Professional Documents
Culture Documents
What Anthropologists Do
What Anthropologists Do
ANTHROPOLOGISTS
DO
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WHAT
ANTHROPOLOGISTS
DO
Veronica Strang
Illustrations by
Blue Powell
Strang, Veronica.
What anthropologists do / Veronica Strang ; illustrations by Blue Powell.—English ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-84520-355-9 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 1-84520-355-0 (pbk.)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84520-344-2 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 1-84520-354-2 (cloth)
1. Anthropology—Vocational guidance. 2. Anthropology—Research. 3. Anthropology
—Methodology. I. Powell, Blue, ill. II. Title.
GN41.8.S77 2009
306.023—dc22
2009011242
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
www.bergpublishers.com
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
What Do Anthropologists Do? 1
Employing Anthropology 4
Conducting Research 5
contents vii
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book arose out of discussions between the executive committees of the
Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and the Commonwealth, and the
Royal Anthropological Institute. Both have long observed that, with little anthro-
pology offered in schools, school leavers have little idea about what anthropologists
do, and no idea at all about the broad potential for interesting (and viable) careers
that studying anthropology provides. It is apparent that many potential research
users are equally unsure about what anthropology can offer. As a result of these
discussions Berg’s managing director, Kathryn Earle, asked me to review the ‘applied
anthropology’ literature, collect a range of examples and describe these in a form
accessible to a younger audience. This turned out to be an intriguing project, enabling
me to discover what my colleagues around the world are doing in many areas of
research far removed from my own. I am grateful for this opportunity, and for the
support of the ASA and the RAI in the process. Other anthropology associations
and journals were also very helpful in circulating my requests for information. I
would like to thank them, and in particular those colleagues from around the world
who responded with lively accounts of their professional experiences.1
There are some excellent texts aimed at introducing first-year anthropology
undergraduates to the discipline and providing career advice for graduates. These
describe ways of applying anthropology that are now well established, as well as
pointing to emerging areas. I am greatly indebted to the authors of these texts, and
hope this volume will provide a stepping stone to their work.
A number of people assisted this project directly. I would particularly like to thank
my research assistant, Mira Taitz, who did a sterling job helping to collect diverse
examples of anthropological application; Blue Powell who undertook the large and
challenging task of illustrating the text; Aran Yardley and April-Rose Geers who
acted as my ‘guinea pigs’ for final drafts; and the various colleagues and anonymous
referees who took the time to read and make comments on the manuscript. And it
was, as ever, a pleasure to work with the team at Berg.
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INTRODUCTION
anthropology has a vital contribution to make; and because, contrary to the stereo-
types, anthropological training is immensely applicable in a very wide variety of
careers. So the purpose of this book is to describe what anthropologists actually do,
with examples from a range of areas. It is not a comprehensive account: just a brief
introduction to the kind of work that anthropologists undertake, and the multiple
directions open to practitioners.
It is probably useful to start by talking about what anthropology is.2 The broadest
definition is that it is a social science that involves the study of human groups and
their behaviour: their interactions with each other, and with the material environ-
ment. Most anthropologists study contemporary societies (or smaller groups within
them), although in some countries anthropology also includes archaeology and
the study of past societies.3 It sits alongside related social sciences like sociology
(which tends to be more quantitative), and psychology (which focuses more on
individuals).
Anthropology itself is a very broad discipline4 with large sub-disciplinary areas:
for example, social anthropology, cultural anthropology, political anthropology,
economic anthropology, the anthropology of religion, biological anthropology,
medical anthropology and my own field, environmental anthropology. There are
other ‘offshoots’ too, crossing into development studies, social policy, and studies of
art and material culture. And, as a glance at the diverse list of contents for this book
illustrates, there is a host of smaller, even more specialized areas.
What unites this diversity? Anthropology has several key characteristics: it is
holistic, placing whatever behaviour it is examining within its social and environ-
mental context, and considering the range of cultural beliefs and practices that direct
people’s activities. It is largely qualitative, recognizing that most of these things are
not readily measurable. It aims to be ‘in-depth’, getting under the surface of social
life to make its underlying dynamics visible. It engages fully with the complexities
of human ‘being’.
In effect, ‘what anthropologists do’ is try to understand and represent the realities
of particular cultural and sub-cultural worldviews, encapsulating their key features
and underlying principles, in order to ‘make sense’ of human behaviour. They try to
do this in such a way that this understanding can be communicated cross-culturally,
acting as a translatory bridge between groups whose beliefs, values and practices may
be completely different.
Anthropological research generally involves working with a host group or com-
munity to create an ‘ethnography’. This can be described as a portrait of that group
and its dynamics, which is usually in text form, although some anthropologists also
use visual media. Most ethnographies contain a set of core elements: the composition
of the group; its history; its ways of making a living in a particular environment; its
social and political institutions; its belief systems and values. A good way to imagine
this ethnographic portrait is that the particular issue the anthropologist is studying
will be in the foreground, in detail, but these contextualizing elements that shape
how people live will be there too, as an explanatory background (see Agar 1996,
Pawluch et al. 2005).
An ethnography is the result of the two key things that underpin any science:
theory and method. Like other sciences, anthropology has, over many years,
developed a set of theoretical principles. Being part of an ongoing international and
inter-cultural scientific ‘conversation’, these are always moving forward, increasing
our understanding. Again like other sciences, anthropology is fundamentally com-
parative: we compare different social and cultural groups and, by examining their
differences and similarities, we are able to tackle broader questions about human
beings and the patterns of behaviour that they share.
Anthropology theories have been described in various ways: for example, by
James Peacock (1986) as a ‘lens’ that helps to bring human life into focus. As a keen
scuba diver, I tend to think of the in-depth immersion of ethnographic research as a
way of seeing under the surface. Theories are also presented as a sort of ‘tool kit’ for
analysis, and that’s quite a good analogy too, as it underlines the reality that theory
is a practical thing: a set of useful ‘idea tools’ that help us to open up what is often
regarded as the ‘black box’ of human behaviour.
Of course any sensible analysis requires data. Anthropology is fundamentally
empirical, in that it relies on data collected ‘in the field’. Let me have another swipe at
the stereotypes here, and say that ‘in the field’ doesn’t have to be somewhere far away,
or even somewhere else. As anyone who has travelled will know, being a long way
from home is certainly useful, in terms of coming into contact with (and being able
to compare) very different perspectives on life. But highly diverse social groups and
cultural ideas can also be found on the doorstep, and there are many anthropologists
for whom ‘the field’ is at home, working with particular communities, sub-cultural
groups, organizations or networks.
introduction 3
4 what anthropologists do
EMPLOYING ANTHROPOLOGY
Anthropologists are supported in their work in a variety of ways. Some are employed
by universities, and therefore combine teaching with research. Both of these activities
are important to universities, and most hope that their academic staff will devote
their time fairly equally to both. In reality, most university-based anthropologists
probably spend a higher proportion of their time teaching and doing administra-
tion, but they are still expected to keep up with what is going on in their field, and to
conduct some research. At a tertiary level, there is (or should be) a symbiotic relation-
ship between teaching and research, with original research findings feeding into the
curriculum. This makes additional use of the external research that academics do,
and ensures that students receive teaching that is intellectually fresh and up-to-date.
For anthropologists who like teaching, and who can tolerate the (considerable)
administrative demands of university life, an institutional post has a number of
advantages. The teaching itself is often very rewarding; a good academic depart-
ment provides a lively and supportive intellectual environment and – with luck –
congenial colleagues; and, where tenure or long-term contracts are available, there is
a greater degree of security than may be provided by more independent career paths.
Universities often provide some financial support for research, or at least regular
sabbatical time to enable bursts of research activity, and university-employed anthro-
pologists also write research proposals and compete for funding from national or
international funding bodies. Most countries have a research council, and there are
other (national and international) funding bodies, such as the Royal Anthropological
Institute or the Wenner-Gren Foundation, whose aim is to support original research
in the discipline.
Some university-based anthropologists also do consultancy work, and some
combine part-time teaching posts with other forms of employment or freelance
research. As the case studies in this book illustrate, anthropological CVs often
contain a mixture of ways to make use of anthropological training, and there is
considerable scope for people to shape their careers in accord with their particular
interests and preferences.
Although teaching is an obvious avenue of employment for anyone trained in
a scientific discipline, there are probably greater numbers of anthropologists either
employed as full-time researchers or working as freelancers for government depart-
ments, non-governmental organizations, charities, industries, legal bodies, indigenous
communities and so forth. There are significant advantages to employment outside
the academy, although it is sometimes less secure: an ability to focus on research
(rather than spending a large proportion of time on teaching and administrative
duties); the opportunity to follow specific areas of interest, for example in politics,
health, or development; and, of course, independence from the strictures of institu-
tional employment.
CONDUCTING RESEARCH
However anthropologists make a living, they have a responsibility, not only to
their employers or sponsors, but also to anthropology as a discipline, in terms of
maintaining professional standards, academic independence, and ethical principles.
Ethics are central to practitioners’ relationships with the groups or communities in
which they conduct research (see Caplan 2003, Fluehr-Lobban 2003). Professional
anthropology associations expect their members to conform to detailed and rigorous
codes of practice, which ensure that the interests of the host group or community
are carefully protected throughout the research.5 Projects are therefore designed with
two key questions in mind: ‘how will this research produce new knowledge that
answers a particular question?’ and ‘how will it benefit the group in which it is
conducted, and society in general?’ In many cases, the host group is involved in the
research design from the very beginning. At the very least, there will be a process of
asking permission from them; of seeking input on the proposed work; and of getting
feedback on the research findings as these emerge.
Many anthropologists maintain long-term relationships with communities,
returning regularly to extend earlier research, or to do new projects. As well as
allowing researchers to develop productive collaborations with individuals and
groups, these lengthy relationships also permit shorter research projects, building
on accumulated background ethnographic data. In many professional contexts, the
realities of research funding do not permit a great deal of time for fieldwork, and
anthropologists have to build on former (or other people’s) datasets and experience.
Nevertheless, the major objective is still to create as complete a picture as possible,
so that the research question is always given an ethnographic context that will help
to explain what is going on.
Anthropologists tend to collect a lot of data, and it is this meticulous depth and
detail that gives strong foundations to their analyses. Preliminary literature reviews
can take many weeks, and it is common for fieldwork to take from six months to
a year. In a sense, anthropology is the ‘slow food’ of the social sciences, because it
tends to be quite painstaking and cannot be ‘whipped up’ instantly. Fortunately, this
willingness to be very thorough generally pays off, providing genuine and useful
insights into human behaviour.
Ethnographic data are collected in a variety of ways. A core method is ‘participant
observation’, which – as its name implies – involves participating in the everyday
life of the host community, and carefully observing and recording events. The
introduction 5
6 what anthropologists do
other major method is to conduct interviews with individuals and groups, and this
usually means a mixture of long in-depth interviews and shorter, more opportunistic
ones. Interviews might be formal (with a specific list of issues to explore) or more
exploratory and informal. Ethnographers often interview people a number of times,
and spend a lot of time with them, in particular those members of the host group
willing to work collaboratively on the research.
introduction 7
8 what anthropologists do
posts and other roles, and most have research interests that engage with issues far
removed from any kind of ‘ivory tower’. Typically, anthropologists’ web sites or lists
of publications (including those found on university web pages) describe a range of
work, some of which could readily be described as ‘applied’ and some of which is
more obviously focused on contributing to theoretical debates. They also reveal an
extraordinary diversity of interests: a profession investigating a host of intriguing
questions about human behaviour in an equally varied range of groups.
Anthropology is not only fascinating but also rather addictive. Many people start
by studying a bit of anthropology but then find they want to go on. That is more or
less what happened to me: after more than a decade of working as a freelance writer
and researcher in various parts of the world, I was sufficiently intrigued by a stint
in the Australian outback to spend a year doing a masters’ course in anthropology.
A doctorate, several teaching posts and numerous research projects later it remains
endlessly absorbing.
This raises a question as to why there are not more people doing anthropology.
After all, there are plenty of souls with incurable curiosity, the flexibility to work
with different cultures and ideas, and enough patience to do in-depth research.
A major obstacle is that anthropology is not generally taught in schools, so most
people don’t come into contact with it.6 This leaves them with only the stereotypes
to consider, and part of the problem with those (quite apart from the fact that they
are inaccurate and outdated), is that they don’t seem to point either to potential
careers in anthropology, or to many ‘practical’ uses of anthropological research.
So this book is intended to show that anthropology can lead to a vast choice
of careers, and that it has an equally diverse range of potential applications. I have
divided the material into some broad areas, but these are fairly arbitrary and there
is considerable overlap and flow between them. In each area, however, the purpose
of anthropological research remains constant: to gain a real understanding of a
particular social reality, its beliefs values and practices, and to communicate this
understanding across cultural and sub-cultural boundaries.
1 ANTHROPOLOGY AND
ADVOCACY
BALANCING ACTS
A lot of the work that anthropologists do involves acting as cultural translators:
creating bridges between societies or more specific social groups that have quite
different worldviews. Being able to understand various points of view, and translate
ideas in a non-judgemental way, is a key aspect of the training that they receive, and
this rests on a combination of rigorous in-depth research and a theoretical framework
that enables them to step back and consider situations analytically. In many situations,
having a ‘neutral’ but empathetic outsider, who has taken the trouble to gain insights
into the complexities of people’s lives, can greatly assist cross-cultural interactions.
Scientific neutrality can be particularly important in legal contexts, where courts
or tribunals depend on the testimony of ‘disinterested’ expert witnesses to present
evidence, but there are many situations in which cultural beliefs, values and practices
clash, and tensions arise. For example, the translatory skills of anthropologists
may be used in conflicts between religious groups; in quarrels between managers
and workforces; in defusing racial or ethnic hostilities; in mediating between
organizations competing for the control of heritage sites and national parks; or in
facilitating communication between local groups and government agencies.
For some practitioners, advocacy is a logical extension of long-term working
relationships with host communities. It is, after all, virtually impossible to work
closely with people and not develop some sympathy for their concerns. Even in
the early 1900s, when Bronislaw Malinowski first established in-depth fieldwork
as a core anthropological method, he suggested that ‘as a scientific moralist fully in
10 what anthropologists do
FACILITATING CROSS-CULTURAL
COMMUNICATION
Sometimes ‘special pleading’ articulates the concerns of a group who may otherwise
not be heard. For instance, Jacqueline Solway works in Botswana as an advocate for
minority language groups who, even in a peaceful multi-party democracy, remain
somewhat disenfranchised. By communicating the realities of their lives to decision
makers in the political arena, her work seeks ways to assist the state in becoming
more inclusive to these groups (Solway 2004).
Elizabeth Grobsmith works with Native-American inmates in prisons in Nebraska
who, although their community comprises only 1 per cent of the population as a
whole, make up 4 per cent of the prison population. Her work began in the 1970s,
when the courts upheld prisoners’ rights to religious freedom and education, and
she was employed to teach a programme in American Indian studies. As she says,
‘prisoners stand to profit both from an academic perspective and from the increased
self-respect which education affords. Their culture gains credibility by being the
subject of a prison college class’ (Grobsmith 2002: 166). Thus she was able to allay
the authorities’ anxieties about religious practices, such as pipe smoking:
The contribution of the anthropologist can be great here, serving as a consultant
to correctional authorities and guiding them as to the legitimacy and meaning
of these religious practices. Absence of regular training programs and turnover
of employees result in ignorance and insensitivity on the part of correctional
officers and continual mistakes which prisoners deeply resent . . . Anthropological
expertise is of benefit not because the inmates are incapable themselves of
explaining their traditions. Rather the use of an ‘outside expert’ or consultant
affords legitimacy to the entire process. (Grobsmith 2002: 167)
Grobsmith was also involved in the design of treatment programmes to tackle drug
and alcohol problems in the prison population, pointing out that ‘the consequences
of ignoring Native American prisoners’ needs is the ultimate return of most Indian
inmates to incarceration’ (Grobsmith 2002: 168). She advised the parole board on
indigenous cultural approaches to rehabilitation, and acted as an expert witness in
disputes on prisoners’ rights.
There is a tremendous need for anthropologists in correctional affairs. With the
largest number of inmates representing minorities, and correctional staff rarely
representative of those same groups, anthropologists are frequently sought as
liaisons, cultural resources persons, and simply savvy outsiders who can help
minority individuals interact with the complex, legal world in which they live.
Correctional authorities benefit from this interaction as well, through improved
inmate-staff relationships, decreased litigation, and prison accreditation
standards which reward institutions that permit and cooperate with research.
(Grobsmith 2002: 170)
As she concludes: ‘few activities are more satisfying than helping to mend an
intercultural communication network that has broken down’ (Grobsmith 2002:
171).
with possible cultural differences as having significant effects does not seem to detain
them for very long’ (Avruch and Black 1996: 53). Their research examines attempts
to introduce alternative dispute resolution in the Pacific island of Palau:
There is perhaps something ironic in bringing ADR, an ideological formation
partly inspired by misread ethnography . . . back to the sort of cultural setting
people . . . thought it came from in the first place. But to revel in that irony is
perhaps to underestimate the costs that such a disingenuous export can inflict . . .
It is important that if ADR is introduced to Palau, it be done in a manner that
makes good local sense. In our opinion, this is not something that can be written
in by consultants drawn from the American ADR community, no matter how
culturally sensitive they may be. Those designing ADR for Palau will do well
to predicate it on Palauan assumptions about conflict and its management,
assumptions that are part of Palauan culture . . . One way to ensure that this
happens is to put the design of the process firmly in Palauan hands . . . The
contribution that anthropological outsiders can make is to offer suggestions
about the design of the process. (Avruch and Black 1996: 54–9)
From their point of view, ‘the greatest contribution anthropology can make to the
creation of a humane fit between ADR and Paluan society may lie in its insistence
on the importance of culture’ (Avruch and Black 1996: 47), and they have gone on
to insist as best they can.
Kendall Thu and Paul Durrenberger’s research is similarly critical of the social
and ecological effects of industrial farming, showing how pig factories in Iowa and
North Carolina created enormous stenches for miles, lowered property values and
impinged on social life, as well as polluting rivers, and damaging fish and fisheries.
