Peter A. Munch

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Peter Andreas Munch (* 1908 in Nes, Norway, † 1984 in Pleasant Hill, Tennessee, USA) was a Norwegian-American sociologist.

[edit] Life

Born near Oslo (Norway), he took up studies at the University of Oslo (1932 cand. theol.). 1937-38, he was scientific member of the Norwegian expedition to Tristan da Cunha. 1943-44 he was imprisoned by the German occupation forces. 1944, he took up sociology and graduated 1946 (Dr. phil.) with a thesis Sociology of Tristan da Cunha (Oslo: Dybwad 1945), based on the gemeinschaft concepts of Ferdinand Tönnies.

After 1946, he went for linguistic studies to the Universities of Oxford and Wittenberg and to the USA, where he became 1951 Professor at the University of North Dakota (Grand Forks) and was 1957 called to a sociological chair at Southern Illinois University (Carbondale). There he worked until his death, mainly in the fields of cultural anthropology, rural, and maritime sociology.

1960-64, he was editor of The Sociological Quarterly.

1934, he had married Helene Stephansen, a marriage with three children to last until he died in Pleasant Hill, Tennessee, in 1984.

His big collection of books, documents, and papers on the Southern Atlantic islands is now with the Saint Louis University, Missouri.