Robert Paine

Robert Patrick Barten Paine (April 10, 1926 – July 8, 2010) was a British-born Canadian anthropologist whose primary areas of study were the Saami people of northern Scandinavia and the Inuit, though he also published on topics as diverse as the Jewish settlers of the West Bank and the purpose of gossip. He served as chair of the combined departments of Sociology and Anthropology at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Biography Robert Paine was born in Portsmouth, England on April 10, 1926. At age 17 he joined the Royal Marines as a paratrooper. In August 1945 he was part of the campaign to reclaim Hong Kong from the Japanese.

For his dissertation research Paine worked in Finnmark, resulting in "a two-volume monograph, Coast Lapp Society I (1957) and Coast Lapp Society II (1965), portraying a coastal Saami community in peripheral north Norway on the brink of economic and political integration in the wider society." He supported himself during this time as a reindeer herder and went on to live with and study nomadic Saami groups.

In his 1977 book The White Arctic, Paine develops the theory of Welfare Colonialism, detailing how investments in the health, education, employment and welfare of indigenous inhabitants of the Canadian Arctic had perverse effects, lowering living standards and weakening traditional institutions of support. This theory was embraced by anthropologists in other countries who used it to explain similar situations in Australia and elsewhere.

Paine was often involved in public advocacy based on his research, authoring a report opposing the Norwegian government's plan to dam the Alta River, which would adversely affect nomadic reindeer herding, as well as warning against the impact of the Chernobyl disaster on reindeer populations. Paine has stated that the intended audience for his work on welfare colonialism in the Canadian Arctic was "policymakers in Ottawa" who had the power to address the situation. He later became involved in using the tools of anthropology to try to understand and explain the complexity and volatility of Israeli settlements. whose ideas Paine critiqued in one of his works, and the British social anthropologist Anthony Cohen, who wrote a memorial for him.

Personal life Paine was married four times. His first wife, Inger-Anna Gunnare, was a Saami woman whom he met during his fieldwork in Norway. They later divorced. He met and married his second wife, Sonia Kuryliw, in St. John's, Newfoundland in the early 1970s. His fourth wife, the Israeli writer, lawyer and human rights activist Rachel Kimor, returned with Paine to live in St. John's. She died in 2007 following a protracted struggle with cancer. Paine was known for his love of the outdoors and was a lifelong birdwatcher.