They provide an account of the social costs of these changes: the loss of family farms;
the environmental and health risks; the greater uncertainties in employment; and the
way that these pressures lead to social division and conflict. Kendall Thu therefore
sees a clear need for research to lead to advocacy:
My applied work involves a strategy combining research with advocacy through
the media, public speaking, legislative testimony, expert witness work in the
courtroom, holding industries publicly accountable for co-opting science, work
with non-profit organizations and cooperation among community groups . . .
Research and advocacy are necessary partners. Science never has, nor ever will,
exist in a political vacuum. If we do not advocate based on the rigor of our
ethnographies, by default we have made a decision affecting the lives of those
whose knowledge provided for our professional careers. (Ervin 2005: 157)
communities – whether they farm or make a living from other economic modes
– often have valuable ecological knowledge, and another area of advocacy in anthro-
pology is concerned with the protection of intellectual property rights. Working for
the International Potato Center (which in Spanish is called the Centro Internacional
de la Papa (CIP)), Robert Rhoades observes that with scientists and pharmaceutical
and food corporations on the lookout for new plant breeding opportunities, ‘the topic
of ownership of plant genetic resources is an international minefield of controversy
because it concerns profits, power and politics at the highest levels of international
government’ (Rhoades 2005: 77). Since the mid-1980s, anthropologists have assisted
local communities and the Centre in protecting indigenous intellectual property:
As the traditional curators of cultivated species . . . indigenous people have
become more aware of their own rights and their crucial role in conservation.
This connection between indigenous cultures and crop diversity has increased
the demand for anthropologists, especially ethnobotanists,1 in agricultural
research . . . Anthropological contribution to this area took place in several
ways. First, field-level studies demonstrated that farmers possessed a complex
folk nomenclature of native potatoes . . . Ethnobotanical studies provided
basic information on farmer selections to assist with the center’s efforts . . . An
approach called ‘memory banking’ pioneered by anthropologist Virginia Nazarea
. . . demonstrated how cultural knowledge should be conserved along with the
conventional gene bank ‘passport’ data . . . Anthropologists have served on panels
and international commissions to encourage implementation of farmers’ rights
as a way to maintain germplasm diversity. An effort has been made to lobby
legislative bodies and get the message about genetic erosion and indigenous
cultures to the general public . . . Today several international centers – including
the Rome-based International Plant Genetics Resources Institute – employ
anthropologists and ethnobotanists to help guide participatory plant breeding
efforts involving both scientists and farmers. (Rhoades 2005: 76–8)
global level. Many work in the legal arena, bridging the gaps between indigenous
or specifically cultural ideas about law and moral order, and the national and
international legal frameworks that often override these (see Rodríguez-Piñero 2005,
Toussaint 2004).
Counter-development movements are emerging as people resist the appropriation
of their resources, and direct protests against globalization are springing up all around
the world. As well as turning an anthropological eye on multinational corporations,
June Nash (1979) has studied the rise of these resistance movements, occurring most
particularly in places that have been marginalized in the reorganization of global
capital.
These are the areas that are becoming the center of dissent in day-to-day protests
against the dislocations and environmental contamination caused by global
enterprises. At the same time that populations are forced to migrate in search
of work, global enterprises are going underground, buried in the underworld of
dotcoms and obliterating their tracks with multiple conglomorate identities . . .
Anthropologists are by inclination and profession predisposed to study the
peripheral phenomena of everyday life everywhere in the world, and especially
in marginal areas. Our hidden bias for Third World perspectives is becoming
more explicit as the failure of modernity projects becomes explicit. With the
widening gap between rich and poor – countries, regions, and people . . . many
of these formerly marginalized areas have become frontiers of the latest capitalist
advances, where we find indigenous people engaged in a fight for their territories
and their way of life. (Nash 2005: 177)
Nash focuses on people ‘whose cultivated historical memories and everyday lived
practices enable them to attest to ways of life that are alternatives to capitalism’.
Many continue to practice collective lifeways and to relate to cosmic powers in
ways envisioned by their ancestors. These normative practices are not the result
of passivity, but rather the product of practiced resistance by those who have
experienced the trauma of conquest and colonization. (Nash 2005: 178)
LAND RIGHTS
Globalization is, of course, merely the latest development in a long process of
expansion by industrialized societies, which resulted in the colonization of many parts
of the world in the 18th and 19th centuries. There was widespread appropriation of
land owned by indigenous or less powerful groups, and this appropriation continues
in the contemporary world with what many regard as ‘economic colonialism’. So,
as well as fighting to retain their rights to water and other resources, many groups
are now battling to reclaim their land. Their hope is to regain the right to share in
its management and use, or at the least to be compensated for its loss. The result
is a number of bitter conflicts over land and water rights in which, once again,
different cultural perspectives are a critical factor (see Trigger and Griffiths 2003.
Toussaint 2004). It is therefore unsurprising that this has become a major area of
activity in anthropology. As resources are sought in ever more remote areas of the
globe, threatening the land and livelihoods of more and more communities, it is
likely that there will be an increasing need for cultural translators who can mediate
between groups in conflict, and for advocates who can assist less powerful groups in
defining and defending their rights.
Land is the key to the cultural and often even the physical survival of indigenous
peoples . . . If forced off their land, tribal societies can be physically annihilated.
They are in a sense cast adrift with no way to fend for themselves in an alien
society – a common trend in the Americas as various nations seek to counteract
spiraling international debts by ruthless exploitation of their hinterlands. In these
circumstances indigenous populations come under immediate threat because of
an inability to maintain their land holdings in the face of vastly more powerful
settler populations that are apt to regard indigenous peoples’ claim to land as
inconclusive at best. (Maybury-Lewis 1985: 137–40)
have shown, similar issues confront Australian landholders, most particularly since
the Native Title Act of 1993 which (after 200 years of European settlement) ack-
nowledged Aboriginal people’s prior ownership of the land. In New Zealand too,
although the original Treaty of Waitangi continues to offer some protection to
indigenous ownership of land and resources, the control of land and water remains
contentious, with particular angst emerging in recent years about the foreshore and
seabed, and the ownership of the rivers.
In many parts of the world aspirations to protect key habitat areas for conservation
purposes are creating further pressure on indigenous ownership and use of land.
Anthropologists have been central to efforts to persuade conservation organizations
that what they fondly imagine as ‘uninhabited wilderness’ or ‘pristine’ areas have, in
fact, been inhabited by indigenous peoples for millennia, and that they need to take
on board the cultural and economic needs of these communities.
An example is provided by Marcus Colchester’s work. He made use of his anthro-
pological training in becoming the Director of the Forest Peoples Programme of the
World Rainforest Movement and an Associate Editor of The Ecologist Magazine. He
has helped to design international campaigns to draw attention to indigenous rights
in Venezuela, and has received numerous awards for his scholarship and activism.
There are currently some 100,000 officially recognized protected areas world-
wide covering as much as 12 per cent of the land surface of the planet. The
great majority of these areas are owned or claimed by indigenous peoples . . .
The emergence of indigenous peoples as a social movement and as a category
in international human rights law has contributed to conservation agencies re-
thinking their approach . . . A new model of conservation can now be discerned
based on a respect for the rights of indigenous peoples and other bearers of
‘traditional knowledge’. (Colchester 2004: 20)
Indigenous communities are not the only groups to find their way of life threat-
ened by major conservation schemes. Sometimes local farmers find that common
land is seen as ‘fair game’ for the creation of national parks. For example, Tracey
Heatherington (2005) has conducted research in rural Sardinia on the controversies
surrounding the proposed creation of Gennargentu National Park. This required
local communities to contribute large areas of communal land to the project, and
when their protests about doing this were simply dismissed, she was able to help
them to build a more powerful case by showing that their ‘love for the commons’
rested on key cultural precepts that made a defence of the commons, in essence, a
defence of their traditional values.
PARTICIPATORY ACTION
Anthropologists have a key role in contributing to a better understanding about
local forms of ownership and tenure, and people’s relationships with places. This
can be communicated in a variety of ways, many of which could be described as
‘participatory action research’ (PAR), which involves members of the community
in a collaborative research process that enables them to achieve their own aims:
‘Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a research strategy whereby the community
under study defines the problem, analyzes it, and solves it. The people own the
information and may contract the services of academic researchers to assist in this
process’ (Szala-Meneok and Lohfeld 2005: 52).
Such collaboration between local communities and anthropologists is becoming
more common, and anthropological training increasingly provides access to the
methods entailed. For example, medical anthropologist Patricia Hammer runs an
ethnographic methods training centre in the Peruvian Andes, which emphasizes
PAR methodologies, and enables students ‘to engage in ongoing investigations in
local agricultural communities’ in relation to local issues around ‘health, ecology,
biodiversity and community organization’ (Hammer 2008: 1).
Participatory action research is well suited to work on land and resource issues.
For example, along with many anthropological colleagues in Australia, I have been
involved in the compilation of evidence for land claims. The methods used in this
context also have wider utility, as a way of recording important cultural knowledge. I
have therefore spent much of my time with Aboriginal people in north Queensland
doing ‘cultural mapping’,5 which involves travelling with the elders around their
‘country’, much of which lies outside the reserve area held by the community, in
neighbouring national park areas and cattle stations. Cultural mapping entails
recording, in a variety of media, all of the information about each group’s sacred
sites and important historic places, and their traditional knowledge about the land
and its resources. This collaboration has resulted in a detailed collection of cultural
information, which is now archived in the community, and provides a key teaching
resource for younger generations, as well as a body of evidence for indigenous claims
to the land. These are ongoing, but in the meantime the community has been able
to negotiate a joint management agreement with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife
Service, and to substantiate their ownership claims sufficiently to persuade local
graziers to co-sign Indigenous Land Use Agreements.
However, a fully successful land claim is a faint hope, at best, for most indigenous
groups, and many have been displaced. Along with land appropriations, political
conflicts, environmental degradation and other pressures have created many refugees
and economic migrants, and such groups often need support, most particularly
when they are forced to relocate to areas geographically and culturally distant from
their own. There is often a useful role for anthropologists in providing advocacy and
cultural translation for these communities. For example, Lance Rasbridge worked
with Cambodian refugees in Dallas, as a ‘refugee outreach anthropologist’ for a
health organization:
My search for an applied position was in a large part a response to the profoundly
emotional experience of conducting research with refugees . . . the situation of
refugees demands involvement . . . I coordinated both the medical team and the
refugee clients and their sponsors and caseworkers, occasionally protecting one
from the other and often mediating between them. My role as a coordinator
frequently centers on compromise: sensitizing the agencies, medical providers,
and refugees to each others expectations and limitations . . . A common scenario
involves sensitizing the medical community to non-Western medical beliefs and
practices. (Rasbridge 1998: 28–9)
Jeffery MacDonald notes that there are approximately 20 million war refugees
living in the United States. He worked with Iu-Mien people from Laos, who had
fled to Oregon:
Like many refugee researchers, I soon became an applied anthropologist,
first providing services for the Iu-Mien. Later, I took a position in a refugee
resettlement social service agency, where I began to work with other Southeast
Asian ethnic communities, providing direct client services and training, doing
needs assessment research, and managing and designing culturally specific
programs for Southeast Asian refugees . . . As my reputation has grown in the
Southeast Asian community as an expert sympathetic to community needs . . .
I have had to take on the roles of advocate for individuals and of community
political activist. (Macdonald 2003: 309)
As these examples show, advocacy can take a variety of forms. At times it becomes
very formal, for instance when anthropologists act as ‘expert witnesses’ in the legal
arena. This happens regularly in land claims, where they conduct research, compile
evidence, and present this to the land claim court or tribunal. It is also becoming a
more frequent role in relation to refugee communities. Thus Stephanie Schwander-
Sievers, who had conducted lengthy ethnographic research in Albania and Kosovo,
found herself much in demand as a cultural translator and expert witness in legal
cases involving asylum seekers – people seeking political refuge – from these areas:
In both types of cases, I was asked to explain various issues involving ‘Albanian
culture’, either in a written report or, on some occasions, as an expert witness
in court during trial . . . I was usually asked to comment on the risks involved
if an asylum seeker were to be returned to his or her home country, and how
socio-cultural issues at home would affect that risk . . . Regarding criminal cases
I was often approached by police detectives during the criminal investigation
process . . . I was usually asked to explain . . . particular aspects of Albanian culture
and how these would give cultural sense to a violent deed and help explain
its motives . . . In legal procedures and in court, particularly in asylum cases,
individuals from different cultures and legal background come into contact.
Here the anthropologist both participates in, and observes, relations of power.
(Schwander-Sievers 2006: 209–17)
found perplexing) – across a discipline that studied the rituals of contemporary peoples. My next few years
were sorted: I went off to study social anthropology.
From dead Latin to defunct Sanskrit was a short step, and the prospect of a few years in India ‘doing
fieldwork’ was too good an opportunity to miss. I headed to the desert state of Rajasthan and hid out in dusty
archives and palaces talking to old men about the former glories of the Raj. This was fieldwork on kingship,
an institution that no longer legally exists in India, and so my study of the past in the present continued.
Although focused on rescuing dust-laden manuscripts from the ravages of time and termites, I nonetheless
encountered all the usual issues that plague the world. There was the mistreatment of women and children in
the form of domestic violence, and even the occasional sati (the ritual sacrifice of widows on the funeral pyres
of their husbands). And in a country where half the population lives below the poverty line, violence against
the poor and untouchable, and the denial of human rights was, inevitably, part and parcel of everyday life.
On my return to the UK I found myself subjecting innocent anthropology students to the intricacies of the
caste system, Hindu-Muslim violence, the glories of kinship charts and the wonders of patrilateral parallel-cousin
marriage. My world was still mediated by text and the careful evaluation and interpretation of differing versions
of the same reality.
Then, one day a colleague asked me to give a paper at a conference on violence against women in
multicultural Britain. Despite protesting that I knew nothing worth repeating, I was persuaded to offer an
anthropological perspective on domestic violence in British South Asian communities. After my presentation on
‘honour crimes’, a well-known professor came to talk to me, and my journey into legal anthropology and the
writing of expert witness reports in asylum cases in the UK began.
In Britain refugees receive a very bad press. If the newspapers are to be believed all crime, evil and
immorality (and no doubt global warming too) stem from this numerically rather small group; the British never
commit any evil acts, and if we were to rid ourselves of these ‘money-grubbing, welfare-scrounging foreigners’,
the country would become an idyllic utopia. My work with refugees, however, leads me to think of most asylum
seekers as unfortunate people who have managed to survive some appalling experiences.
When individuals seek refuge in Britain they are interviewed, and have to provide evidence to justify their
requests to remain here. This evidence has to show that they have been persecuted, and also why they would
risk further persecution if were forced to return to their country of origin. Many asylum claims are rejected,
and a ‘Letter of Refusal’ from the Home Office explains why. Asylum seekers can appeal against the decision, and
solicitors acting on their behalf ask experts to prepare reports explaining to the Asylum Immigration Tribunals
why a case should be reconsidered.
Anthropologists are consulted when it seems that a cultural explanation might be of use. For example, if
a woman is widowed and has reason to fear for her life in Pakistan, she might seek leave to remain in the
United Kingdom with her naturalized British brother. This was the situation in one of the first legal expert
reports I produced, for a woman who had witnessed a serious crime and was at risk from the family of those
convicted. Not only was the strong documentary evidence of persecution rejected as ‘not accepted’ – the Home
Office also considered that the ‘right to family life’ did not mean that adult siblings should be allowed to join
each other. It was held that the kinship bond between an adult sister and brother was not a primary one, and
that the widow in question should therefore return to Pakistan. If her life was in danger in her own home,
then she should simply move to a different city. After all Pakistan is a big country.
My report showed how, from an early age, brothers and sisters in Pakistan are raised to behave in culturally
prescribed ways, with the understanding that as they get older the sister will not bring dishonour to the brother,
and the brother will undertake to help his sister in later life. This is a close bond, much more pronounced
than in the UK. I was able to demonstrate that women in Pakistan do not usually live alone, and that those
compelled to do so are vulnerable to exploitation and harm. Armed with cultural knowledge, my report set out
why, in this particular case, it was not safe for this woman to return to her home.
Other cases I have worked on include those of persecuted religious minorities such as Christians and Ahmadis
in Pakistan, and Muslim women who have married Hindu men in India. Some require knowledge of customary
practices, particularly where the violence is gender-based. The Home Office may say that women can return to
their country of origin and go to crisis centres, but the reality is that many are killed long before they can
ever get to these, and even the centres may not protect them from further abuse. Further, some legal systems
punish as a crime behaviour that in the UK would be considered only a moral failing. For example, a married
woman who commits adultery in Britain may be considered foolish, may annoy her husband, or may find that
her behaviour generates gossip. In Pakistan, however, such a lapse is not simply a private matter: it is a crime
that can land a woman in prison and end with a potential death sentence. In such cases, my knowledge of
the legal system can make this risk clear to an asylum judge. Then all I can do is to hope that the judge
makes the right decision.
One thing I must never do as an ‘expert’ is to say if I think a case is true or not. All I am expected to
do is to assess the plausibility of any particular asylum claim in the context of my knowledge of the country
and the position of the individual making the asylum claim. The judges are expected to decide on the truth of
the case. My work is to produce an account, a narrative of events, and to interpret these in the light of what
I know as an anthropologist. This is where my earlier years of translation, novel reading, and sorting through
archives of overlapping but never quite matching accounts of events, has finally turned me into: someone who
is, from time to time, of use to others.
CROSSING BOUNDARIES
The in-depth knowledge about particular groups and societies that ethnographic
research provides means that anthropologists are potentially very useful advisers for
international organizations, whose work crosses cultural as well as national bound-
aries. For example, there is growing involvement of anthropologists in government
agencies: in ministries of foreign affairs, diplomatic services, and in organizations
such as UNESCO or the World Health Organisation. There is especially a need for
the skills and insights of anthropology in the governmental and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) that try to assist people suffering from famine, poverty or
ill-health, or from human rights abuses, conflicts or persecution. In the latter areas
it is sometimes difficult to discern a dividing line between work that might be
described as advocacy, and that which is more directly focused on providing aid and
assistance.
In areas concerned with food and water provision, or in the alleviation of poverty,
there are frequent overlaps between the provision of aid and the encouragement of
development. As the next chapter shows, they share many common issues. However,
there is a fundamental difference between ‘helping people in trouble’ and ‘changing
the way that they live’. This chapter therefore focuses on humanitarian activities that
simply aim to help when things go wrong.
