Norman E. Whitten

Norman E. Whitten Jr. (born May 23, 1937) is an American cultural anthropologist who is professor emeritus of anthropology and Latin American studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and curator of the Spurlock Museum of World Cultures. He is known for books based on his anthropological field work and his research on the Afro-Latin and Indigenous peoples of the West Coast rainforest and upper Amazon Rain forest, most notably the Black population and Canelos Quichua and Achuar Peoples.

Whitten is the author and editor of several books, including Patterns Through Time: An Ethnographer's Quest and Journey, Histories of the Present: People and Power in Ecuador, From Myth to Creation: Art from Amazonian Ecuador, Puyo Runa: Imagery and Power in Modern Amazonia, and Millennial Ecuador: Critical Essays on Cultural Transformations and Social Dynamics. Working in Ecuador since 1961, Whitten and his wife, Dorothea Scott Whitten (1930–2011), has cofounded the Sacha Runa Research Foundation, a non-profit organization to support research among ethnically identifiable peoples of Ecuador, and to promote recognition of aesthetic values and cultural traditions of these peoples. Whitten is a Fellow of American Anthropological Association, Society of Cultural Anthropologists, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Society for Applied Anthropology. He edited the Journal American Ethnologist for five years, and the book series Interpretations of Culture in the New Millennium for over twenty years, and together with Dorothea, he has organized museum exhibitions in North and South America, including a permanent exhibit of over 450 objects at the University of Illinois's Spurlock Museum of World Cultures.