He studied anthropology at Harvard University and the University of Chicago and worked as a professor at New York University and Princeton University in the United States of America. He also worked as a professor and head of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology and a faculty member at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the American University in Cairo. He has many books and studies in the anthropology of the Arab world and West Africa and the Indian subcontinent in English and French. He also translated and edited a large number of books.