There are many governmental and non-governmental agencies involved in aid:
the latter often receive government funding, and the former increasingly contract
work out to independent or semi-independent agencies. However, although most
governments remain involved in the provision of aid to some extent, in the last few
decades there has been a rapid proliferation of non-governmental aid organizations,
not just internationally, but also at national, regional and local levels. In many
instances these have taken up tasks that were formerly the direct responsibility of
governments, creating a set of alternative institutional arrangements.
There is already a whole NGO culture in the world, with its characteristic
symbolism . . . behavioural patterns . . . and a special type of leadership . . . NGOs
develop clustered networks within which there are hierarchies and competition,
especially for sources of funding. The best known among the biggest global
NGO networks are social volunteer, child protectionist, human rights, ethno-
cultural and peacemaking ones, although every country and every region has its
particularities. (Tishkov 2005: 11)
although social movements can provide useful inputs to mainstream politics, their
lack of a democratic mandate raises questions about their legitimacy, even when some
actively promote democracy, and William De Mars (2005), describing them as ‘wild
cards’, notes that they change the whole context in which governance happens.
Every situation is different. For example, Celayne Shrestha’s research shows that
there were only 250 NGOs in Nepal in 1989, but then, after a more democratic
government was instituted in 1996, NGO numbers jumped to 5,978 within a
year, as groups saw an opportunity to break with a state that had long been seen
as corrupt and self-serving: ‘For the intelligentsia, as well as many frontline NGO
workers, NGOs offered an opportunity to break with “corrupt”, personalistic modes
of appointment and promotion and access to services’ (Shrestha 2006: 195).
But Valery Tishkov, whose work is concerned with NGOs in post-Soviet Russia,
warns that NGOs cannot be assumed to be an unambiguous reflection of democratic
aspirations: ‘Some pursue hopelessly separatist agendas. Others perform foreign
policy functions a state finds inconvenient to accomplish directly. Others install a
“benevolent colonialism” complete with local westernized bourgeoisies’ (Tishkov
2005: 1).
As he points out: whatever the agenda of an NGO or its impacts on the people
involved, being unelected: ‘a voluntary organisation is practically impossible to
abolish’ (Tishkov 2005: 6). Steve Sampson, who has analysed the recent activities of
Western NGOs in the Balkans, is similarly dubious about their effects, suggesting
that in this instance they created a new kind of ‘project elite’ that led to a rejection
of Western aid, stirring up local nationalists and weakening the post-Yugoslav states
(Sampson 2003).
So there are many complex questions about the aims of international aid organ-
izations: what are their effects on the functions of government? Who actually
benefits from their efforts? What are the social and cultural costs of aid-based
relationships? What political and ideological values are being promulgated in the
process? By addressing these ‘under-the-surface’ questions, anthropologists have
sought to look beyond comfortable everyday assumptions about aid, and to make
deeper analyses of relationships between NGOs and the recipients of their efforts.
There are often major disparities in power in these relationships, and part of the
task of anthropologists and other social scientists is to reveal these dynamics. Thus
Alnoor Ebrahim’s research focuses on the way that power relations are maintained
through public discourses:
A discourse is a specific and historically produced way of looking at the world
and is embedded within wider relations of power – power that is manifest, for
example, in the scientific ‘expertise’ of development economists, professionals,
and expatriates that serve as advisers, funders and consultants to Southern
Governments and NGOs. (Ebrahim 2003: 13–14)
NGO-GRAPHY
Exploring the interactions between aid agencies and recipients has a number of
potentially useful outcomes. Greater transparency leads to better informed decision
making and illuminates the different perspectives of the parties involved, assisting
communication between them. Researchers in the Department of Anthropology at
Durham University, for example, have a collective research project concerned with
NGOs in Ghana and India. Their work explores the different perspectives of the
state, the NGOs and the donors, and looks at the impact of their relationships on
the poverty eradication programmes that have become the major focus on NGO
activity in those areas (Alikhan et al. 2007).
In Ifugao, in the Philippines, anthropologist Lynn Kwiatkowski considers similar
questions at an international level, examining the interactions between transnational
organizations and local communities:
Some of these global institutions have financially supported, and in some cases
directed, local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that seek to improve
the conditions of everyday life in Philippine communities . . . I discuss some
of the cultural issues, political contestations, and contradictions that can arise
for progressive NGOs working in ‘cultural communities’, or among indigenous
cultural groups, as the NGOs operate within a broader context of national and
international political and economic processes. (Kwiatkowski 2005: 1)
Charlotte Hursey points out that there is still comparatively little analysis of
NGOs and a real need for this kind of work: ‘Although ethnographic approaches
have been applied to the study of the management and structures of private and
public organisations, there are still comparatively few detailed accounts of the
internal lives of non-governmental and civil society organisations, especially at the
local level’ (in INTRAC 2007: 3).
However, this is changing rapidly: ‘In recent years the subfield of political
anthropology, NGO-graphy (i.e., the ethnography of NGOs), has dramatically
expanded as anthropologists have begun to examine the work of NGOs’ (Iskanian
in INTRAC 2007: 3–4).
ASSISTING AID
Many anthropologists are keen to assist aid agencies directly, and their professional
associations have often encouraged their members to make use of their skills in this
way. Some years ago the Royal Anthropological Institute created the Lucy Mair
Medal of Applied Anthropology, which recognizes excellence in using anthropology
for ‘the relief of poverty or distress, or for the active recognition of human dignity’. An
obvious area of application is concerned with the provision of food and medical aid
in times of famine or other forms of disruption (such as earthquakes and tsunamis).
Anthropologists have sometimes taken the initiative in offering their skills in this
regard. For example, in 1984, the American Association of Anthropologists (AAA)
set up a Task Force on African Hunger, Famine and Food Security:
The premise behind providing rosters of anthropologists knowledgeable about
Africa and hunger problems, and symposia and publications on their ideas and
methods, is that anthropologists offer unique perspectives and capabilities that
might improve performance of intergovernment (IGO) and nongovernment
organizations (NGOs) that monitor and respond to hunger problems. (Messer
1996: 241)
As a member of the AAA Task Force, Art Hansen has stressed the need for research
that engages with local complexities:
Our original mandate was to work out better ways to utilize anthropologists
and anthropological knowledge to help Africa and Africans during that major
famine. Our concern at the time was that the planners and staff of assistance
programs often had little appreciation or knowledge of how Africans helped
themselves. That ignorance could result in assistance being less effective or, at
worst, becoming itself a secondary disaster. (Hansen 2002: 263, 273)
disease outbreaks (malaria and leishmaniasis) and the breakdown of formerly stable
social communities.
An appreciation of the effects of displacement is particularly important when
refugees or economic migrants move to countries very different from their own, and
many anthropologists work with ethnic minorities located in societies far from their
homelands.
(1) providing Western audiences with a nuanced picture of the complexity and
flexibility of Islam and Muslim culture . . . (2) exposing the socio-economic
and political processes that foster Islamic extremism and terrorism . . . and (3)
demonstrating that Muslim and Western culture are not as radically different
as some appear to believe and that either is just as capable of tolerance and
extremism as the other. (Moretti 2006: 14)
Moretti does not comment on the potential for Muslim anthropologists to per-
form similar tasks, but clearly in an international discipline such as anthropology
there is scope in all countries for researchers to offer more informed views of other
societies. Moretti’s own fieldwork has been conducted in Oceania, where many small
nations receive US aid, and have expressed support for its ‘war on terror’. However,
each has its own perspective on the issues. In Papua New Guinea, for example:
Reports on ‘terrorism’ and the ‘war on terror’ were followed and debated with
concern. In these discussions, some claimed to be supportive of ‘the terrorists’,
who they regarded as freedom fighters engaged in a just war of liberation. For
many more, the Americans and their allies had no business invading Iraq . . . With
a local history of colonialism which included over five decades of exploitation,
land alienation and natural resource pillage at the hands of other Western
powers, it was not that hard to see why many could sympathise with the Iraqis
and Osama, who they saw as Iraq’s foremost protector against the West.
Yet, in spite of such apparently widely held sympathy for their struggle, ‘the
terrorists’ were viewed with a degree of ambiguity and anxiety. (Moretti 2006:
14)
As these examples make plain, the resolution of conflicts around the world, and
the alleviation of poverty and disease depends heavily on work that enables cross-
cultural understanding. Sadly, there is much that needs to be done in this area,
but those who undertake this kind of work can at least feel that what they do is
worthwhile, and hope that it makes a difference.
3 ANTHROPOLOGY AND
DEVELOPMENT
CRITIQUING DEVELOPMENT
The anthropology of development has much in common with the anthropology of
aid. It often requires interdisciplinary collaborations, and almost invariably entails
interactions between different cultural groups. A consequent need for cross-cultural
translation has long made development a major area of interest for anthropologists.
As with the provision of aid they are also wont to analyse and critique the process
of development, as well as providing assistance in various parts of that process
with international agencies, governments and the recipients of these organizations’
developmental efforts. However, although there is a great deal of overlap between these
areas, a key difference is that while the provision of aid is not necessarily intended to
do more than restore a (presumably) faltering status quo, the fundamental principle
of development is one of initiating change (see Olivier de Sardan 2005). So although
– like aid – development is generally presented as dealing with a problem that needs
solving, or a condition that needs to be cured, it is more accurately defined as ‘a
synonym for more or less planned social and economic change’ (Hobart 1993: 1).
‘Development has often been linked to, or equated with modernisation; that is the
transformation of traditional societies into modern ones, characterised by advanced
technology, material prosperity and political stability’ (Hobart 1993: 5).
The idea of development therefore rests on an assumption that there are
technological, material and political goals to which all societies should aspire, and
that wealthier countries should assist others in attaining these. It is hard to fault this
principle, on the face of it, particularly when many groups around the world are
38 what anthropologists do
plainly struggling even to subsist, but there are some important questions to ask.
Quite apart from the pragmatic reality that aspirational lifestyles that consume a lot
of energy and resources are not sustainable in ecological terms, even for a minority of
the world’s people (and we have yet to address that problem successfully), there are
more complex questions about the values being presented as ‘ideals’ and the social
and cultural costs of transforming ‘traditional’ ways of life into a more homogenous
‘modern’ vision reliant on constant economic growth and industrial modes of
production.
‘Development’ is a largely European and American idea which emerged in the post-
war era (Arce and Long 1999: 5). Attitudes and policy were based on assumptions
about the superiority of nations that had successfully modernized themselves, and
‘backward’ or ‘underdeveloped’ countries were described as ‘the Third World’, repres-
enting an earlier stage of technological inferiority and ignorance. Development
would help them to ‘catch up’. The implication was that local traditions were a bar to
‘progress’ and should be discarded, and a ‘developmentalist’ relationship was created
with Third World countries, requiring that they replicate European and American
models (Escobar 1995).
Because anthropologists work with a variety of cultural groups, they are keenly
aware that there are many alternatives to this dominant model, and – as social
analysts – they also observe that there are some highly differential power relationships
involved in development and, at times, some rather less than altruistic aims.
Because the prevailing rhetoric is of altruistic concern for the less fortunate, it is
useful to remember that development is big business . . . In one form or another,
development is very profitable not just to the western industries involved, but
to those parts of governments which receive aid, let alone to development
agencies. And the giving of development aid and the extension of markets for
manufactured products is more than balanced by the processes . . . by which the
countries to be developed make up the major source of cheap raw materials and
labour. Less obviously, the idea of ‘underdevelopment’ itself, and the means to
alleviate the perceived problem, are formulated in the dominant powers’ account
of how the world is. (Hobart 1993: 2)
With the rise of more market-driven ideologies, a more analytic view of the dev-
elopment process is emerging and an important part of what anthropologists bring to
the field of development – as they do to the area of aid and other fields – is a critical
analysis about larger social and political process in which it takes place. This involves
examining what is actually going on between the parties involved, deconstructing the
rhetoric and the ways that groups are represented, observing what actually happens
to resources, and making visible the underlying dynamics. This critique has been
immensely useful in engendering a much greater awareness of the complex issues in
this area (see Nolan 2002, Mosse 2005, Mosse and Lewis 2005).
DEVELOPING AN UNDERSTANDING
Yongjun Zhao
Adviser, DFID China
I work as the ‘institutional and sustainable livelihoods adviser’ for the UK Department for International
Development (DFID) in Beijing, China. My job is to provide high-quality advice on institutional development and
governance issues for key programmes in rural development, rural water supply and sanitation, water resources
management, fiscal reform and ‘China in transition’ policies.
Having trained in anthropology and environmental studies I make use of anthropological theory and practice
in my work. Anthropological critiques of development and governance in the development industry have been
valuable in enabling my understanding of how institutions and governance can be of crucial importance to the
achievement of donor objectives. As an adviser, I try to make an anthropological critique of government policy
and development practice, and so assist in building effective partnerships between government, donor agencies,
civil society and other organizations.
IN DEVELOPMENT
Anthropologists are also closely involved in development activities, and making the
underlying realities visible is equally vital at a local level. Alberto Arce and Norman
Long (1999: 2) suggest that there is ‘a desperate need’ for empirical, ethnographically
informed research inputs, to articulate local realities and communicate these to
development agencies. These inputs are critical at each stage: in creating appropriate
designs for projects; in ensuring that they are carried out with an appreciation of
local cultural beliefs and values; and in evaluating their progress and outcomes.
CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES
Scarlett Epstein
PEGS (Practical Education and Education Support), Kingsway, England
I have been ‘retired’ now for 20 years, during which period I have worked continuously in the field of
development anthropology, directing research projects on problems facing developing societies. My first project
was a four-year ‘cross-cultural study of population growth and rural poverty’ and the second was an ‘action-
oriented study of the role of rural women in development’. I engaged Third World doctoral students in this
research: 20 per cent of my students now hold professorships in their respective home countries; another 20 per
cent work in health and education and 60 per cent are involved in development projects in Africa and Asia.
I have focused, as a consultant, on poverty alleviation and rural development in general and in particular on
income-generation for some of the poorest women. Conducting micro-society studies in south India and in Papua
New Guinea, I acquired an in-depth understanding of the interplay between culture and developmental activities.
In my work I emphasize the important part culture plays in response to new development opportunities. My
anthropological training has helped me to get economists, who usually base their planning on the ‘rational
economic man’ model, to include cultural variables in their considerations, and this has helped to reduce the
high failure rate of projects.
Ideally, anthropologists will be involved at each of these stages. Ted Green, for
example, worked in development for many years (see Green 1986). This led to
his involvement in the design for a project assisting women’s self-help groups or
‘zenzele’,1 in Swaziland (Green 1998). In earlier research he had shown that there
was a positive correlation between these self-help groups and other development
projects. USAID therefore decided to provide development training for zenzele
group leaders, and asked him to help design the programme. After it had run for
several years, Ted was asked to come back and evaluate its progress. His qualitative
analysis, based on detailed ethnographic research in the area, was able to show the
many – and often subtle – social and economic effects of the training programme,
as well as contributing to wider theories about rural development and the political
status of women.
We cannot understand cultures by looking at individual parts of them in isolation: we have to consider the
whole picture. For example, in oil field developments in Papua New Guinea, it would seem unlikely that religious
beliefs could be an issue, but this is exactly what happened with people talking about the oil coming from
the body of an enormous multi-headed subterranean snake that the oil drill had speared. The idea originated
in their belief that spirits sometimes manifest themselves in the form of frightening snakes. They consequently
became increasingly anxious at the cosmological implications of oil and gas developments and their potential
to lead to disasters. Such views may seem bizarre to people in the petroleum industry, but they clearly need to
be aware of them to understand the reactions and demands of the landowners whose agreement is necessary
for production.
We also need to beware of accumulating ethnographic information not directly related to development issues,
and of potentially disempowering people by representing their knowledge in ways beyond their control, maybe
infringing their intellectual property rights. These are issues that anthropologists are trained to be aware of,
and where they are well placed to make significant contributions to development endeavours. It is an exciting
and challenging time to be involved in this area.
As a central human activity, farming remains a major area of interest for develop-
ment anthropologists. James Fairhead (1990, 1993) has focused on local knowledge
in farming communities in Zaire; Elisabeth Croll and David Parkin (1992) brought
together a number of researchers to consider the relationship between anthropology,
the environment and development; Patrick Herman and Richard Kuper’s (2003)
work is concerned with the effects of international trade negotiations on farmers in
Europe; and Miranda Irving’s research focuses on the issues raised around farming
and irrigation in Oman (see her autobiography in the concluding section). Farming
is not merely an economic and practical activity though: it is also a way of life and,
working with high country sheep farmers in New Zealand, Michele Dominy (2001)
considers how, in a settler society, they construct their identity and attachment to
the land.
Farming is a precarious way of life at the best of times and not all development
projects are successful. Sometimes anthropologists are asked to find out why they
failed: for example, in Lake Titicaca, on the high Andean border of Peru and Bolivia,
Benjamin Orlove and Dominique LeVieil (1989) compared private fish canneries;
state and private trout farms; and a trout cage project assisted by international
NGOs. All were established to increase fish production and, over a period of 20
years, all of them failed. The ethnographic analysis pointed to a need to ‘ground’
development projects more carefully, suggesting that the failure was largely due to
the lack of accountability of distant state bureaucrats, who were unable to control
overfishing in the lake, or to provide regular professional assistance. In this case
the NGOs involved were also able to establish projects without being accountable
for the outcomes, reflecting what Carol Smith (1996: 41) calls ‘the lack of popular
responsibility held by development agents in much of the Third World’.
It is certainly a challenge to chart the linkages between efforts to provide
developmental aid and the realities of what happens when it arrives; and to identify
the factors that decide whether or not projects succeed. Janine Wedel spent a decade
studying the impacts of Western aid to Eastern Europe following the collapse of
communism, and she highlights the need to follow the process through:
I followed the aid story from the policies, prescriptions, rhetoric and mode of
organisation of the donors . . . through to the recipients so dramatically affected
by those policies . . . I concluded that the way in which donors actually connected
with recipients could play a pivotal role in aid outcomes. The individuals involved,
the means by which the connections were established, and the circumstances in
which they connected were of key importance. Yet this was precisely the element
of this process that was so often overlooked . . . Many people discussed the need
for aid and the specific problems it would address . . . Yet how aid is delivered,
by whom and to whom, their goals, and the circumstances that surround these
individuals and their activities, is critical. It determines what recipients actually
get, how they respond to it, and whether aid succeeds or fails. (Wedel 2004:
14–15)
communities, and to work with them in trying to protect wildlife and wider
ecosystems.
