Anticipatory%20Anthropology

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Anticipatory Anthropology

• Thinking like a futurist

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Anticipatory Anthropology

• Area of anthropology that uses the perspective,
  theories, models, and methods of anthropology in
  an anticipatory manner.
• Allows individuals, citizens, leaders, and
  governments to be better able to make informed
  policy decisions
• Improving the community's or society's chances
  for realizing preferred futures and avoiding
  undesired ones

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Anticipatory Anthropology

• The term anticipatory anthropology was
  introduced by anthropologist Marion Lundy Dobbert
  in 1984
• Anthropologists in preceding years had different
  terms for the same idea
• futurology,
• futuristics,
• anthropology of the future, and
• speculative anthropology of cultural futures

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Futurists

• Futurists
• Try to suggest things that might happen in the
  future, so that people can decide what they want
  to make happen.
• By looking at current trends, for example, it is
  possible to make a projection of what might be
  the case in the future

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The World Future Society

• The World Future Society is a nonprofit,
  nonpartisan scientific and educational
  association of people interested in how social
  and technological developments are shaping the
  future

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Future Society

• By studying the future, people can better
  anticipate what lies ahead.
• They can actively decide how they will live in
  the future, by making choices today and realizing
  the consequences of their decisions.

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Futures Research in Action

• http//superstructgame.org/

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Global Trends

• The future doesn't just happen People create it
  through their action -- or inaction -- today.
• If we can predict how culture will react to
  specific imputes, we can make some predictions
  about society

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Future Society

• The Society strives to serve as a neutral
  clearinghouse for ideas about the future
• Ideas about the future include forecasts,
  recommendations, and alternative scenarios.

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Anticipatory Example

• President Kennedy's dream of placing a man on the
  moon and predicting it would occur before 1970
• This dream was embraced by America, and supported
  by an aggressive funding of research and
  development, and the implementation of a time
  factored plan

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Moon Landing

• The visionthe dream, the scenariowas realized
  in 1969 when homo sapiens took a first step onto
  the moon's pristine dusty surfacean achievement
  that awed the world

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Dreamin

• This sequencethe dreaming followed by the
  planning of actions to be implemented in
  pursuit of the dreamcomprise the nature of
  futures studies and planning.
• Also reflects human culture itself.

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Anticipation

• Anthropologists have been actively involved in
  the art of anticipation from a cultural
  perspective for well over 30 years.
• Example Margret Mead

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Mead

• Mead was persistent in her efforts from 1943 to
  1977 to apply anthropology in anticipating and
  pre-figuring the future
• Likely inspired the emergence of futures
  studies in the mid-50's by her interest and
  research

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Mead

• She viewed human future as "neither predetermined
  nor predictable it is, rather, something which
  lies within our hands, to be shaped and molded by
  the choices we make in present time."

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Systems

• Sharing a pattern, or system, of culture enables
  people to communicate and interact with one
  another appropriately and efficiently.
• Systems also allow us to acculturate the next
  generation

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Cultural Systems

• Cultural Systems also allow us to predict future
  social systems
• We can effect future cultural systems now by our
  choices now
• Identifying those systems is where
  anthropologists come in

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Planned Changed

• Anthropologists became involved in anticipation
  during social impact assessment research.
• They assessed the social gains and losses that
  might be expected to accompany a program of
  planned change.

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Applied Research

• So applied research projects are concerned with
  assessing the future impacts of present policies
• Thus the birth of anticipatory anthropology

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Ethical Considerations

• Futurists reflect their culture without knowing
  it
• Speaking for the world and forget that it is
  their cultural biases, their disciplinary
  education and their social character that is
  being expressed
• Futurists must acknowledge the existence and the
  value of cultures, attitudes and objectives that
  are different from their own

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Ethics

• Futurists must be aware of etic systems of values
  and beliefs being projected to someone else's
  future
• This may not end in the people willingly
  participating in the way of life that we would
  create for them (ex. eating beef in India)

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Anthropological Eye

• Anthropology sensitizing people to other ways of
  life, values and worldviews
• Some VERY different from their own
• Anthropology brings appreciation for the
  potentiality of cultural diversity

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Ethnographic Method

• Understanding of the human condition
• Ethnographic fieldwork approach
• First hand observation of, and participation in,
  the daily behavior of the group under study for a
  prolonged period of time (over one year) in which
  the myriad details of everyday life, seasonal and
  unusual events and happenings may be experienced.

