Applied Anthropology?

1
Applied Anthropology?

• Or, Yes, You Can Get a Job as An Anthropologist!
• (modified from McGraw-Hill 2004)

2
What is Applied Anthropology?

• Applied Anthropology refers to the application of
  anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and
  methods to identify, assess, and solve social
  problems.
• Applied anthropologists work for groups that
  promote, manage, and assess programs aimed at
  influencing human social conditions.

3
Types of Applied Anthropology

• Applied anthropologist come from all four
  subfields
• Biological anthropologists work in public health,
  nutrition, genetic counseling, substance abuse,
  epidemiology, aging, mental illness, and
  forensics.
• Applied archaeologists locate, study, and
  preserve prehistoric and historic sites
  threatened by development (Cultural Resource
  Management).

4
More Applied Anthropology

• Cultural anthropologists work with social
  workers, businesspeople, advertising
  professionals, factory workers, medical
  professionals, school personnel, and economic
  development experts.
• Linguistic anthropologists frequently work with
  schools in districts with various languages.

5
What is the Role of the Applied Anthropologist?

• Three views
• The Ivory Tower
• The Schizoid
• The Advocate

6
What is the Role of the Applied Anthropologist?

• The ivory tower view contends that
  anthropologists should avoid practical matters
  and focus on research, publication, and teaching.

7
What is the Role of the Applied Anthropologist?

• The schizoid view is that anthropologists
  should carry out, but not make or criticize,
  policy.

8
What is the Role of the Applied Anthropologist?

• The advocacy view argues that since
  anthropologists are experts on human problems and
  social change, they should make policy affecting
  people.

9
Jobs for Applied Anthropologists

• Professional anthropologists work for a wide
  variety of employers tribal and ethnic
  associations, governments, nongovernmental
  organizations, etc.
• During World War II, anthropologists worked for
  the U.S. government to study Japanese and German
  culture.

10
Responsibilities of the Anthropologist

• The primary ethical obligation of the
  anthropologist is to the people, species, or
  materials he or she studies.
• Researchers must respect the safety, dignity, and
  privacy of the people, species, or materials
  studied.
• Researchers must obtain the informed consent of
  the people to be studied.

11
Responsibility to Scholarship and Science

• Anthropologists should expect to encounter
  ethical dilemmas during their work.
• Anthropologists are responsible for the integrity
  and reputation of their discipline, or
  scholarship, and of science.
• Researchers should disseminate their findings to
  the scientific and scholarly community.

12
Responsibility to the Public

• Researchers should make their results available
  to sponsors, students, decision makers, and other
  nonanthropologists.
• Anthropologists may move beyond disseminating
  research results to a position of advocacy.

13
Academic and Applied Anthropology

• Academic anthropology had its beginning in the
  early 20th century (Kroeber, Malinowski, Boas).
• After World War II, the baby boom fueled the
  growth of the American educational system and
  anthropology, fostering the further growth of
  academic anthropology.

14
The Spread of Applied Anthropology

• Applied anthropology began to grow in the 1970s
  as anthropologists found jobs with international
  organizations, governments, businesses, and
  schools.
• The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966
  resulted in the new field of cultural resource
  management.

15
The Pragmatism of Cultural Anthropology

• In the 1960s, anthropologys focus fit with
  prevailing social interests, which began the turn
  to practical applications.
• Anthropologys ethnographic method, holism, and
  systemic perspective make it uniquely valuable in
  applications to social problems.

16
Applications of Cultural Anthropology

• Applied cultural anthropology has excelled in
  four areas in particular
• Education
• Urban social issues
• Medicine
• Business

17
Anthropology and Education

• In particular, anthropology has help facilitate
  the accommodation of cultural differences in
  classroom settings.
• Examples include English as a second language
  taught to Spanish-speaking students different,
  culturally based reactions to various pedagogical
  techniques.

18
Urban Anthropology

• Human populations are becoming increasingly
  urban.
• Urban anthropology is a cross-cultural and
  ethnographic study of global urbanization and
  life in the cities.

19
Urban vs. Rural

• Robert Redfield was an early student of the
  differences between the rural and urban contexts.
• Various instances of urban social forms are given
  as examples (Kampala, Uganda) social networks in
  particular.

20
Medical Anthropology

• Medical anthropology is both academic
  (theoretical) and applied (practical).
• Medical anthropology is the study of disease and
  illness in their sociocultural context.
• Disease is a scientifically defined ailment.
• Illness is an ailment as experienced and
  perceived by the sufferer.

21
Disease and World Development

• The spread of certain diseases, like malaria and
  schistosomiasis, have been associated with
  population growth and economic development.

22
The Three Theories of Illness

• Personalistic disease theories blame illness on
  agents such as sorcerers, witches, ghosts, or
  ancestral spirits.
• Naturalisitc disease theories explain illness in
  impersonal terms (e.g., Western medicine).
• Emotionalistic disease theories assume emotional
  experiences cause illness (e.g., susto among
  Latino populations).

23
Health-Care Systems and Specialists

• All societies have health-care systems.
• Health-care systems consist of beliefs, customs,
  specialists, and techniques aimed at ensuring
  health and preventing, diagnosing, and treating
  illness.
• Health cares specialists include curers, shamans,
  and doctors.

24
What Have We Learned from Non-Western Medicine?

• Non-Western systems of medicine are often more
  successful at treating mental illness than
  Western medicine.
• They often explain mental illness by causes that
  are easier to identify and combat.
• Non-Western systems of medicine diagnose and
  treat the mentally ill in cohesive groups with
  full support of their kin.

25
The Down-side of Western Medicine

• Despite its advances, Western medicine has
  problems.
• Overprescription of drugs and tranquilizers.
• Unnecessary surgery.
• Impersonality and inequality of the
  patient-physician relationship.
• Overuse of antibiotics.

26
Medical Development

• Like economic development, medical development
  must fit into local systems of health care.
• Medical anthropologists can serve as cultural
  interpreters between local systems and Western
  medicine.

27
Anthropology and Business

• Anthropologists can provide unique perspectives
  on organizational conditions and problems within
  businesses.
• Applied anthropologists have acted as cultural
  brokers in translating managers goals or
  workers concerns to the other group.
• For business, key features of anthropology
  include ethnography, cross-cultural expertise,
  and focus on cultural diversity.

28
Careers in Anthropology

• Because of its breadth, a degree in anthropology
  may provide a flexible basis for many different
  careers.
• Other fields, such as business, have begun to
  recognize the worth of such anthropological
  concepts as microcultures.
• Anthropologists work professionally as
  consultants to indigenous groups at risk from
  external systems.