Recent events in Kenya have resulted in some healthy – if not contradictory
– rethinking of pastoral land use and its effects on savanna landscapes . . .
Confronted with the prospects of large-scale subdivision and capital-intensive
agriculture near some of Kenya’s most important wildlife areas, international
conservation groups and the government now embrace pastoral land use . . . for
its positive benefits to wildlife conservation. (Little 2005: 48–9)
But dam building around the world continues: Sanjeev Khagram (2004) and
Ranjit Dwivedi (1999) have highlighted the social and cultural issues raised by
the building of the controversial Narmada Dam in India, Jun Jing (1999) has
written about the dispossession created by the Three Gorges Dam in China, and
other ethnographers have noted the particularly disempowering effects that this
displacement has had on rural women (Tan et al. 2001). My own recent work has
been concerned with conflicts over dams and water resources in Australia (Strang
2009). With an intensive developmental agenda, competition for the control and
use freshwater resources has become a major issue. ‘The story of water is all too often
a story of conflict and struggle between the forces of self-interest and opportunities
associated with “progress” and the community-based values and needs of traditional
ways of life’ (Donahue and Johnston 1998: 3).
GLOBALIZATION
Clearly one of the major pressures for development is the process of globalization
itself. In the new millennium, the global picture retains many of its previous
wealth and power divides, but it is greatly complicated by new information-based
technologies, rapid transport and communications, and flows of capital and com-
modities. Anthropologists have therefore also turned their analyses to considering
how development activities function within these wider processes. As well as creating
expanding markets and new demands for resources, globalization has required the
formation of many new cross-cultural relationships: between transnational corporate
networks and local communities; between large and small societies; and between
materially rich and poor countries. In this intensifying global interaction, there is
both a need for effective cross-cultural ‘translation’, and for a thoughtful analysis of
its social and cultural effects.
Anthropologists such as Angela Cheater (1995) and Marc Edelman and Angelique
Haugerud (2005) have tried to set out some new ways to analyse the linkages between
local and global dynamics. More specifically, Akhil Gupta and Aradhana Sharma
have considered how globalization changes ideas about the state, nationhood and
identity. Studying call centres in India, and the issues created by the ‘outsourcing’ of
jobs to countries with cheaper labour, they observe that:
Outsourcing is seen as both a sign of state ‘openness’ modernity, and good
macroeconomic liberalization by the defenders of transnational capitalisms, and
as a charged symbol of decreasing state sovereignty and control by economic
nationalists . . . As a symbol of economic globalization, call centers have come to
occupy a central place in debates on the ‘outsourcing’ of jobs from the North.
Corporations, and increasingly state bureaucracies in the North, are farming
out customer service and processing-related jobs to the South as part of their
cost-cutting measures . . . One of the most important fears fuelling the backlash
against outsourcing is that high-end, white-collar workers in the North are now
in danger of being displaced by cheaper labor in the South (and especially in
the Indian subcontinent). Some of those who cheered the ‘efficiency’ of global
competition in hastening the decline of the heavily unionized ‘smokestack’
industries in the North have now become economic nationalists, as they find
themselves in danger of being displaced by the same capitalist forces. The
emergent transnational economic order is transforming the relationship between
citizenship, national identity and the state. (Gupta and Sharma 2006: 2, 4)
Transnational trade takes many forms, sometimes with widely dispersed effects.
One of the world’s fastest growing industries, for example, is international tourism.
Bringing different cultural groups into contact and exerting a range of developmental
pressures, this is an area of major interest to anthropologists. Thus James Carrier
(2004) looks at how ‘local’ and ‘global’ understandings of the environment meet in
debates about marine parks in Jamaica; Don Macleod (2004) charts the way that
tourism in the Dominican Republic has led to the wholescale appropriation of the
local environment and its resources; and Kenneth Macdonald’s (2004) research on
tourism in the mountains of Pakistan shows how a view of conservation as a form of
‘alternative development’ repositions local fauna as ‘global property’ and indigenous
hunting as ‘poaching’, to be replaced by putatively more sustainable trophy hunting
for wealthy foreigners.
However, tourism is a double-edged sword which can also assist local groups in
maintaining a way of life: ‘The cultural survival of indigenous groups . . . and the
survival of the environment and wildlife are closely interlinked and, according to
some, can result in new types of tourist activities (including ecotourism) that benefit
local development’ (Little 2005: 50).
In making wealthy societies more aware of the realities of others, international
tourism has also assisted less advantaged groups in demanding ‘Fair Trade’. Peter
Luetchford’s work examines the way that ethically motivated trade operates. He has
conducted ethnographic research on the relationships between cooperatives of coffee
producers and the various NGOs and other agencies in Costa Rica who negotiate
with Fair Trade counterparts and commodity markets in the north.
Although I have shown that as policy fair trade does not operate as envisaged,
it is at least implementable. Fair trade opens up moral, economic, and political
possibilities in development . . . from ethnography we can begin to see how
policies take shape in practice. (Luetchford 2005: 144)
There are other, more problematic aspects of globalized markets. For example,
Nancy Scheper-Hughes was asked to assist an international Task Force looking at
the issues raised by global traffic in human organs for transplants. She carried out
ethnographic research in Brazil, South Africa and India,
. . . examining the ethical, social, and medical effects of the commercialization
of human organs, and accusations of human rights abuses regarding the
procurement and distribution of organs to supply a growing global market.
[This involved] . . . forays into alien and at times hostile and dangerous territory
to explore the practice of tissue and organ harvesting and organ transplantation
in the morgues, laboratories, prisons, hospitals, and discreet operating theaters
where bodies, body parts, and technologies are exchanged across local, regional
and national boundaries. Virtually every site of transplant surgery is in some
sense part of a global network. At the same time, the social world of transplant
surgery is small and personalistic; in its upper echelons it could almost be
described as a face-to-face community. (Scheper-Hughes 2002: 270–1)
In Central and South America there have been many conflicts about land and
resources. In the 1980s, attempts to privatize water in Mexico led to angry protests by
women in low-income urban areas, who organized mass rallies and street blockades.
Vivienne Bennett’s work looks at the political dynamics underlying these protests:
Poor urban women are often the protagonists in these protests because infra-
structure problems, especially inadequate water services, have an immediate
impact on the difficulty of their housekeeping work. At the same time, women’s
needs are inadequately represented or addressed by formal political institutions
such as political parties. As a result, protest has become the public voice of poor
urban women . . . At least part of the objective of women’s actions becomes the
transformation of gender relations. (Bennett 1995: 108)
Violent protests also resulted from more recent attempts to privatize water in
Bolivia. Robert Albro (2005) investigated the violent civil revolt that followed,
exploring the relationship between regional and global activist networks. This work
is part of an important and expanding body of anthropological research concerned
with understanding the new transnational social movements, which are often the
source of ‘counter-development’ – resistance to globalizing forces and imposed
development schemes (see Hobart 1993, Arce and Long 1999).
‘Counter-development’ is evident at a local level too. James Fairhead and Melissa
Leach’s (1996) work shows how groups in Africa devise alternative narratives
to challenge ‘expert’ knowledge, and Ralph Grillo and Andrew Stirrat (1997)
similarly point to a need not only to articulate the multiple perspectives involved
in development activities, but also to consider how groups resist the imposition of
others’ visions of desirable ‘modernity’. Thus as members of interdisciplinary teams,
or as individual researchers, anthropologists are closely involved in every aspect of
development, working with communities and networks around the world as they,
in various ways, welcome or resist social and economic changes and negotiate their
relationships with others.
‘ENVIRONMENTAL’ PROBLEMS
As environmental problems around the world become increasingly pressing, it is
plain that although most of the challenges we face are framed terms of ‘climate’ or
‘ecology’, their causes are anthropogenic – they are caused by human activities. This
points to an urgent need to understand ‘why people do what they do’ in relation to
the environment. Why do societies develop economic practices that degrade land,
over-use resources, and threaten the wellbeing of other species and indeed entire
ecosystems? Why don’t they rein in population growth and resource use to sustainable
levels? What enables some groups to have much smaller ecological footprints than
others? These questions are not ecological: they are social and cultural, and involve
particular beliefs, values and practices that lead to different ways of interacting with
the material world.
encoded in water. I chose the River Stour in order to work with an arts and environment group, Common
Ground, who were composing music and poetry about the river with local community groups. Water has very
powerful and emotive meanings. The research looked at how people interacted with it, why they wouldn’t
conserve it, and why (more than a decade after the water industry was privatized) they were still mad as hell
about losing public ownership of it (see Strang 2004).
A year or two later I was back on the other side of the planet, with a Royal Anthropological Institute
Fellowship in ‘Urgent Anthropology’.1 Returning to the Mitchell River, I did some more work with the Aboriginal
community in Kowanyama, looking at the way they presented their relations to land in the political arena, and
doing a lot of ‘cultural mapping’ with the elders, recording data about their sacred sites and ‘story places’.
I had barely unpacked again in the United Kingdom when I accepted a university post in New Zealand. In
theory, that is where I live now, although in the last few years I have spent a lot of time back in Queensland,
investigating the wider social and cultural aspects of water issues along the Brisbane and Mitchell Rivers. With
the harsh water shortages that Australia has been experiencing, there is increasing conflict over access to
resources, so this research continues to keep me busy.
My ongoing ‘water works’ also led to an invitation to join the Scientific Advisory Committee for UNESCO’s
International Ecohydrology Programme. As its name suggests, this brings together researchers in ecology and
hydrology from many different countries. However, until recently the group had paid little attention to the social
and cultural aspects of human engagements with water. My task is to assist the programme in encompassing
these dimensions. Being a tiny cog in the wheel of one of the world’s largest NGOs is a new and intriguing
experience.
With water resources coming under increasing pressure, most countries are introducing new systems for
governing and managing water, and trying to find new technical solutions to water shortages. Often this is
very ‘top down’, and my concern, as an environmental anthropologist, is to ensure that the views of the people
most affected by these changes are clearly represented, and that reforms are developed with an understanding
of the social and cultural beliefs and values that direct water use and management at a local level.
There are many other strands of research that I would like to investigate further: for example thinking about
the design of water features in gardens and public parks; the use of horses in stock work and the human-animal
relations that this entails; concepts of ownership and property in relation to water. And ... and ... and ... And
that’s the trouble: inside or outside the academe, anthropology can take you anywhere, into whatever area of
research seizes your imagination and enables you to feel that you are doing something worthwhile.
from this experience. For example, Darrell Posey’s (1989) research with indigenous
communities in the Amazon led him to consider the lessons that other groups could
draw from their ecologically sensitive methods of forest management,4 and working
with communities who do not see ‘nature’ as something completely separate from
themselves encouraged Philippe Descola and Gisli Palsson (1996) to think critically
about the way that Western societies treat ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ as separate categories,
which allows for ‘nature’ to be objectified in ways that many environmentalists regard
as exploitative. Explorations of alternative perspectives and values are illuminating,
and this work highlights one of the major gains of a comparative social science: that
by offering insights into different ways of understanding the world, it enables people
to step back and consider their own in a new light. This reflexive view is essential,
of course, if we are to understand – and potentially change – the factors that create
socially and ecologically unsustainable relationships with the environment.
INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGES
One of the most important things that anthropology brings to the environmental
arena is an appreciation that resource management emerges not just from specific
cultural ideas about ‘what resources are for’ but from whole belief systems and the
structural arrangements of a society, which includes its forms of governance and
decision-making, its economic practices, its social and spatial organization, and its
laws concerning the ownership of resources and access to them. ‘Governance’ is not
just a matter of political parties: in many societies, religious beliefs play an equally
important role. For example, Stephen Lansing’s (1991) research with a community
of rice growers in Bali showed that the hydrological management of water flowing
from a mountain lake through weirs and channels into farmers’ rice paddies was
actually conducted by the priests responsible for a series of ‘water temples’ placed at
key points in the streams.5 Lansing’s major challenge was to translate this reality for
the ‘development experts’ who wanted to come in and tell the farmers how to manage
their resources better. As it turned out, the priests’ local hydrological experience, and
the farmers’ knowledge about planting, pest management and so on, assisted by a
social and religious framework that maintained fair access to water for all, was shown
to be considerably more in tune with the realities of local ecosystems, and with local
social needs, than the ideas promoted by external agencies. ‘The anthropological
contribution has been to bring people back into the discussion by highlighting their
perspectives, as well as the gap between local knowledge and that of the planners and
“experts”’ (McDonald 2002: 298).
Anthropologists have therefore devoted considerable energy to recording local
systems for classifying and understanding ecology, and there is now a large body of
literature on ‘traditional ecological knowledge’ that not only provides a rich lexicon
of information about habitats and species but also describes some very diverse ways
of thinking about these, producing localized expertise which has sometimes been
described as ‘ethnobotany’, ‘ethnobiology’ or ‘ethnoscience’ (see Bicker, Sillitoe and
Pottier 2004).
Stephen Lansing’s role in ‘explaining’ local knowledge to development experts is
one that is frequently carried out by environmental anthropologists. In conducting
ethnographic research, many of us find ourselves acting as ‘cultural translators’,
not just for indigenous groups or local farmers, but also for the various groups
involved in resource management, which often include mining and manufacturing
industries, government and non-government agencies, natural scientists, catchment
management groups, recreational land and water users, conservation groups and
suchlike. Each of these groups will have its own perspective on resource management
issues; its own ways of understanding local ecology; its own forms of knowledge and
expertise; and its own aims and values. Some cross-cultural translation can therefore
help to ensure that each group has a ‘voice’ in the proceedings, and each can gain an
understanding of the other perspectives involved. This is pretty essential if they are
to reach any kind of amiable agreement.
Local knowledge is often enlightening: for example, James Fairhead’s (1993)
work on environmental change in Africa, shows that quite often the ‘received
wisdom’ on problems such as land degradation and deforestation is contradicted
by the experiences of local groups. And, working in South America, Ronald Nigh
found that while deforestation for cattle farming was framed (and often demonized)
by environmentalists as a core problem, a closer ethnographic analysis of local issues
showed that better outcomes could be achieved by working directly with cattle
farmers to understand and improve their managerial practices. This ‘allowed us to
reduce the area of a ranch devoted to pasture to one-third or even one-tenth of the
area, while at the same time increasing bioeconomic production in absolute terms.
The project has also allowed some reforestation to occur, as well as generating income
to support changes’ (Nigh 2002: 314).
POLITICAL ECOLOGY
Failing to engage with local communities can carry a high social and ecological
price tag. Susan Stonich’s research in Honduras examined what happened when the
government attempted to boost the economy and pay off foreign debt by expanding
shrimp farming along the coast, without considering the traditional land owners.
Coastal land was given to investors – often government officials, military leaders
and urban elites. There was a massive leap in shrimp production (1,611 per cent
in ten years), but also major social and environmental consequences. The previous
small landholders lost their access to newly privatized ponds and wetlands that they
had relied on for fishing, harvesting and firewood. There were few jobs to replace
these local economic practices. The shrimp farms devastated the habitats essential to
other species and, in effect, the government’s decision created the conditions for ‘a
permanent human and ecological crisis in the region’ (Stonich, in McGuire 2005:
94).
Implicit in each of these examples is the reality that ecological crises affect not only
plants and animals but also the people who are not powerful enough to pass the costs
on to others. There are many such groups: not just indigenous communities whose
land is appropriated by larger societies for national parks or commercial activities,
but also – as in the Honduras example – people displaced by developments that
remove their ability to make a living. Examples include local fishing communities
whose resources vanish when over-fished by industrial trawlers from elsewhere;
small farmers pushed out by industrial agriculture and urban expansion; whole
populations forced to migrate when intensified farming in fragile environments
leads to desertification. Eric Wolf pointed out several decades ago that
People were not simply engaged in the ‘work process’ of applying technology to
nature . . . they were people caught up in struggles to obtain and retain access to
resources, to resist or manipulate the ‘penetration of capital’ into the countryside,
to fight peasant wars when the opportunities arose – real people enmeshed in
relations of power. (Wolf, in McGuire 2005: 92–3)
Examining the discourses of different interest groups, and how they represent
and promulgate particular beliefs and values, is an important part of anthropological
research. Anthropologists also consider how different groups evaluate and present
risk and, here too, the translation of local knowledges and the context encapsulated
by ethnographic research can be helpful. Edward Liebow, for example, worked
with rural landowners in America’s Washington State, analysing their responses to a
proposal to build a major hazardous waste incineration plant nearby. He observed that
local groups are often excluded from decision making, leading to deep conflicts:
In practical terms, the issue here is deciding who gets seats at the table when
these choices get made; in other words, what qualifies as applicable knowledge
and insight . . . One specific aim of the practice of anthropology in environmental
planning is to give voice to the knowledge and insights of non-specialists, whose
experience . . . lends authority to lay judgements about environmental dangers
and the public agencies responsible for managing those dangers. (Liebow 2002:
300)
Current debates on climate change also benefit from what is commonly called
‘discourse analysis’,8 which examines how groups present ideas in ways that sub-
stantiate their views and support their own interests. Plainly climate change is an
area that is becoming increasingly important analytically: Kay Milton and other
anthropologists are investigating public understandings of the issues (Milton 2008),
and researchers such as Michael Glantz (2001, 2003) are considering the social
effects of climate change on communities, and the implications of these effects for
policy development. Some anthropologists are directly employed in climate change
research institutes, for example, Annette Henning works at the Solar Energy Research
Center (SERC) at Dalarna University in Sweden, and believes that energy use and its
impacts are urgently in need of social analysis:
The issues of climate change call for in-depth research by social scientists in
collaboration with technical researchers and professionals outside the academic
world . . . Anthropological theories, methods and research are needed, not only
for the study of how humans around the world adapt to climate change, but for
studies that might actually contribute to climate change mitigation. (Henning
2005: 8)
UNPACKING GARBAGE
Climate change is not the only waste-related issue with potentially major social and
ecological effects. Social analysis is also illuminating in considering other kinds of
waste, and in recent years popular interest has been raised by what Americans have
called ‘garbology’ (see Buchli et al. 2001). William Rathje’s work in Tucson Arizona
hit the headlines by applying archaeological thinking to household waste. As he
says:
All archaeologists study garbage . . . our data is just fresher than most . . . What
we do not have and what we need are specialists to study the crucial relationship
between people and things, especially now, as the need to manage resources
efficiently becomes essential. The Garbage Project studies household garbage
because, whether dealing with ancient Maya or modern America, the household
is society’s most commonplace and basic socioeconomic unit. (Rathje, in
Podolefsky and Brown 2003: 98–9)
Rathje’s (2001) work on garbage, supported by the Environment Agency and the
Solid Waste Council of the Paper Industry, has obvious relevance for planning in
waste management, as does his research on food waste, both at a household level and
in larger cycles of production, consumption and distribution.
