Using Anthropology in the World

A Guide to Becoming an Anthropologist Practitioner

Riall W. Nolan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351856911
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Anthropologist practitioners work outside the confines of the university, putting their knowledge and skills to work on significant problems in a wide variety of different contexts. The demand for anthropologist practitioners is strong and growing; practice is in many ways the leading edge of anthropology today, and one of the most exciting aspects of the discipline. How can anthropology students prepare themselves to become practitioners?

Specifically designed to help students, including those in more traditional training programs, prepare for a career in putting anthropology to work in the world, the book:

- provides an introduction to the discipline of anthropology and an exploration of its role and contribution in today's world;
- outlines the shape of anthropological practice – what it is, how it developed historically, and what it looks like today;
- describes how students of anthropology can prepare for a career in practice, with emphasis on the relationship between theory, method, and application;
- includes short contributions from practitioners, writing on specific aspects of training, practice, and career planning;
- sets out a framework for career planning, with specific and detailed discussions of finding and securing employment;
- reviews some of the more salient challenges arising in the course of a practitioner career; and
- concludes with a discussion of what the future of anthropological practice is likely to be.

Using Anthropology in the World is essential reading for students interested in preparing themselves for the challenges and rewards of practice and application.

Part I
The discipline

1
The Discipline of Anthropology

One of the things practitioners often have to do is explain anthropology to other people. What is an “anthropological perspective” and how does it differ from some other ways of looking at the world? What can anthropology contribute to human understanding and to problem-solving?

Disciplines as lenses

Anthropology is a discipline: a distinctively structured way of looking at – and understanding – the world.

Each discipline looks at the world in a somewhat different way, and as a result, could be said to learn different things. Different disciplines ask different questions, use different methods in their work, and perhaps most importantly, bring different perspectives to bear.

An engineer, an artist, and a mystery writer, walk together past a construction site. The engineer admires the way in which the steel supports have been designed. The artist draws attention to the interplay of light and shadow, the contrast between the earth tones of the excavation and the bold contrasting colors of the steel and concrete. The mystery writer looks at the site for a moment and then says, “Great place to hide a body.” a

Like all other disciplines, anthropology has a particular subject matter on which it is focused, a set of key concerns and interests which it brings to this subject matter, and employs a set of specific methods or approaches in its work. Anthropology’s subject matter is extremely broad: the study of human beings across space and through time. And anthropology’s basic question is very simple: how many different ways are there to be human? Anthropology is a naturalistic discipline; phenomena are observed in their natural settings, with little or no interference or manipulation by the investigator.

Anthropology has proven to be a useful and effective lens for looking into the cultural worlds of others, and understanding these worlds, their construction and rationale, in and on their own terms. Anthropology helps us understand human variation, while also uncovering the commonalities and universals which bind us. It helps us understand why we are all so different, and why, at the same time, we are all so similar. Most importantly, perhaps, it gives us insight into how and why we change.

Anthropological perspectives

Disciplines, broadly speaking, situate themselves somewhere along a continuum between being very quantitative and empirical on the one hand, and vary qualitative and interpretive on the other. These two ends of the continuum might be contrasted as in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1 Empirical and interpretive approaches to knowledge

More empirical	Key questions	More interpretive
We seek to explain the natural world, in order to predict, and ultimately, to control it.	What is the fundamental goal of the discipline?	We seek to understand human experience in all of its many forms.
We focus on uniform and universal “objective truth” which lies out in the world. We discover this objective truth scientifically. We assume terms and concepts have clear and distinct meanings.	What kind of knowledge is the discipline seeking?	We assume that truth is to a large extent subjective and contextual, and that there are many ways of ordering the world. We assume terms and concepts often have multiple, diverse meanings.
Since reality is “out there” we can work deductively, using logic and experiment to test theory.	How do we learn?	We work largely inductively much of the time, from the ground up, seeking to represent our subjects’ viewpoints, and looking for patterns within these viewpoints.
We attempt to distance ourselves from what we study, maintaining objectivity and neutrality.	How do we interact with what we look at?	We know that we have an influence on what we look at. Our relationships with our subject matter are often intense and transactional.
We present “objective facts” and in doing so, add to general overall knowledge.	How do we report what we have learned?	We attempt to represent a specific situation in local terms.
It is easy to generalize our findings. We can use them to design system-wide structures and policies. We assume that our findings are relatively permanent.	How do we use what we have learned?	It is difficult to generalize beyond the local case. Our knowledge is most useful for designing local policies and actions. We assume that our learning will change over time.

The interpretive approach, it should be stressed, is not in competition with empiricism, but simply represents a different – and complementary – way of learning and knowing about the world, one which acknowledges that the world is defined, in many of its important aspects, by and through human experience.

Most – although by no means all – anthropologists would place themselves more on the interpretive side of things. Does this mean that anthropology isn’t quantitative, that anthropologists don’t like to work with numbers? Not at all. Anthropology can be very empirical when necessary. Numbers are obviously important, but the anthropologist will want to know, first and foremost, where the numbers come from, and what they actually mean.