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Anthropologys Contribution

• Because of this, anthropology can contribute to
  discussion and decision making by citizens,
  activists, leaders and governments of a given
  society, community or organization.
• Especially where serious attention is paid to the
  means whereby preferable futures may be achieved,
  and undesirable ones avoided

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Essays in anticipatory anthropology Victoria M.
Razak Department of Anthropology, State
University of New York, Buffalo, New York, USA

• What does Razak hope will happen?
• Truly collaborative emic/etic futures studies
  approach to the visioning and crafting of the
  future will become a standard approach used in
  the practice of foresight planning

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What can be done?

• Collaborative research creating an interface with
  theory, hindsight, practice and objectivity to
  provide a necessary broader context to the
  visioning process

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Anticipatory Planning

• The ethnographic approach used in conjunction
  with necessary quantitative data gathering and
  analysis, can straddle the divide between an etic
  (outsider point of view) based approach and an
  emic-centered approach to anticipatory planning.

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Anticipatory planning

• Anticipatory planning is really at the core of
  Futurism
• Anthropologists have a unique set of tools for
  this kind of planning
• Anthropologists should be involved in regional
  planning programs
• Anthropologists should be involved in predicting
  social trends impacting development

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Global Trends

• So, if anticipatory anthropology seeks to
  understand cultural trends as they effect social
  organizations
• What have we learned?
• Enter Raymond Scupin

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Global Village

• Globalization the growth of global
  interdependence
• Colonialization the establishment of settler
  colonies, trading posts, and plantations with the
  metropole's own population, colonialism deals
  with this and the ruling of new territories'
  existing peoples.
• (largely economic over the last 100 years)

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Environmental Trends

• Preindustrial societies
• Foragers
• Horticulturalist
• Pastoralist
• Intensive agriculture
• Overall limited impact
• Global Industrialism spreads after the industrial
  revolution
• Agribusiness (Mechanized Agriculture)

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Environmental Trends

• Green Revolution
• Not very green
• Fossil fuels, Chemical Fertilizers, Genetically
  Modified Seeds, Pesticides
• All energy intensive
• Bhopal incident, Rivers in the Midwest, other
  drainage
• Air and Water Pollution
• Automobile, coal power, industry
• Greenhouse Effect and global warming
• CO2 build upNatural or human-made? Doesnt
  matter if we can see the effects

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Population Trends

• Global growth over human history
• Paleolithic 10 million total population over the
  entire period
• Neolithic 300 million by 1 A.D. (advent of
  agriculture 10,000)
• Industrial Revolution Demographic Transition
  theory
• 1900 1.6 billion
• 1950 2.5 billion
• 2000 6 billion
• 2040 8 billion
• 2050 10 billion

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Demographic-Transition Theory

• Assumes a close connection between fertility and
  morality rates and socio-economic development.
• Phase one high fertility rate is countered by a
  high morality rate
• Foragers such as the !Kung
• Phase two population increases quickly due to
  lower morality rates and higher fertility rates
• Industrial Europe in the 1500s
• Phase three fertility rates drop due to family
  planning and increasing costs of child rearing
• Germany/Italy today

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Global Population

• U.S. 307,571,579 (300 Million)
• One birth every 7 seconds
• One death every 13 seconds
• One international migrant every 29 seconds
• Net gain of one person every 9 seconds
• World 6,787,153,505 (6.7 Billion)
• Do we need to control population? Or will
  technological and economic adaptation allow us to
  continue to grow?

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Global Population Trends

• In the wealthy industrialized Core countries of
  the U.S., Japan, Europe
• Low growth below ZPG for some (Germany)
• Peripheral Countries such as India, Bangladeshi,
  etc
• Extremely fast growth rate
• Globalization death rate falls
• High rates of population growth
• 3 doubles population every 25 years
• 4 doubles population every 15 years

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Global Technological Trends

• Industrial technology high energy usage, such
  technology necessary to compete in world market
• Wealthy core countries 15 of world population
• Uses 80 of energy reserves
• India, China, Mexico show high rate of increasing
  energy use

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Global Technological Trends

• The loss of biodiversity
• Biodiversity is the genetic and biological
  variation with and among different species of
  plants and animals
• About 50 of all species live in tropical
  rainforests
• Global trends toward resource overuse leading to
  loss of biodiversity
• Greatest level of mass extinction in global
  history?