Each stage in the larger cycles that create waste is critical, and many environ-
mental anthropologists work with groups who produce food and goods. There is an
entire sub-field of ‘agricultural anthropology’. For example, Yunita Winarto (1999)
has examined debates between local farmers and scientists on pest management in
Indonesia; research by Carolyn Sachs (1996) considers the ways that gender roles are
constructed in farming; and Ben Wallace (2006) is involved in a project attempting
to understand the social pressures that have led to deforestation in the Philippines.
Such research is generally conducted with a view to assisting the development of
better agricultural strategies, and in each instance, researchers bring the social and
cultural aspects of farming to the fore. Thus, conducting research on a strawberry
farming cooperative in California, Miriam Wells highlighted the differences between
a ‘top down’ purely economic assessment of its success, and the local perspectives
of the participants, which pointed to the cooperative’s importance in providing
disadvantaged Mexican farmers with social status, security, and more stable family
and community lives, as well as better access to education and other social services
(Wells, in Ervin 2005).
HUMAN–ANIMAL RELATIONS
Environmental anthropologists also go to sea, as fisheries management is critical in
terms of food supply. There are major issues about the ecological sustainability of
fish populations, as well as the social sustainability of the many communities who
depend on fishing for their livelihoods.
Fisheries anthropologists have worked long and hard to find, document, and
recommend solutions to the problem of a resource that has no owners . . . Most
significantly they have placed notions of co-management – the call for local
communities to share in the management of their own resources – firmly on the
agendas of state and international resource management. (Van Willigen 2005:
98)
A ‘resource that has no owners’ raises complex questions about who should have
rights of access, and as anthropologists have shown, this is very much an arena in
which power and politics are critical, both at an international level, in negotiations
over quotas, and locally, between different groups of resource users and managers.
Thus Bonnie McCay (2000, 2001), who works on fisheries policy issues, seeks ways
for fishers and policy makers to collaborate in finding workable solutions for fishing
communities. There are some useful ethnographies of diverse local management
schemes, and these are not always conventional: for example, James Acheson (1987)
produced an ethnography about the ‘lobster gangs’ who protect communal access to
resources in Maine, ensuring a greater density – and so more effective conservation
– of lobsters in ‘their’ territories.
Environmental anthropologists are also keenly interested in broader conservation
issues, and there is a fast-growing area of research concerned with human–animal
relations and ‘animal rites’ (as well as animal rights). Classically, this has involved
research exploring the various ways that cultural groups categorize and relate to
animals (for example, as totemic beings, or as spiritual creatures) or examining how
societies have made use of animals in systems of production, either hunting them as
prey, or domesticating them to varying degrees.
Gregory Forth’s (2003) research in Indonesia, for instance, considers how the
Nage people incorporate birds into religious ideas, myths and poetry, and regard
them as having prophetic abilities. Paul Sillitoe’s (2003) ethnographic work with New
Guinea Highlanders considers how animals – in particular pigs – are classified and
dealt with in consequence. Understanding how particular societies relate to animals
is useful in a variety of ways. It provides insights into their cosmological beliefs
and understandings of the world; their interactions with ‘nature’; the ways in which
they organize themselves socially; and their ideas about identity and personhood. It
also helps us to understand why people think some species are – or are not – worth
conserving and protecting.
Anthropologists have often worked with communities whose way of life is bound
up with particular animal species. For example, Gideon Kressel’s (2003) research on
shepherding in the Middle East and Israel considers how groups are struggling to
preserve a traditional form of pastoralism that they see as their cultural legacy, while
also encompassing the political realities of the region. Such lifeways are integral to
the preservation of cultural diversity, and many anthropologists believe that it is
important to record and publicize ethnographic accounts of them in the hope of
broadening the wider political reality to encompass and valorize these groups and
their cultural traditions.
From a very different perspective, James Serpell’s (1996) research takes a look at
how many societies have created the idea of ‘pets’, and incorporated animals into
their domestic lives. This work shows how cultural groups think about animals as
semi-persons, or as fellow members of the family, and how their worldviews use
animals creatively as categories of characteristics (feline or foxy) or behaviour (being
boorish, bullish, bovine . . . or chicken). These understandings help to explain how
people interact with the particular range of species in their environments, as well as
revealing the way that they organize social relationships and evaluate behaviour.
The social and cultural meanings of hunting, even in urbanized industrial
societies, have been considered by anthropologists such as Matt Cartmill (1993)
and, more recently, Garry Marvin (2006), whose research with English foxhunting
groups informed highly contentious debates on whether this activity should be
banned. Rather than taking sides in the conflict, Marvin sought to articulate the
deeper meanings and ideas located in hunting:
What I wanted to do was something different – I wanted to understand what
foxhunting is per se. I sought to understand the social and cultural processes
that constituted foxhunting. As an anthropologist I have a particular interest in
human-animal relations, and it seemed to me that at the heart of hunting were
some complex configurations of such relations . . . I regularly heard those who
participated in foxhunting defend it against attacks from the outside but that
defence never seemed to tally exactly with how they spoke about hunting, the
experiences they had of it and the meanings it had for them when they were
talking amongst themselves. (Marvin 2006: 193, 194)
parties involved in the debate made use of his ethnographic research, and the deeper
understandings that it provided.
As species extinctions have reached unprecedented levels, research on human–
animal relations has become more focused on the social and economic practices that
result in the loss or degradation of plant and animal habitats, and in the pressures on
endangered species. Quite often there are clashes between environmental groups and
local communities whose view of animal (or other) species may be less protective.
Such conflicts have been analysed by Dimitri Theodossopoulos, who investigated
‘troubles with turtles’ on a Greek island (2002), and by Adrian Peace (2001, 2002),
whose research – which includes ‘an ethnography of whale watching’ – considers
diverse cultural perspectives on dingoes, whales and sharks in Australia.
As an anthropologist who was also an active environmentalist, I did much of my fieldwork in committee
meetings. This may sound dull, but it wasn’t at all, because the meetings were about what interested me most
– how people manage and interact with the natural world. At one stage I was on fifteen different committees,
covering everything from local park management to the national council of Europe’s largest conservation
organization. I was also on a government advisory committee, commenting on proposals for oil exploration
in the Irish Sea, wind farms, new housing developments, changes in environmental legislation – pretty well
anything that affected the landscape and wildlife of Northern Ireland. All the time I was doing this, I was
applying my anthropological knowledge as well as collecting material for my research. And when my time on
the committees came to an end, I was told that I would be difficult to replace because I understood the
human, cultural side of nature conservation as well as the biological side.
I didn’t get paid directly for any of this work: I remained a professional academic, and the research was
part of my job. I got the distinct impression, though, that had I wanted to move out of academia and into a
non-governmental organization, or even into the environmental branch of the civil service, it would not have
been difficult. It was clear to me that an anthropologist’s skills are not only useful, but also recognized and
valued, something that does not always happen. So I would advise anyone who wants to change the world to
go for anthropology. The better we understand ourselves, the better our chances of making changes that lead
to a better future.
Concerns about conservation are not only confined to wildlife and habitats:
there are many groups equally concerned to preserve cultural heritage in its various
forms although, as Barbara Bender’s work on Stonehenge demonstrates (1998), they
often have very different ideas about how this should be done. Her research with
the various groups arguing over Stonehenge – English Heritage, druids, New Age
groups and so forth – shows how each imagined, evaluated and represented the site,
and served to explain the sometimes extreme conflicts over its management and
use.
Although conflict between groups – over land and resources, animals, habitats
and important cultural sites – is a common theme in environmental anthropology,
I don’t wish to give the impression that this subdisciplinary area is all about
conflict. There are many strands of research that are simply concerned to gain a
deeper understanding about how human beings interact with their environments.
For example, analyses by Barbara Bender (1993), Chris Tilley (1994), Jeff Malpas
(1999) and Rodney Giblett (1996) illuminate the processes through which people
make cultural landscapes and locate meaning in them.9 Kay Milton’s research with
environmental groups led her to consider closely how humans develop emotional
attachments to places, or to ‘nature’ (2002, and Milton and Svašek 2005). This has
fostered a lot of work in this area, such as that by Tracey Heatherington, whose
research on communal territory in Sardinia showed how ‘. . . attachment to the land
is perceived as inherent to cultural identity, economic futures and the persistence
of community . . . belonging to the town commons is felt in the body and in the
family. It is an object of ongoing ‘love’, nostalgia, passion, worry, grief and jealousy’
(Heatherington 2005: 152–3).
This kind of research also connects with areas such as architecture and urban
planning, in which it is vital to have an understanding of how people relate to their
surroundings, both in creating successful urban spaces, and in helping to move
towards more sustainable ways of living. For example, David Casagrande and his
fellow environmental anthropologists are involved in an interdisciplinary project
in Arizona, working with biologists and ecologists to bring urban landscaping,
human behaviour and water conservation together in experimental research aimed
at contributing to water management policy (Casagrande et al. 2007).
Environmental and architectural themes also come together in Marcel Villenga’s
work, which considers vernacular (local) traditions in architecture, and considers
what can be learned from these. He notes
. . . the strength of the need, desire and capacity of human beings all around the
world to be in control of their own built environment, to create buildings that
are intimately related to their own sense of identity . . . Buildings can be culturally
responsive and environmentally sustainable, if creative use is made of resources
and vernacular methods are used in combination with modern and sometimes
innovative technologies . . . anthropology has the potential to contribute much
to these attempts. (Villenga 2005: 7)
Hills points to several key contributions from anthropology to policy and decision
making: its use of ‘grassroots’-level evidence to inform analysis; its strengths in being
able to consider events in relation to a wider context; its ability to understand and
empathize with diverse views on issues; and its commitment to communicating this
understanding across cultural boundaries. He also makes an important point in
observing that anthropological theory is readily applicable, and can make a critical
difference in how events are analysed. It is not enough, he says, to list facts or sign
petitions:
The real strength of academics . . . should not be merely making a mark on a
page; it should be making a mark on a problem by evolving, and applying,
what we do best, i.e., generating concepts to better understand . . . Given that all
wars and conflicts are essentially wars about meaning – of identity, ownership
of natural resources, of control, of purity, of profit, of greed, and grievance . . .
surely anthropologists concerned with the comprehension and generation of
meanings should be claiming a role. (Hills 2006: 130–1)
Officials hoped that the study would provide some simple formula for helping
them to make their hard financial decisions, but they also wanted a general
study of community conditions that could be used by other government and
nongovernment agencies. For nongovernment charitable organisations, pressures
were becoming overwhelming. Because of government cutbacks in direct services
and funding to human service agencies, more and more was being expected of
the non-profit sector. The United Way had to sort out these difficulties in its
planning. (Ervin 2005: 109)
The research project identified needs in seventeen ‘human service’ areas, including
employment, housing, poverty, a range of health issues, recreation, substance abuse,
ageing and Native issues, and showed that ‘about 25% of the population was
potentially in need of the sort of services that were provided by United Way or
parallel agencies’ (Ervin 2005: 88). It also illustrated the cultural and sub-cultural
diversities within the city, and the way that these intersected with particular social
needs.
The concern for social justice that characterizes anthropology leads many prac-
titioners to work with disadvantaged groups. Frank Munger (2002), for example,
has promoted the value of ethnography in revealing the various aspects of poverty
and economic survival strategies in a globalizing economy. Survival strategies are
culturally specific, and an understanding of these and their ethnographic context
can greatly assist aid agencies in tailoring their activities to fit local needs.
The way that local and national governments deal with problems also benefits
from ethnographic insights. For example, Kim Hopper’s (1991) research on the
realities of life and the mental health issues for homeless people in New York has
enabled the authorities charged with rehousing or providing assistance to people
on the streets to do so in ways that accommodate these realities and deal more sens-
itively with the mental health issues involved. Patricia Marquez’s (1999) work with
homeless youths in Caracas was directed towards similar improvements, with the
ethnographic approach to their experiences as a sub-cultural community yielding a
useful understanding of their particular social rules and moral universe.
Poverty and crime do not necessarily go together, but there is often a relationship
between social disadvantage, poor education, and levels of criminal involvement.
Gaining an in-depth understanding of the experiences that people have and the
social contexts they inhabit provides important insights into the causes of crime.
For example, Mark Totten and Katherine Kelly used ‘life course analysis’ with young
offenders who have been convicted of murder or manslaughter:
We wanted to uncover the participant’s world from his or her own viewpoint . . .
The research explored the intentions, meanings and motives young people
ascribe to their actions within the context of having them recount their life
experiences. Our theoretical position suggests that involvement in the criminal
justice system and in high-risk activities was the result of a lifetime of events
that, in turn, contributed to the risk of committing homicide. (Totten and Kelly
2005: 77)
His research focused on how these conditions, and the marginalization that comes
with them, contributed to the growth of a street-gang subculture and crime in urban
areas. By doing in-depth ethnography within the ‘sub-culture’ of gang membership,
his research pointed to ways that problems could be addressed at an educational level,
through special programmes and through more effective home–school linkages.
Clearly insights into all of these factors are helpful to social service agencies and
those concerned with maintaining law and order. In investigating the underlying
causes of crime, anthropologists have therefore encouraged government agencies to
look beyond simple cultural or racial stereotypes, and to consider – and address
– the real causes of social dysfunction.
HOME WORK
Having a home is a basic human need, and anthropologists’ skills are useful for
agencies involved in housing and urban planning. There is a wide range of ethno-
graphy examining how different societies think about, design and use domestic and
public spaces, and the culturally diverse ideas and values that come into play in
this process. The economics of having a home are also a key issue for many people,
particularly in urbanized societies, and there is useful anthropological research
being done in this area too. For example, Erve Chambers was involved in a project
evaluating a programme designed by the United States Department of Housing and
Urban Development. The programme was meant to give financial assistance to low-
income families and allow them more choice in rental housing, as well as inducing
builders (with inspections) to provide better quality facilities. Located in Boston, his
research evaluated the effects of government policy on families, looking at how it
affected their choices and their costs of living (in Ervin 2005: 106).
As people become more mobile and cities expand, social tensions can rise. At
the other end of the housing market, Brett Williams’ (2006) work is concerned
with the clashes of culture and class that can arise when urban neighbourhoods
become ‘gentrified’, bringing together people from different backgrounds, with very
different ideas about who ‘belongs’ in the community, what constitutes neighbourly
behaviour, and how public space should be used. Even in small, everyday conflicts,
an understanding of cultural differences is helpful in resolving disputes, which (as
the number of ‘neighbours at war’ on reality TV illustrates) can escalate rapidly.
Access to housing can also be determined by cultural perceptions. For example,
Kathryn Forbes’ research showed how stereotypical images of Mexican farmworkers
created a barrier for them in California’s housing policy:
Despite the desperate need for affordable housing in the rural areas of Fresno
County, local policy makers either have failed to aid or have actively discouraged
attempts to increase the stock of affordable housing . . . Public officials make
policy decisions based on both a land use ideology that rationalizes governmental
failure to serve Mexicans working in the agriculture industry and portraits of
farmworkers and farmworker families that reflect stereotypes . . . This ideology
and these stereotypical profiles operate to render invisible portions of the
Mexican farmworker population who have been working in the area for decades.
(Forbes 2007: 196)
PRESCRIPTION AND PERSUASION
Another basic human need is for health and wellbeing. The involvement of anthro-
pologists in medical issues and in health care is examined more closely in Chapter
7, but the general health and welfare of the population is also a major issue for
any government, and a number of anthropologists are employed in assisting policy
development and implementation in this area. Health care can be intensely political,
most particularly when access to resources is uneven. Cori Hayden’s (2007) work, for
example, is concerned with the ethical and political issues around access to medical
resources. Her research has focused on the debates in Mexico when the government,
frustrated by the soaring costs of imported pharmaceutical products, enabled the
legal creation and use of generic ‘similar’ drugs with the argument that this was in
the public interest.
In practical terms, there are two key ways of enacting government policies: legis-
latively, through laws and regulations; and through persuasion – communicating
and promoting ideas and information, encouraging some kinds of behaviour, and
discouraging others.
One of the major prerequisites for public health is a healthy environment. As
well as researching environmental issues directly (Chapter 4.), anthropologists work
with the regulatory agencies responsible for protecting public health in a variety
of ways: for example, by ensuring that food providers practise good hygiene; that
industries do not release pollution into the communities where they are located; and
that individuals do not impinge on the health of their neighbours.
Thus Roberta Hammond (1998) made use of her anthropological training in
understanding the people and the cultural dynamics surrounding her work as an
environmental health specialist in Florida, in Franklin County’s Department of
Community Affairs. Using research methods such as open-ended interviewing and
participant observation, she was able to ‘elicit as complete a contextual framework as
possible for the problem or situation at hand’:
I incorporated various features of ethnographic field work in the performance of
my duties as a public health official . . . By participating in community life, I was
able to increase my sensitivity to residents’ concerns and gain a more balanced
view of the issues important to them versus those important to the state. On
the other hand, in the observation mode, impersonal detachment as an outsider
allowed me the use of authority in enforcement and other unpopular actions
necessary for a public health official. In all cases, good listening skills facilitated
better community relations.
While I am sure that differences of gender, socialization, and personality also
affected the outcome of my work, my background in anthropology helped me
Bhattacharjee’s research shows how respect for the ‘privacy’ of domestic space
makes it difficult to tackle these problems, and she has used anthropological analyses
to rethink ideas about private and public spaces, and to suggest some new directions
in tackling domestic violence and abuse.
