Iver B. Neumann

The project returned him to the study of social anthropology, and led to field work at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, first as a planner (1997/98), then as a senior adviser on European politics (2001-2003).

The principal publications following from this work were the official centenary history of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs[6] and an ethnography of diplomacy,[7] based on his second doctorate, in Social Anthropology, at the University of Oslo.

The two modes of knowledge production have different genealogies and are quite different, so that the individual diplomat as well as the Foreign Service at large are stuck in a never-ending effort to reconcile the two.

Using his early specialization in Russian-European relations a spring board, Neumann became a much-used commentator in Norwegian newspapers from the mid-1980s onwards, with a penchant for taking a losing stand in political battles.

Neumann became the focus of public debate in early August 2010 for criticizing the local opposition to a new main power supply running through the fjord area of Hardanger.

[11] This created an outcry in Western Norway,[12] and Neumann's claim was dismissed as "arrogance" by the leader of the conservative party[13] and as "nonsense" by a leading economist[14] and a fellow political scientist.