scholars.  New York:  MSS Modular  publications, Module #6.

1976    Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore, eds. Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers: Studies of the !Kung San and their Neighbours.  Cambridge:  Harvard University Press.

1979    Richard B. Lee. The !Kung San:  Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society.  Cambridge and New York:  Cambridge University Press.

1982    Eleanor Leacock and Richard B. Lee, eds. Politics and History in Band Societies. Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press and La Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. 

1999   Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly, eds. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers. Cambridge and  New York: Cambridge University Press.    

2004    William Haviland,  Shirley Fedorak, Gary Crawford and Richard Lee. Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Second Canadian Edition. Toronto: Nelson-Thompson Publishing. 
    
2011   Bathseba Opini and Richard B. Lee. The Africans Thought of it: Amazing Innovations. Toronto: Annick Press (for children). 

2013    Richard B. Lee. The Dobe Ju/'hoansi. Belmont CA; Cengage Wadsworth, Case Studies in Anthropology, Fourth Edition. 
 

Honours

• Fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada (1983)
• Past-president of the Canadian Anthropology Society (1984)
• Appointment as University Professor at the University of Toronto (1999)
• Election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences(2011)
• Appointed Officer of the Order of Canada (2017)
• Honorary Degrees:
  • University of Alaska, Fairbanks (1990)
  • Guelph University (2002)