Cultural insights are equally important in one of the most fundamental of
responsibilities that societies have: caring for children and ensuring their healthy
development. Anthropologists are involved in many kinds of research relating to
children: for example Pat Caplan (2006) conducts research on the social and cultural
issues surrounding adoption. Cross-cultural adoptions raise many complex issues and
are highly controversial, as illustrated by the public debates surrounding adoptions
by ‘celebrities’ such as Madonna and Angelina Jolie. This is therefore an area that
is particularly in need of careful social analysis and cultural sensitivity. The process
of raising children in general is another major area of interest for anthropologists.
Jonathan Green has worked in the area of child care for a number of years, and
observes that
. . . while I became involved . . . largely by chance, I have found numerous inter-
sections between my work in child care and early childhood education and my
study and research in anthropology . . . Anthropology has much to add to the
field . . . A key contribution is awareness of the importance of culture in defining
interpersonal interactions and discourse . . . Additionally, applied anthropological
concepts of intercultural negotiation and collaborative and cooperative efforts
towards change can contribute to improving the quality of day care . . . How and
what we can teach children in the early years of life has immense repercussions
for the future of the children and our society as a whole . . . it is an area in need
of qualitative and quantitative anthropology research and anthropologically
informed practice. (Green 1998: 161–5)
EDUCATION
Many people think that education is simply a matter of going to school and acquiring
knowledge and skills. However, it is more than that: it is also an important part of
how nation-states construct themselves, ensuring that schooling also teaches students
allegiance to the state – hence American rituals such as flag raising in schools, and the
recent introduction of ‘citizenship’ in the UK curriculum. However, globalization
and commoditization have had a major effect on this process. Anthropologists have
been critical of the reframing of education as a commodity (Cooper 2004) and of
the effects of selling it internationally.
Public education remains the nation-state’s foremost instrument of forging
citizens. But the emergence of ‘international education’, a system explicitly
based on the ideology of globality and outside the purview of national curricula,
provides a way to circumvent the citizen-making machine. This [research], based
on fieldwork among Chinese secondary school students in Hungary, considers
the interaction between ‘international education’ and transnational migrants in
a nation-state whose public education, as the state itself, has little interest in the
‘integration’ of non-natives. (Nyíri 2006: 32)
conducted detailed ethnographic research in inner city schools, and his classic text
was seminal in defining racial issues in the educational system.
Other anthropologists have looked at the wider educational context: thus Yvonne
De Gaetano (2007) has considered the importance of involving parents in the
schooling process and ensuring that it has a culturally relevant approach. A careful
consideration of the social and cultural context of education is important, in order
that the interests of all children – including those from minority or disadvantaged
groups – are upheld: ‘Most educational anthropologists, some of whom are also
teachers, believe that their specialized knowledge makes them potentially more
effective advocates for children – and for amelioration of the issues having an impact
on their success within their micro- and macro-sociocultural contexts’ (Kedia and
Van Willigen 2005: 272).
Concha Delgado-Gaitan describes her work as a combination of advocacy and
facilitation: ‘Through my role as a participant-observer, I have become actively
engaged with the community where I research to act as a ‘facilitator’. By doing so
I am able to act as an advocate for the families, using research data to inform and
develop agency for the people as they shape policies and practices in the schools and
the community at large’ (Delgado-Gaitan, in Kedia and van Willigen 2005: 272).
In multicultural societies, language is also an educational issue both in terms
of assisting the children of new immigrants in acquiring sufficient language to
participate in the educational process, and in maintaining indigenous languages. Thus
Lotty Elderling, working with immigrant families in the Netherlands, highlighted
the need for immigration policy to address language acquisition among immigrants,
to improve their children’s performance in school and their overall social mobility
(Elderling, in Kedia and van Willigen 2005: 283).
There is also a role for anthropologists in ‘nurturing native languages’ (see
Reyhner et al. 2003). Many indigenous communities, inhabiting larger societies
and economies, struggle to uphold their own cultural traditions. Keeping languages
alive is central to these efforts, and linguistic anthropologists have often focused
their research on understanding and documenting languages not previously written
down, in order to explore the diverse worldviews that they express, and to assist
contemporary indigenous communities in their educational endeavours. There is
also a broader role in assisting the integration of these languages into educational
systems. Anthropologists have been closely involved in this, and countries such
as Canada, America, Australia and New Zealand have now made major efforts to
introduce indigenous educational material to their curricula, along with indigenous
languages and pedagogies.
In Australia, for example, there are now multiple efforts to make use of Aboriginal
languages and culture in the Australian educational system. Thus, in the Aboriginal
community where I work in northern Australia, elders from each of the local language
groups participate in the school as advisors and educators, focusing on traditional
knowledge, which is also incorporated into the school’s literacy material. Working
for the Australian Council for Educational Research in the Learning Process, Nola
Purdie notes that a recent National Plan for education affirmed the need to value
indigenous languages:
Such recognition must be heartening for indigenous people. Their languages
have a unique place in Australia’s heritage and in its cultural and educational life.
For indigenous learners they are fundamental to strengthening identity and self-
esteem. For non-indigenous learners they provide a focus for the development
of cultural understanding and reconciliation. (Purdie 2008: 1)
The Center for Cultural Understanding and Change (CCUC) at The Field
Museum uses problem-solving anthropological research to identify and catalyze
strengths and assets of communities in Chicago and beyond. In doing so,
CCUC helps communities identify new solutions to critical challenges such
as education, housing, health care, environmental conservation, and leadership
development. Through research, programs, and access to collections, CCUC
reveals the power of cultural difference to transform social life and promote
social change. (Chicago Field Museum 2008)
There are thus many areas of human services in which it is useful to have
anthropological training – indeed, as each deals with humans, and their complex
ideas and values, it is reasonable to say that there is no area of human service in
which such training would NOT be useful. Anthropology can therefore make a
contribution to many – potentially all – areas of governance: to the design of new
policies; to their implementation, and to evaluations of their efficacy in providing
for human needs.
6 ANTHROPOLOGY, BUSINESS
AND INDUSTRY
MONEY MATTERS
Anthropologists understand that work is not just about process, it’s about people.
If you lose sight of that, you lose.
Anita Ward, Senior Vice President, Texas Commerce Bank
process of globalization and its vast and volatile international markets. As observed
in previous chapters, globalization is of considerable interest to social scientists, and
many anthropologists have focused on it directly, considering how it affects different
communities, demanding new economic practices and disseminating a range of
cultural ideas and values.
Globalization is a pattern of economic and cultural change involving mutual
influence of previously separate and distinct societies. This is not a new phen-
omenon, because the entire period of colonization was one of unequal trans-
national economic and cultural exchange. In the postcolonial world, the
processes of globalization are made possible by the advent of world capitalism.
Multinational corporations are now world powers operating in a world market.
On the local level, the flow of investment, profit and consumer goods across
borders can provide access to cash for the producers of some luxury goods. In
the long run, however, the evidence indicates that peripheral peoples become
less well-off because of globalization, while wealth becomes more and more
concentrated in the hands of a small elite. (Bestor 2003: 367)
Caren Kaplan (1995) was an early analyst of globalization. She has considered
the way that ‘ethical’ corporations such as the Body Shop and Ben and Jerry’s
promulgate notions of a world ‘without boundaries’ in which, through multi-
national corporations, European traders deal directly with producers rather than
‘middlemen’. The Body Shop proposed that ‘free trade without middlemen means
liberation’ (Kaplan 1995: 430). Kaplan’s critique of the way that this advertising
represents a multinational enterprise is an important one, highlighting the language
that is used and the values about globalization and capitalism that it carries. She
looks at how ‘the world’ is represented in these discourses, as a place where there is a
flow of culture and capital between the West and communities that are celebrated as
‘native’, ‘authentic’ or ‘tribal’. As an illustration of this rosy view, she examines a joint
advertisement by American Express and The Body Shop:
‘Trade Not Aid’ is a way of trading honorably with indigenous communities in
disadvantaged areas – not changing the environment or the culture. Instead we
listen to what these people need and try to help them with it. What we bring
back with us are stories – how they do things, the connections; the essential
wisdom of indigenous groups . . . Customers come into the Body Shop to buy
hair conditioner and find a story about the Xingu reserve and the Kayapo Indians
who collect Brazil nuts for us. We showed them a simple process for extracting
oil from the nut, which consequently raises the value of the raw ingredient we
use. The result is we pay them more for it, and that gives them an alternative
to their logging income, which in turn protects the rain forest. (Anita Roddick.
Advertisement in Kaplan 1995)
Kaplan carefully picked apart the messages in this material, which, she says, ‘can
be read as the celebrity marriage of entrepreneurial capitalism to bourgeois feminist
travel-and-adventure motifs’:
First, the ad copy refers to a site of consumption that can only be in a metropolitan
location where information about the Xingu reserve and the Kayapo Indians
will be pleasingly novel. It assumes that the customer in the metropole will
enter a store to buy a mundane item such as hair conditioner only to procure
simultaneously something ‘different’. Secondly, it is implied that consumption
leads not only to the pleasure of owning something but to the acquisition of a
moral object lesson in Roddick’s entrepreneurial philosophy, a set of practices
she calls ‘Trade not Aid’. Trade not Aid emits bits of 1980s-style Thatcher–
Reagan injunctions in the 1990s, displaying a savvy, neoconservative message all
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96 what anthropologists do
As Kaplan points out, the discourse gives a simple, polarized view of ‘developed’
and ‘underdeveloped’ ‘First’ and ‘Third’ world people, and a vision of
vanishing natives who require managed altruism from a concerned source of
capital development . . . the benevolent capitalism of The Body Shop . . . What
is particularly chilling to me is The Body Shop’s representation of a corporate
replacement of the nation-state. It appears to be The Body Shop that funds and
manages development projects, just as it appears to be The Body Shop that
addresses health care, financing, and environmental concerns in its global
reach . . . Both the written text and the images in these ads glamorize and seek
to legitimate unequal transnational economic relations . . . The myth of a ‘world
without boundaries’ leaves our material differences intact and even exacerbates
the asymmetries of power that stratify our lived experiences. (Kaplan 1995:
437–9)
Although Kaplan uses the ‘ethical’ Body Shop as an example, her major point
is not to have a go at this particular company: her aim is rather to show how repre-
sentations create imaginary communities and ‘mask’ the real economic workings
of business and commerce and the inequalities that are created and maintained by
global capitalism. There is an underlying issue – a vital one for human societies –
about the weakening of democratic processes as the functions and services of elected
governments are taken over by multinational corporations accountable only to their
shareholders.1
Global business is concerned, fundamentally, with the use and distribution of
resources. This is particularly evident in resource-based industries, such as mining,
oil exploration and – as noted earlier – materials such as timber, and food produc-
tion. Because global economies are reaching further and further into what were until
recently remote areas, many anthropologists who work with indigenous communities
and peasant societies are now considering how these deal with the incursion of
enthusiastic developers and greater involvement in expanding global markets.
This expansion has major social and environmental implications, as demon-
strated, for example, by Stuart Kirsch’s (2001) research with communities in Papua
New Guinea, where mining has become a major part of the country’s economy.
Kirsch’s work, which I mentioned in Chapter 1, points to the massive ecological
damage caused by mining in the headwaters of the Ok Tedi river, and its economic
and social effects on the communities in the area. Observing the dominance of
transnational corporations in the equation, he points to the local communities’
relative powerlessness and inability to demand environmental protection, in an area
vital to their social and economic well-being (Kirsch 2003).
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98 what anthropologists do
Flocks of hornbills flew overhead and the raucous cries of cockatoos disturbed the quiet afternoon. Finally, after
five days, we reached the town of Kiunga.
It took another day’s travel by motor-canoe to the village on the Ok Tedi River where I lived for two years.
The purpose of my research was to learn about the myth, magic, and rituals of the Yonggom people. During my
first week, a group of men took me into the rainforest to tell me the secret myths associated with their male
initiation ceremony. From that moment, I was hooked: despite the heat, humidity, and malaria of the lowland
rainforest, this was clearly the place for me! Eventually my new friends would call upon me to reciprocate their
generosity in welcoming me into their lives.
Upstream from Kiunga is the Ok Tedi copper and gold mine, which began production in the mid-1980s.
Plans for a dam to protect the river from pollution were never fully implemented. The mine discharged 80,000
metric tons of tailings – the particles that remain after the ore is extracted – into the river every day. To
date, one billion metric tons of tailings and other mine wastes have been dumped into the river system, and
more than 1,500 square kilometres of rainforest have been affected, destroying the habitat of the fish, birds, and
other animals which used to live there. The mine wastes – and their impacts – will slowly move downstream
towards the Gulf of Papua over the next two centuries. The savannah grasslands where the Boazi live will be
flooded for eight months of the year; the Gogodala’s lagoons will fill with silt from the mine; and the mangrove
forests of the Kiwai will be substantially reduced. It remains to be seen whether new problems with acid mine
drainage, which releases poisonous heavy metals into the food chain, can be brought under control.
After living with the Yonggom for two years, I began my journey home. There had been a rebellion on the
island of Bougainville, which shut down Papua New Guinea’s largest copper mine. Bougainvilleans objected to
the mine’s environmental impacts and the government’s failure to distribute its economic benefits. The resulting
civil war lasted more than a decade. Boarding a ship in Kiunga for Port Moresby one morning, I reached up to
climb over the side of the boat, clutching a souvenir bow and arrows in one hand. When the crew saw these,
they called out in fear, imagining that they were under attack by opponents of the Ok Tedi mine!
I assumed that my time in Papua New Guinea was almost over, but soon realized that no one in the capital
was aware of the magnitude of the impacts of the Ok Tedi mine. At a lecture at the national university, in a
newspaper editorial, and as a guest on a national talk radio program, I warned Papua New Guineans that the
fate of the entire Fly River was at risk.
These events launched me on a path of activist anthropology. After years of unsuccessful petitions and protests,
the people living downstream from the mine sued Broken Hill Proprietary, Ltd (BHP), its majority shareholder
and managing partner. The case was settled out of court for an estimated US$500 million in compensation
and commitments to implement tailings containment. Subsequently, when BHP continued to dump tailings into
the river, the landowners returned to the courts but were unsuccessful in gaining legal redress. However, BHP
decided that the Ok Tedi mine was no longer ‘compatible with our environmental values’ and transferred its
share of the project to a trust fund that will support economic development in Papua New Guinea. Given the
current high prices for gold and copper, this fund may eventually be worth US$1 billion.
Throughout their political struggle, I have continued to work with the Yonggom and their neighbours. I
advised their lawyers, wrote about the social impact of the mine, and collaborated with environmental NGOs
and human rights organizations in Papua New Guinea, Australia, and the United States. I spoke about these
issues at the United Nations, advised the World Bank on its support of the mining industry, and published a
book about the experiences of the Yonggom (Kirsch 2006). Recently I tried to convince my own university that
it erred in inviting BHP Billiton to advise a campus initiative on sustainability.
When I first visited Papua New Guinea, the village on the Ok Tedi River seemed like an archetypal ‘out
of the way’ place. Since then, the mine has become one of the most infamous environmental disasters in the
world. I never expected to become involved in the struggle of indigenous peoples against threats to their
environment and way of life. Studying anthropology is the beginning of a long and exciting journey, and what
happens along the way is filled with surprises!
Work that reveals the deeper effects of a globalizing economy underlines the
fact that anthropology is not just about applying qualitative methods: it requires
theory and analysis that enables practitioners to look ‘under the surface’ and make
social action more transparent. It also implies a level of intellectual independence,
derived from scientific training, and upheld by the ethical codes that guide the
discipline. In reflecting on globalization, anthropologists have tended to unsettle
comfortable assumptions popularly made about the benefits of economic growth,
and the utility of the market as a force for positive change. As in other applications
of anthropology, researchers therefore find themselves both ‘standing back’ to reflect
critically on issues and, with a more internal role, trying to conduct research in a way
that properly incorporates ethical principles.
ANTHROPOLOGISTS IN BUSINESS
Business and industrial companies are, ultimately, social communities. They share
a common purpose, often have common training (for example through business
schools, or vocational institutions), and develop their own internal cultures. They
are therefore very amenable to the kind of ‘organizational research’ discussed earlier
in this volume: research that specializes in gaining an understanding of institutional
cultures, how these work internally and how they interact with larger social and
economic networks (Corsin-Jiménez 2007).
In multicultural societies and globalizing economies, businesses and industries
increasingly contain people from diverse cultural groups. They have to manage this
diversity. Many also have international networks of relationships that bring further
– and sometimes even more diverse – cultural perspectives into the equation. The
‘cultural translation’ skills of anthropology, and its ability to provide in-depth under-
standings of social behaviour are therefore an important part of the work that
anthropologists do in this sphere.
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100 what anthropologists do
Kate Kane presents a range of other examples: Sue Squire’s work with Andersen
Worldwide, instructing accountants in different ways of doing business around the
world; Patricia Sachs’ research with telecommunications design engineers at Nynex;
Tony Salvador’s work as an ‘engineering ethnographer’ at Intel (Kane 1996: 60). Kane
suggests that this new popularity is due to anthropology’s holistic approach which is
well suited to tackling the complexities of contemporary business activities.
Anthropologists therefore bring to business and industry a unique intellectual
perspective from which to consider events analytically. As John Seely Brown, the head
of the Xerox corporation’s research and development section observed: anthropology
and anthropologists ‘let you view behaviour through a new set of glasses’ (in Roberts
2006: 73). Having discovered the benefits of doing so, Xerox now regularly employs
anthropologists. And they are not alone: the number of anthropologists working as
employees for businesses, or assisting them as consultants, is growing rapidly (see
Morris and Bastin 2004). As Jennifer Laabs observes: ‘the corporate jungle is full of
cultural anomalies. Business anthropologists are helping to solve some of them’:
Chances are, an anthropologist wouldn’t be the first business expert you’d call
if you wanted a better mouse-trap – or a better HR program . . . But maybe
they should be . . . many companies have found that anthropologists’ expertise
as cultural scientists is quite useful in gaining insight into human behaviour . . .
Anthropologists study many different areas of business, but essentially they are
all people watchers of one sort or another. Business anthropologists have been
studying the corporate world for years. (Laabs 1998: 61)
SEEING ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS
Ralph Bishop
Global Manager, Qualitative Research, ISR, Chicago
I am currently manager of qualitative research for an international human resources and organization
development consulting firm. This entails design and analysis of structured interviews, open-ended survey
questions, and analysis of the results. I became involved in this kind of work purely by chance. I signed on as
a freelance editor and everybody I reported to quit, so I had the opportunity to take over the department!
