Greg Urban

Greg Urban is the Arthur Hobson Quinn Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, with a career spanning over four decades. His work bridges Linguistic Anthropology, Cultural Motion, and Business Anthropology, focusing on how culture circulates through societies, corporations, and global contexts. He has held leadership roles as Chairman of Anthropology at UPenn (2001-2007, 2014-2018) and directed research initiatives like the Culture and Nuclear War Project.

• Education: Ph.D. in Anthropology (1978), MA (1973), BA (1971) from the University of Chicago.
• Key Books: Metaculture: How Culture Moves through the World (2001), The Culture Puzzle (2021), and Nation-States and Indians in Latin America (1991).

Urban’s research interests include:

• Cultural Motion: The dynamics of cultural replication and transmission across societies
• Discourse Analysis: Rituals, power structures, and semiotic flows in communication
• Corporate Anthropology: Ethnographic studies of business organizations and citizenship
• Amerindian Cultures: Sociolinguistics and cultural practices in Brazil and South America

His articles (1978-2025) reveal trends in:

• Corporate semiotics and affective cultural forms
• Constitutional discourse and citizenship
• Amazonian mythologies and ethnographic theory
• Metaculture as a framework for globalization
• Ritual practices and linguistic relativity
• Comparative studies of nation-state-indigenous interactions

Scientific Awards:

• Lindback & Ira H. Abrams Awards for Teaching
• Guggenheim Fellowship
• Center for Advanced Study Fellowship
• American Ethnological Society Book Prize
• Multiple University Research Awards

Urban’s advising and grants focus on:

• Interdisciplinary projects blending anthropology with business and political science
• Long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Brazil
• STS (Science and Technology Studies) collaborations
• Studies of corporate citizenship and constitutional processes