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Perspectives on Global Trends

• Pessimistic and Optimistic views on globalization
• Limits to growth model
• What can the world sustain? Do we have the right
  to destroy all other species for our own
  continued expansion?
• Pessimistic forecasts
• The Doomsday Model
• Club of Rome predicted that at current resource
  use levels would lead to scarcity and economic
  collapse
• Run out of resources in 100 years
• Logic of growth model
• Assumes that natural resources are infinite and
  that economic growth can continue indefinitely
  without long term harm to the environment
• Argues population growth a stimulus for, not
  deterrent to, economic progress

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Perspectives

• Technology will solve all problems
• Ethnographic Research on the green revolution
• Positive and negative assessments
• Case StudySikh village in Indiaadopted green
  revolution successfully
• Villagers took economic risks that paid off
• Villagers willing to learn new skills
• Ethnographers contributionhis detailed report
  lead to his involvement in the planning process

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Perspectives

• Knowledge can solve all problems
• Ethnographic research in Haiti
• Intensive agriculture
• Peasant farmers cut forests for fuel (cannot
  afford to buy fuel on wages)
• Do not value replanting local varieties of trees
  (took too long to grow)
• Introduction of new tree species
• New tree farms owned by peasant co-ops
• Success lead to localized production of
  for-profit commodity

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Global Solutions?

• Conferences/Summits on Climate Change
• Organization for Economic Co-operation and
  Development
• Represents industrialized nations
• Kyoto Protocol established targets and limits for
  greenhouse gases
• Bush Administration withdrew from the accords

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Global Solutions

• Sustainability Model
• Suggests that societies globally need
  environments and technologies that provide
  subsistence
• Model encourages resource management for future
  generations
• Encourages growth that does not damage the
  environment
• Requires global movement, not nation by nation
  solutions

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Global Economic Trends

• Multinational capitalism spreads
• Are multinationals the new social institution?
• Multinationals reorganizing industry
• Eventually assume management of global affairs?
  Problems?
• Positive assessment of Multinationals?
• Jobs, technology, capital. Enhanced global
  economic development leads to reduction in
  poverty.
• Negative Assessment?
• Cheap labor, pollution, inequalities. Create
  benefits for wealthy elite, majority of
  population doesnt participate in modernization

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Global Political Changes

• Nation-state too small?
• Growth of the European Union
• Global problems need multilateral solutions
• Unified European continent?
• Population, environment, economy, terrorism
• World Bank, NAFTA, European Union, UN
• Nation-state is too large?
• Perceived threat to ethnic identify
• Local level interests not being served
• Localization of identity and the new identity
  movements like Scottish and Quebec independence
• THESE MOVEMENTS ARE A REFLECTION OF GLOBALIZATION
  AND THE WEAKINING OF NATIONALISTIC TIES!!!

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Emerging Economic Trends

• Globalization of the world economy
• Changes in the socialist countries
• State administered economies failed to compete
  globally (with one notable exception)
• Soviet Russia fallsRussian leaders call for
  economic reform
• Adaptation of free-market capitalism
• Cultural patterns lead to substantial hardships
• Rise of crony capitalism (appointing people
  without proper skills because of loyalty) and
  corruption
• Eastern Europe
• Eastern Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary,
  Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia all reformed
  economies in the 1990s
• China liberalization of economy. Little
  political reform. Necessity of free speech and
  civil liberties for expanding market economy?

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Global Religious Changes

• Globalization creates secularization
• Religion becomes separated from
  economy/environment
• Individualization of religion
• Responses to secularization
• Fundamentalism response to globalizations
  challenge to traditional beliefs
• Islamic fundamentalism
• Christian (end of times cults)
• Jewish (zionist colonialists)
• Hindu (anti-Islamic movements)
• Buddhist (anti-Chinese movements)
• Re-emphasis on tradition
• Religious substance as a means of restoring
  meaning to individuals lives
• Gives people meaning and understanding of
  otherwise chaotic lives
• Fearful of losing culture, values, traditions

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Role of Anthropology

• Active recording of local responses to
  globalization.
• Understanding of dislocations, loss of identity
• Understanding of localization and sustainability
• Understanding of specific cultural aspirations
• Synthesis of local studies with studies of global
  conditions
• Anthropological studies of trends can help
  understand the globalization process