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of ordering spicy food in a restaurant and being asked by the waiter to indicate how hot you want it on a scale of 1–10. You will have a general idea of what the number “5” means to you in terms of hotness, but can you be sure that the cook in the kitchen has the same idea? Numbers, in other words, may be crisp, clear, and constant, but the underlying reality to which they refer is hardly ever so. To be meaningful, numerical data must be situated within a context. And anthropology, as it turns out, is very good at contextualizing data.

A number like “40” for example, is meaningless on its own. If you learn that “40” is a temperature, you now know a little more, but not much more. You basically have a stand-alone data point. But now, if we add the word “Centigrade,” we have a piece of information. Unfortunately, this piece of information is relatively useless unless we know still more. Where was this temperature reading taken? When was it taken? Why was it taken?

A temperature of 40 degrees Celsius in Chicago in the middle of January would be highly surprising, but not necessarily in mid-August. If, on the other hand, the temperature is that of a human body, then 40 degrees Celsius is a cause for concern, no matter what the season.

Finally, knowing what the temperature was yesterday, last week, last month or last year, here and in other places, allows us to more fully understand the real significance of this one number, in the here and now. By understanding the context which surrounds something we observe, we learn much more about what that something really is, what it means, and to whom.

Reality, as far as anthropologists are concerned, is as much “in here” – i.e., inside people’s heads – as it is “out there.” Many of our most important concepts, such as “rationality,” “justice,” or “well-being,” are essentially subjective, and therefore arbitrary. In order to measure them in any meaningful way, we need first to understand them in their context. Even when we think we know what we are talking about, we often find that interpretations differ.

So while empirical science often focuses on the isolation and reduction of key variables, and their manipulation under tightly controlled circumstances to produce a snapshot of reality, anthropology moves in somewhat the opposite direction, by ramifying and expanding the field of enquiry – entering into dialogue with it, so to speak, to better understand phenomena not as isolates, but in their natural context. In this way, anthropology uncovers the meanings and significance that data have, not for the investigator alone, but also (and primarily) for the other people involved.

Anthropology tries to understand, in its naturalistic and inductive way, the salient or significant aspects of what is being looked at, in context, and particularly from the viewpoint of the human actors involved. This has been termed by some investigators as the process of learning to “count to one” – to learning, in other words, what is actually worth counting, before counting begins.¹

Aspects of the anthropological approach

Ground truth, in the meteorological sciences, refers to data actually collected on the ground. In anthropology, information about what people say and observations about what they actually do, both collected from real situations, constitutes an important part of the ground truth upon which the work of the discipline relies.² Although anthropology can be very theoretical at times, the theories which are discussed and debated are tied, ultimately, to naturalistic field observations of real statements and events.

Anthropologists search for ground truth using a very wide (and ever-expanding) range of methods, both qualitative and quantitative, all designed to uncover and explore the context surrounding what is being looked at. Six main orientations typify the work of anthropologists, whatever methods they may use:

• Holism. Instead of simplifying and isolating what’s being looked at, anthropology seeks to expand on things, probing for further connections in space and time, situating the focus of investigation within a wider context.
• Cultural relativism. To better understand something, anthropologists suspend judgment as they investigate what things mean to the people they’re working with.
• Induction. Anthropologists generate data through investigations of natural behavior in situ, and use these data to build understanding, patterning, and theory.
• Emic viewpoints. Anthropologists seek to understand things from an insider’s perspective, and not just from their own.
• Comparison and contrast. Anthropologists, while focused on relatively small field situations, also seek to compare findings from one situation with those from others, to better understand meaning and variation.
• Diachronic and synchronic views. Anthropologists work very much in the present, but seek connections with the past, to better understand how and why things change.

Context in anthropology is therefore all-important. Our inductive approach, as mentioned, relies on ground truth – real occurrences rather than theoretical predictions. Our holistic perspective encourages us to look for the actual (as opposed to theoretical, or imagined) connections between one thing and another. Our concern with inside, emic perspectives ensures that we examine and understand others’ viewpoints as well as our own. And an attitude of cultural relativism reminds us to suspend personal judgment as a way to better understand the other’s view of what we are seeing. Finally, we are interested in comparison and contrast across both space and time as a way to better situate and understand our findings spatially and temporally.

Anthropology’s approach is a distinctive one, a good example of the old saying that “what you get is how you do it.” Good anthropology involves sustained fieldwork and intense interaction with people, generating vivid and authentic data which render situations three-dimensional.

Developing meaning in context

Anthropologists often begin with questions, and then proceed to investigate these more fully, uncovering the salient issues and components involved, usually from the perspective of the people involved. The contrast between an insider’s and outsider’s view of something was nicely captured by James Spradley in his landmark work...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of figures and tables
• Preface
• PART I The discipline
• PART II Anthropological practice
• PART III Preparation
• PART IV Finding employment
• PART V Career-building
• Notes on contributing practitioners
• Works cited
• Index