The most important thing anthropology does is to help people see alternate solutions to problems, largely
because it sees more information as relevant than more constrained methodologies. Statistics tell you what;
qualitative input tells you why. You need both.
Laabs (1998) notes that over 200 anthropologists were employed in corporate
America, advising businesses on a range of issues, how to encourage creativity;
how to manage human resource issues; and how to resolve conflicts and encourage
collaboration. As in other ethnographic contexts, anthropologists in business try
to understand what is going on under the surface. In an organization, this may
mean approaching even mundane things like meetings as analytic opportunities to
see what is really going and how decisions actually get made. Helen Schwartzman,
for example, took a close look at meetings in an American mental health centre,
and suggested that they provide a useful context for understanding events within
organizations: ‘Meetings are a basic and pervasive part of this life, and yet because
they are so prevalent in American society, so ordinary and frequently so boring, their
significance as a social form has not been recognized or examined’ (Schwartzman
1987: 271).
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102 what anthropologists do
There are many such ‘sub-cultures’ in the workplace: groups of people united by
common knowledge and expertise, professional training, a particular language and
of course by the particular kind of work that they do. ‘Members of occupational
or professional groups often have characteristics that parallel those found in small-
scale societies, such as a unique system of meanings, practices, and a language that
distinguishes them from other work groups’ (Baba 2005: 230).
Sometimes the members of particular groups form their own sub-cultural blocs in
a company. Marietta Baba points to a wide range of anthropological studies of these:
Herbert Applebaum’s study of construction crews; Elizabeth Lawrence’s ethnog-
raphy on rodeo participants; and other anthropological research on accountants,
locomotive engineers, longshoremen, medical school students, nightclub strippers,
police, professional dance musicians, social workers, timber loggers, underground
miners, waiters (Baba 2005: 230). Nancy Rosenberger comments that
Anthropological research goes beyond the official corporate culture into the
experiences and perceptions that make up the culture of work . . . Anthropologists
also illuminate subcultures of work – behaviors and values unique to a particular
group of workers – by talking with and observing workers who vary by age,
gender, education, socioeconomic status, ethnic background, or by level and job
within the organization. (Rosenberger 2002: 403–4)
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104 what anthropologists do
Language is of course not just a matter of words. It reveals basic cultural dyn-
amics, showing, for example, how cultural groups think about the importance of
the individual versus the importance of groups; how they value (or don’t value) open
disagreement; how formal or informal, hierarchical or non-hierarchical they are.
There are different ways of saying ‘no’; different uses and meanings of silence. Much
communication is non-verbal, and what can seem friendly and open in one culture
may be seen as aggressive and disrespectful in another.
When I was preparing to go and do my doctoral fieldwork with an Australian
Aboriginal community, I read a short text by John Von Sturmer, called ‘Talking
With Aborigines’ (1981) which outlined some of the cultural conventions that I
would meet in the field: the need not to march up to people or their camps directly,
but to approach them elliptically; the need to use kin terms rather than personal
names; the convention that when people die their names are not spoken for some
time. There are also more subtle issues about how different adoptive kin require
different relationships: some involve ‘joking’ relationships, some are more formal;
some require strict avoidance; some involve social and economic responsibilities.
The use of silence in Aboriginal communities is complex, and cannot be taken to
mean agreement at all. Such preparation, and lengthy fieldwork, is essential to an
understanding of local beliefs and values and ways of understanding the world.
In order to work effectively all anthropologists have to do this kind of thing and,
as a result, they are well equipped to assist others in coming at least part of the way
down the same road. Although people ‘doing business’ may not need the depth of
cultural understanding and engagement that ethnographic fieldwork requires, it is
certainly helpful for them to have some idea about the cultural norms that prevail in
the communities with whom they are involved. There is thus a very useful role for
anthropologists in assisting them in this regard. As Richard Reeves-Ellington (2003:
247) says: ‘Business people who are more culturally aware are also more successful.’
He designed and implemented a cross-cultural training programme for an American
company that was doing business in Japan. About 50 employees participated in this
and the long-term results were impressive. ‘Project managers who took the cultural
training program were able to cut project completion time nearly in half and increase
the financial returns from the projects threefold’ (Reeves-Ellington 2003).
In essence, Reeves-Ellington teaches business-people to use the basic methods
developed by anthropologists to describe and analyse cultural settings. He enables
them to think about the way that things are classified in a particular cultural space;
to discern local principles for behaviour; and to consider the values that drive these.
He encourages them to think about the ‘cultural logic’ that they encounter – how
do people engage with their environment? What do they consider to be truth and
reality? What is their view of human nature? How do they approach relationships
and define the purpose of activities? How do they use their time?
He gives his trainees a lot of information about the values and behavioural rituals
implicit in business interactions in Japan, for example explaining the formal rituals
and ideas that surround business card exchange; the seating arrangements of tables
for meetings; the kinds of conference practices that are expected, and the importance
of reciprocity in ritual exchanges.
Cultural translation is equally helpful in enabling different groups to communicate
across global networks. Thus Emily Martin’s (1996) work examines how scientists
create a ‘global system’ of professional knowledge, and how non-scientists interpret
this work and respond to it. Working in immunology research laboratories and
clinical settings, Martin considered, in particular, how people make sense of medical
images, using them to ‘imagine’ and respond to medical issues. Public understandings
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106 what anthropologists do
of science have major implications for many science and technology industries,
defining how their products will be received and used, so these ethnographic insights
have considerable potential to assist the design and presentation of information.
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108 what anthropologists do
Additionally, I and other Ideas Bazaar associates are involved with the iSociety
research project at the London-based not-for-profit think-tank and consult-
ancy, The Work Foundation [which] investigates the impact of information
and communications technologies in the UK . . . Most iSociety projects use
ethnographic research as a first choice methodology . . . Broadly speaking we help
our clients understand the worlds in which they operate, from their audiences’
perspectives, and then we assist them in acting upon this understanding. Our
job, as we see it, is to give them a new understanding of a familiar environment.
(Roberts 2006: 76–7)
MARKETING ANTHROPOLOGY
A natural extension of investigating communications between manufacturers and
customers is in the area of marketing. Market Research is often considered as
a separate disciplinary field, but it draws heavily on the data collection methods
of the social sciences. In recent years it has enlarged its appreciation of in-depth
qualitative approaches such as ethnography, and is also beginning to recognize that
analytic approaches applying anthropological theory to elucidate human behaviour
can be useful (Mariampolski 2006). As Patricia Sunderland and Rita Denny
(2008) have shown, there are now major opportunities in consumer research for
anthropologists.
Anthropologists themselves have a range of views about involvement in this field.
For Adam Drazin, anthropological skills have considerable utility in a wider ‘research
industry’, and vice versa:
In between my first anthropology degree and my Ph.D., I worked for several years
in this industry of market research and opinion polling. During this experience,
I was struck by how the idea of ‘research’ is at the heart of what it means to be
a ‘market researcher’, and is often more important than the ‘market’ part of
the appellation. Many market researchers I know often identify with academic
anthropologists in the sense that both are interested in research first. There are
dissenters of course, but it is well known that the best market researchers are
people who are simply dying to get onto the next piece of research and find
something out. (Drazin 2006: 91–2)
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110 what anthropologists do
There are times when involvement in market research does create ethical dilem-
mas for anthropologists. It is widely accepted, for instance, that in focus groups and
surveys people very rarely report their behaviour honestly, and that more accurate
information may be gleaned by simply observing what they actually do. However,
the ethical codes that guide anthropology strictly forbid practitioners to do research
covertly, and this led Carrie McLaren to express concern about ‘shopping spies’:
market researchers who covertly spy on customers in shopping malls, fast-food
halls and so on, sometimes striking up conversations with them while pretending
to be fellow shoppers and sometimes videoing their behaviour. Apparently some
market researchers regard this study of what they call ‘naked behaviour’ as ‘ethnog-
raphy’ or ‘anthropological studies’. McLaren (2002: 421) is highly critical of this
misrepresentation of anthropology, and of the approach itself: ‘since focus groups
aren’t the real world, they’re working damn hard to make the real world a focus
group’.
Still, there is no doubt that consumer behaviour is an important area of activ-
ity, defining, in effect, how societies use and manage their resources. It could be
argued that in a public place, such as a shopping mall, security cameras and store
staff are already recording and observing behaviour, and it is not practical to ask
everyone’s permission, or tell them that a research project is underway. However,
some techniques clearly go beyond the bounds of simple observation and stray into
deception. So, once again, there are some interesting ethical issues to consider.
In general, market research is conducted openly, and represents a straightforward
attempt to find out what people think, or what they want, and to produce and
advertise goods accordingly. Anthropology can bring greater depth to such data
collection, as well as the ability to consider diverse cultural responses.
With these demographic changes has come a growing awareness of and attention
to various ethnic groups by the media, the public at large, politicians and private
industry. In market research jargon, these groups are called ‘market segments’,
and efforts to reach them have become more refined. This is part of a longer-
term move from mass marketing to target marketing – first toward young people
and women and now toward ethnic groups.
Equipped with this knowledge and trained in sociocultural anthropology, I
recently decided to open a research and consulting firm, which I call Surveys
Unlimited . . . a ‘cultural research and consulting company’ applying anthro-
pological techniques and analysis to market research. As I met with potential
clients, I promoted ethnographic fieldwork as central to the services I offered
and advocated using the approach in research on targeted ‘market segments’.
(Waterston 1998: 106)
Waterston makes the point that, to really appreciate what people want, there is a
need to explore their views without preconceptions, and to observe them on ‘their
own home turf ’. As she says: ‘exploring issues from the bottom up tunes us into
consumers’ conceptual systems’ (Waterston 1998). Like McLaren, she pays attention
to ethical concerns – in this instance questioning the idea of targeting people (and
in particular less well-off minority groups) to induce them to buy consumer goods.
But, as she points out, there are some erroneous preconceptions to be considered in
this regard:
In my discussions with members of minority groups, many people express
resentment at being passed over by marketers. They view attention paid to
minority markets as empowering to members of those groups and as providing
new work and career opportunities for them . . . Clearly the phenomenon of
ethnic marketing reflects political processes of ethnic identity formation. It
should come as no surprise that exploitation and empowerment are two sides of
the coin. The anthropological advantage in market research also involves keeping
these issues in sight. (Waterston 1998: 109)
As well as dealing with the political and economic aspects of marketing, anthro-
pologists have recently begun to consider the more subtle aspects of how people
respond to consumer goods. In Chapter 4 we considered the ‘anthropology of the
senses’ in understanding how people interact with their environments. The kind of
work can also inform the commercial sphere. For instance, Virginia Postrel’s (2003)
research observes how people respond in aesthetic and sensory terms to objects and
images, and Dan Hill has charted the rise of experiential products and services and
the ways that they are marketed. His work focuses on consumers’ sensory-emotive
reactions to particular ‘brands’, and he suggests that considering people’s sensory
reactions to them provides a much more truthful response than can be gleaned from
either surveys or focus groups (Hill 2003).
Making use of the in-depth ‘insider’ perspective provided by anthropology is
therefore useful at each stage in business and industry – in designing communications
about products, in observing people’s responses to these efforts, and in assessing how
products are actually used. John Sherry’s (1995) work deals with the latter issue.
His career began with research about Navajo activists, and involved looking at how
they were using new technologies to interact with outsiders. He now applies that
experience in a different context:
I’m an anthropologist for Intel Corporation, the company that makes micro-
processors. Most people think that sounds a little strange – an anthropologist
working for a microprocessor manufacturer – but it’s not as strange as you might
think . . . I feel very lucky to have a job like this. Sometimes anthropologists wind
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112 what anthropologists do
up in jobs they never even dreamed of. That wasn’t true in my case – I’d been
hoping that a technology company would be interested in getting a detailed
understanding of how people actually use their products . . . At Intel, in the Intel
Architecture Labs, I work with a small group of social scientists . . . Our collective
goal is to identify new uses for computing power by understanding the needs of
real people. We call it ‘design ethnography’. It’s a great job, and the good news is,
there seems to be a growing market for applied cultural anthropologists in this
field. (Sherry, in Gwynne 2003a: 214–15)
Following John Sherry’s contribution to Intel, the company set up a ‘Peoples and
Practices Group’: a special team of ten anthropologists and psychologists, to research
how people use computers and come up with better products: ‘In the past, market-
ing teams might have been given the task of making a product cross-culturally palat-
able. Increasingly, however, culture is taken into account earlier, at the design stage:
for example, the embedded compass in mobile phones to allow Muslims to locate
the direction of Mecca’ (Anthropology Today, 2004: 29)
Other companies have followed suit:
Social scientists, and in particular anthropologists, are precious commodities.
Back in December 2002, IBM decided to set up a world class human sciences
group. One result is the appointment of Steve Barnett, an anthropologist by
training and generally recognized as a ‘pioneering business anthropologist’
(Economist Magazine, 11 March 2004). In 2003, IBM research claimed to be
‘adding linguists, anthropologists, ethnographers, and similarly non-technical
specialists to its staff in order to provide new insights into clients’ businesses (San
Francisco Chronicle, 21 October 2003).
DESIGNING ANTHROPOLOGY
Adding an anthropologist to a research team is like moving from black-and-
white TV to color.
Cathleen Crain, LTG Associates
EMBEDDING INNOVATION
Patricia Sachs
CEO, Social Solutions Inc., Arizona
I had a job the whole time I was in graduate school, as I needed to support my kids. I found myself continually
making connections between my studies and my work settings. After a five-year research project in develop-
mental and cognitive psychology, it became obvious to me that there was an abundance of opportunities for
practical anthropology that could make a difference.
In a nutshell, I founded and am the CEO of an anthropology consulting firm. The area I work in is innovation
– we ‘embed innovation’ in companies by connecting ‘customer-centered insight’ with ‘work-centered intelligence’.
We collaborate with organizations to help them develop new innovation practices. We describe ourselves as a
business anthropology firm that, like a ‘corporate Margaret Mead’, has the capacity to understand the world
beyond the organizational chart.
I have always maintained that our work is meaningful and useful if it is tied to strategic initiatives for our
clients, so that the perspective it offers expands, shapes, and influences how they go about their business. For
example: we led the redesign of a leading R&D organization, which took it from a strict ‘engineering culture’
(meaning a techno-centric, cubicle-centric way of making things) to a contextually embedded understanding of
‘what people really do in their real lives’. In other words, we apprenticed engineers in Anthro 101, as it were,
teaching them how to ‘see’ the people for whom they were inventing things, and how to develop insight for
innovation from that understanding.
Greg Guest observes that although many people still imagine that anthropologists
invariably disappear off into remote areas:
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114 what anthropologists do
Such work is also more broadly useful to firms who design things for people.
Thus Heath Combs has been charting the work of ethnographers paid by furniture
companies to study people at home, and consider how they actually use their
furniture and their living spaces. ‘In the furniture industry, their findings will drive
anything from retail store and product design to brand management . . . Ethnography
focuses on closely studying a relatively small number of people to get a detailed
understanding of consumer needs’ (Combs 2006: 1).
Adam Drazin makes the point that commercial clients are not seeking anthro-
pology per se – they are seeking answers to questions and solutions to problems: ‘In
most cases, a commercial client does not buy anthropology. They buy research in
order to address problems. Much commercial research begins with a problem. This
is true of all kinds of clients – not only companies and manufacturers, but charities,
public bodies and policymakers. Clients go first to research companies in order to
solve these’ (Drazin 2006: 94).
This view also highlights the reality that anthropology itself – and scientific
research more generally – can also be seen as a product: a service that trained re-
searchers provide. It is certainly framed in this way in business and industry,
reflecting the economic focus that pertains in this sphere. There is thus a wide
range of ways that anthropologists can approach commercial activities: as analysts
of globalization, and as critics of its social and environmental effects; as cultural
translators; and as experts who can offer commercially useful insights into human
behaviour. The opportunities for anthropologists to find employment in business
and industry are constantly expanding, as are the potential areas in which they can
act as consultants.
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7 ANTHROPOLOGY AND HEALTH
Other lessons can be learned from the past, too. Payson Sheets notes that archae-
ologists have found prehistoric crops, agricultural technologies and even medical
remedies that can help to cure illnesses. For example, an archaeological analysis of
ancient Mayan stone tools in El Salvador revealed that obsidian knives were 100–500
times sharper than the modern surgical razor blades and scalpels, creating cleaner
incisions and causing less tissue damage. Archaeological knowledge about ancient
Mayan production skills has therefore been drawn upon to make obsidian blades for
delicate eye surgery (Sheets 2003: 108).
The application of anthropology in health is also spatial, with specialized research
areas such as epidemiology, which considers how diseases spread through popula-
tions, and more generally, with the cross-cultural comparisons that are central to the
discipline. There is much useful knowledge about health and medicine that can be
shared cross-culturally. Although health care in the twenty-first century is heavily
dominated by Western sciences, there are many other cultural models about what
constitutes good health and how this can be achieved and maintained. Anthropology
is therefore useful in translating and communicating different ideas about health
between cultural groups, in a variety of contexts. For instance, Andrea Kielich and
Leslie Miller work in the area of immigrant health care in America (where 800,000
immigrants arrive each year), and note the importance of understanding diversity in
ideas about sickness and health. America absorbs over 800 thousand immigrants each
year: ‘Each group of new immigrants brings a unique set of cultural beliefs about
sickness and health, a vocabulary of medical terms, and, often, a medicine cabinetful
of folk remedies, challenging American physicians to use skills not typically taught
in medical school’ (Kielich and Miller 1998: 32).
In the course of their work they run into Asian ideas about health as an equi-
librium between yin and yang; African and Native American ideas about wellbeing
as a form of harmony with nature; and, among immigrants from Spanish-speaking
countries, ideas about good health as a correct balance of hot and cold. And,
returning to the point that Eaton and Konner made about contemporary ‘modern’
lifestyles, they also find that ‘contrary to popular belief, most immigrants arrive here
in better health than their US-born counterparts – but their health deteriorates in
direct proportion to their length of stay’ (Kielich and Miller 1998: 38).
Cultural differences are also the focus of Brigitte Jordan’s studies of women and
birthing practices. Her work with four different groups showed how these practices
depend on a range of cultural ideas about life and death, gender, power and authority,
and religion:
Jordan’s work opened up a whole area of research in applied medical anthro-
pology and, equally importantly, provided women, their families, and their
medical assistants with knowledge of alternative ways to situate the birth . . .
For many women, this research transformed the birth experience into a positive
and emotionally significant moment in their lives. (Jordan, in Whiteford and
Bennett 2005: 126)
college I left the North American continent for the first time to attend university in Lima, Peru. Here, I expressed
to my professor my enthusiasm to ‘get my feet wet’. Within a month I was in contact with linguists in the
Andes, and lost no time in travelling to the region. I was warmly received by the researchers, who invited me
to accompany them to the rural agricultural villages where they worked.
Although my anthropology and Spanish classes were held at the university in Lima, I took advantage of
long weekends and school breaks to spend time in a particular Quechua-speaking rural village. I observed
and participated in daily activities, while taking extensive notes. I was thrilled to be able to explore the social
interactions and cultural practices of a small Andean farming village, so different from my own US-urban
orientations.
The inductive nature of experiential learning came to the fore in this initial exposure to fieldwork. Because
I had been introduced to the community by established linguists, people associated me with language learning.
When asked why I had come to their village, I commonly replied that I wanted to learn the language, thinking
of my tedious word lists, reference dictionary and grammar texts. However, often I was met with the unexpected
response: ‘Ah, that’s easy! All you have to do is drink the water, breathe the air, eat the food – and soon you’ll
be speaking Quechua just like us!’ This revealed a kind of participatory acquisitive notion of ‘learning culture’.
Beyond ingesting communal substances, locals also convinced me that by wearing traditional dress and joining
in with daily and ritual activities that I would (in a way) become ‘one of them’.
As a female undergraduate, with little guidance about fieldwork, I took my cues from the community members
who instructed me on what to do, what to wear, what to say, with whom to speak (or not), etc., and all the
other details vital for young unmarried women in rural villages. It’s not surprising that, although I went into
the field with no specific research topic, I returned with a keen interest in Andean gender relations.
Having completed a BA, I was convinced that I wanted to pursue a career in anthropology, but was left
pondering what that would entail. I was still intrigued by the Andes region: if I asked the people in the
community what I should study, what would they say? Something that would be of practical use to them, I
thought.
My studies in Peru had improved my Spanish, so while trying to figure out what to study in graduate
school, I took a job as a medical interpreter in a prenatal clinic. This awakened an interest in cross-cultural
perspectives on women’s reproductive experiences. I wasn’t only called upon for literal interpretation, but found
myself having to explain Latin American customs, beliefs and practices to the clinic personnel. For example,
women patients felt it a priority to tell nurses about significant emotional upsets they had suffered (such as
bad news from their home country), in the belief that sudden strong feelings have ill effects on the developing
baby. During that time I also worked as a translator for a lay midwife who attended home births. I began to
search for studies on cross-cultural midwifery, and discovered medical anthropology.
Finally, I sensed the potential for a career with practical applications for understanding, and perhaps
improving, maternal health. I could have trained as a nurse-midwife to pursue a similar goal. However, I chose
anthropology because of its appreciation for different kinds of knowledge. I did my graduate research in Peru
and Bolivia exploring Quechua-speaking women’s concepts and practices to manage menstruation, pregnancy,
birth and post-partum health. Fundamental to this was a focus on cultural conceptions of the workings of
the body, known as ‘ethnophysiology’. This would later underpin participatory research in international health
projects, to improve communication between health workers and community members.
During my graduate study I also looked at the work of other social science professionals, with an eye to
developing a career outside academia. I was pleasantly surprised to find that when I inquired about projects
with international non-profit organizations, as well as with state institutions, they were enthusiastic about my
research, often inviting me to speak at workshops. I began sending my CV to international health organizations.
Early one morning I received a call from a women’s reproductive health project coordinator in Lima. We spoke
at length about effective participatory research, and soon I was flying off to Peru to start my first job as an
international health consultant.
Since 1996, I have worked as an applied medical anthropologist with ministries of health and education,
and NGO projects, primarily in Peru and Bolivia. I am also the director of a rural institute dedicated to the
promotion of indigenous healing knowledge and practices in the north-central Peruvian Andes.
Learning from other cultural groups allows us to question the practices that
our own culture regards as ‘normal’. Elizabeth Whitaker observes that, ‘culture
determines the way we have children and how we raise children . . . Rarely do we
question our cultural traditions, especially when there are experts and expert opinions’
(Whitaker 2003: 38). Using evolutionary, biological and cultural perspectives, her
work examines breastfeeding practices across cultures, and suggests that American
approaches fail to acknowledge that mothers and infants form a biological pair not
just during pregnancy, but also in the child’s infancy:
Mothers and infants are physiologically interconnected from conception to
the termination of breastfeeding. While this mutual biological relationship is
obvious during pregnancy, to many people it is less clear in the period following
birth. In Western society, individuals are expected to be autonomous and
independent, and this idea extends to mothers and their babies. Individual
autonomy is a core value in our economy, society, and family life: even to our
understanding of health and disease. However, it is not a widely shared notion,
as more sociocentric conceptions of personhood are very common in other
cultures. (Whitaker 2003)
LONG-TERM CARE
Sherylyn Briller
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Institute of Gerontology, Wayne State University
I come from a family of urban teachers. My father taught for thirty years in the New York City public school
system. While he truly made a difference in his students’ lives, this job was very demanding. He often came
home bone-weary and said, ‘You can pick any profession you like, just don’t be a teacher. It’s too exhausting.’
Today, despite my father’s warning, I teach anthropology at Wayne State, a large urban university in Detroit.
However, I really love the job, especially teaching applied anthropology and preparing students for their future
professional roles. On the first day of each course, I always tell students ‘my story’.
As a twenty-one-year-old undergraduate anthropology major, I did not know what I wanted to do after I
finished college, but I thought that I might work in a field related to aging. In my family there were many
elders, including grandparents and great aunts and uncles. Some were childless and my nuclear family served as
the ‘children’ and ‘grandchildren’ in their lives. I relished spending time with them and hearing their stories.
This strong interest in working with elders and oral history pushed me in the direction of gerontology, and
my first job after college was working in a nursing home as an Activities Assistant. This was very anthropological,
as you were charged with learning about people and their interests, and trying to incorporate what you found
into making their institutional lives more palatable. I would like to say that I was hired because of my kind
personality and rapport with elders, but the reality was that my boss thought that a college graduate might
keep up with the enormous amount of paperwork that the job required. This job also introduced me to working
on special care units and the ‘culture of dementia care’.
After nearly two years, I went to work as the program coordinator for a large community senior centre
in an economically depressed neighbourhood in Minneapolis. This involved running an activity programme that
encouraged elders to come to the centre, where they ate hot lunch, socialized, and were linked to supportive
services. Technically, I was supposed to have a Masters of Social Work (MSW) for this job. When I began working
in the senior centre, I planned to go back to graduate school and get this degree. However, I shared an office
with the programme’s social worker and got to see her job first-hand. In my opinion, there were strong pros
and cons to it. On the positive side, she got to work with elders 1:1 every day. On the negative side, she
spent much time telling seniors about their eligibility for services. Frequently, the regulations were problematic,
and the process was frustrating for all. Watching these experiences kindled my interest in research and policy.
I was advised that to work in a policy-related area, I needed to go to graduate school and get an advanced
degree. No one said that this had to be in a specific field, so I chose to stick with anthropology.
I entered the graduate program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where several faculties
specialized in medical anthropology and the anthropology of ageing. My dissertation research focused on
familial and governmental old-age support mechanisms in Mongolia. I consider myself very lucky to have had
this traditional long-term ethnographic fieldwork experience in Asia as part of my graduate education. While in
graduate school, I also worked on an interdisciplinary research team focused on improving United States’ long-
term care environments. We did research, staff education and consulting for numerous facilities, and published
a book series about creating successful dementia care settings (Briller et al. 2002).
While finishing my dissertation, I was offered a one-year replacement position as an anthropology lecturer
at Wayne State University, then the next year I was offered a tenure-track job as an assistant professor. My
current research focuses mainly on ageing and end-of-life issues in the United States, and I am interested in
using anthropology to address ageing and health-related issues in a range of groups. My job also involves
training other anthropologists to work effectively in a broad range of community settings.
I tell this story to my classes partly to reassure them that it is OK to study anthropology because you are
interested in the subject, even if you do not know precisely how you will use the knowledge in the future. It
also illustrates how the path into a field like medical anthropology is very often not linear. With a degree in
anthropology and the set of usable skills that this provides, it is possible to remain consistently employed with
a degree in anthropology in academic and non-academic settings. I also use the story to highlight a number
of important characteristics involved in working as an anthropologist in diverse settings namely, broad research
interests, flexibility, creativity and being willing to work under a series of different job titles. I then encourage
students to go on and create their own stories, in which they put their anthropological education to use.
It is also useful to understand social beliefs and values in relation to the diseases
that often accompany (and sometimes precede) ageing. Ideas about cancer, disability,
and dementia are critical in defining how these are treated or managed at a social
level, and an awareness of ‘under-the-surface’ beliefs can often help in developing
new ways to cope with health problems in these areas. Thus Jeannine Coreil’s (2004)
work looks at different cultural models of illness, and how these affect recovery in
breast cancer support groups.
Because of the discipline’s cross-cultural utility, anthropologists are often employed
to assist in the health care of elderly refugees and immigrants. Robert Harman notes
research in several related areas: Elzbieta Gozdziak working on problems specific to
older refugees and programmes designed to support them; Neil Henderson’s devel-
opment of ethnically specific Alzheimer’s support groups for Hispanic and African
Americans; and Kay Branch’s work as an Elder Rural Services Planner for a Native
Tribal Health Consortium in Alaska (Harman 2005).
As noted in earlier chapters, anthropologists also work with aid agencies, many
of which focus on bringing medical aid to parts of the world (and diverse cultural
contexts) where health care systems are failing. More often than not, a lack of re-
sources for health care is coupled with difficulties in the provision of sufficient food
and clean water.
The anthropology of food has long been a major area of research. Ethnographers have
focused on the social and cultural diversities with which human societies approach
this central aspect of life, looking at the history of food; how food is produced,
cooked and shared; what foods mean in different societies; how food is used in
rituals; how food contributes to the construction of social identity and status; the
use of food for medicinal purposes; and of course the various health issues relating to
food security, nutrition and diet.
AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL JOURNEY
Nancy Pollock
Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand
My anthropological journey began in the Caribbean, but led me to establish my research in the Pacific, where I
have been fortunate to benefit from the hospitality and tolerance of many host families who put up with my
seemingly inane questions, fed me a range of foods, and shared times of shortage and times of relative plenty.
Many flights and boat trips have taken me through the skies and waters of the Pacific to islands that are
each beautiful in their own way. The environment of each atoll and island provides a setting that challenges
an outsider’s understanding and necessitates local explanation. My fieldwork has followed two overlapping
research interests, food habits as they affect health, and development. These two areas of research have led
me to exchange information with many non-social scientists, particularly nutritionists, epidemiologists, lawyers
and health physicists.
Food consumption was not a popular or accepted area of anthropological research when I wrote my Ph.D.
dissertation in 1969, but it has come to the fore in the last 20 years. For me, collecting dietary data in an
atoll community in the Marshall Islands provided a platform for subsequent field research and yielded a rich
source of ethnographic data about social life on an atoll still under US jurisdiction. The data also presented
interesting contrasts with later research on food habits in other Pacific island communities.
In the 1990s, a Wallisian colleague and I conducted research on Wallis and Futuna for the South Pacific
Commission (as it was then) and the New Zealand Medical Council. One project focussed on understanding
obesity from a local perspective, where body size (BMI) is considered large by Western medical standards. One
informant told us she would feel weak if she lost any of her 96 kg, and this ‘comfort size’ was an important
consideration for her health. Contributors also asserted the strong focus on food as a social pathway to integrate
communities. The islands of Wallis and Futuna are still heavily reliant on local root crops and fish they provide
for their families, and so represent an economy that is ‘pre-commercial’.
A second project undertaken at the suggestion of French Medical officials looked at the drinking habits of
young Wallisian men, some of whom had injured themselves and others when driving cars. The close restrictions
on social life and lack of alternative ‘entertainment’ were revealed as major reasons for binge parties in the
bush, together with ready access to alcohol at any corner store.
These two projects, and a subsequent one in Fiji, became training exercises in anthropological fieldwork with
local researchers. In Fiji we collected data on food consumption and then, working with Samoan and Maori
students from Victoria University, we demonstrated ethnic differences in food selection, timing of eating and
feasts. This led to a project in Wellington sponsored by the Ministry of Social Development, focussed on the
criteria participants used to select foods at the supermarket when they had $100 a week (or less) to spend
on food. From this I went on to investigate the social issues around use of food banks in New Zealand, and
this work became part of a series of studies assessing poverty in New Zealand society.
Working on food consumption in Pacific communities also drew me into two major projects focussed on the
aftermath of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, where the US exploded Bravo and other nuclear devices
in the 1950s. The Nuclear Claims Tribunal was established in 1987 to assess claims for damage to Marshallese
people and to the environment resulting from fallout from these tests. The tribunal held compensation hearings
between 2001 and 2003, to hear evidence from each of the four atoll communities affected. Food contamination
is the major source of health problems being treated today, particularly the large number of goitre cancers
experienced by Marshallese islanders. Research by nuclear physicists, agriculturalists, epidemiologists and others
assessed the amount of ingested radiation some fifty years after the people were exposed, in order to calculate
compensation levels in dollar amounts. My earlier food research in the area provided ethnographic background
to food use and lifestyle, and thus provided an indication of the circumstances in which people were likely to
have been exposed to radiation. I presented material at each of the four Tribunal hearings, using historical,
environmental and sociological evidence particular to each atoll’s case. Compensation claims have now been
awarded to each of the atoll communities, although at the time of writing the US has yet to complete the
payments.
On another Pacific island, Nauru, people also sought compensation, but in this case it was for the effects
of the phosphate mining carried out since 1906. In 1919 the British Phosphate Commission (consisting of
government nominees by Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain) took over management of the mine from
Germany, selling the phosphate mainly to Australian and New Zealand farmers to enhance sheep and cattle
production. As mining has rendered the interior (four-fifths) of the island unusable, after independence in 1968
Nauruan landowners sought compensation from the former Commissioners for the very low payouts they had
received since mining began. Their case was heard before the International Court of Justice who awarded Nauru
financial compensation to be paid by Australia, New Zealand and Britain, together with advice on rehabilitation.
A Commission of Enquiry was charged with documenting means of rehabilitating the island, and this commission
asked me to provide background documentation to the land claims. I was the only social scientist (and only
woman) on an eighteen-member team, and I performed the role of liaison person between this team and the
Nauruan people. My Nauruan counterpart and I convened meetings around the island, interviewing people about
their ideas of Nauru in the future, and making a video of the issues.
More recently my interest in food habits and health has resulted in a series of research projects addressing
food security and poverty issues, often in multi-disciplinary projects. Collaborating with colleagues across a wide
spectrum of disciplines encourages us all to think laterally. Nutritional colleagues now include social issues such
as meal structures and local food values in their bio-medical approach to nutrition education, and understand
the importance of social data, for example in calculating food intake, or in approaches to obesity.
Anthropologists can and do bridge many disciplinary boundaries. In doing so they try to use language that
overcomes the jargon of specialist communication. I see a very important future for students of anthropology to
draw on their training to bridge the statistical/qualitative gulf; to interweave the subjective with the objective,
and to offer new lines of thought.
Cultural beliefs and practices around food are critical in defining what people
eat. David Himmelgreen and Deborah Crooks point out that many anthropological
studies of food have practical applications in dealing with nutrition-related prob-
lems: for example, a study examining the high consumption of Coca-Cola in the
Yucatan revealed a belief that it is healthy, and the importance of local perceptions of
it as a Western (and therefore high-status) item. As they say: ‘anthropological studies
on the marketing of fast-food chains like McDonald’s are especially relevant today’
(Himmelgreen and Crooks 2005: 155). In more general terms:
Applied nutritional anthropology has the potential to make significant con-
tributions in addressing the nutritional problems of the twenty-first century.
These problems include the global obesity epidemic, the intersection of diet
and physical activity in the development of obesity related diseases (e.g. type
2 diabetes), the continuing problems with undernutrition and micronutrient
deficiencies, the ongoing problem of food insecurity in a food-rich world . . .
[And] the contribution of globalization on food consumption patterns.
(Himmelgreen and Crooks 2005: 178–9)
known . . . In the mythology of alternative health, food and health have become
inextricably linked as if it would be impossible to be healthy without serious
attention to our diet . . . Food and its relation to health has totally replaced sex as
the major source of public anxiety about the body. (Coward 2001: 50–1)
This work resonates with my own research on drinking water, examining why
many people are willing to pay vastly more for bottled spring water rather than
drink tap water that they fear may have been chemically polluted in the course of its
treatment, and during its journey through an industrial farming landscape (Strang
2004).
Anthropologists can therefore provide insights into many aspects of food use
and into wider behavioural issues, such as the way that people think about physical
exercise, and the extent to which this is encouraged (or not) in their economic and
social practices. And as mentioned in Chapter 5, in relation to social marketing,
anthropologists are well situated to work in areas such as health education, where the
major aim is to understand cultural beliefs and values with a view to encouraging
behavioural change. Some culturally embedded ideas encourage people to adopt
habits that are harmful, and the only way to combat such problems is to understand
the underlying factors. Thus Florence Kellner’s research (2005) seeks an in-depth
understanding of how the processes of self-construction and self-presentation that
are part of ‘coming of age’ in most Western societies actually encourage many young
women to take up smoking.
UNDERSTANDING DISEASE
Behavioural change is also, quite literally, a matter of life and death in responses to
infectious diseases, and in this area, as in others, local understandings are critical.
The comparative nature of anthropological research underlines the reality that
there are many specifically cultural ways of handling epidemics, some of which
may be better suited to a particular context than imposed western models. Curtis
Abraham (2007) describes how Barry Hewlett’s work illustrates this point. Hewlett
examined some of the problems that arose following an outbreak of the Ebola virus
in central West Africa in 1995 and 1996. Medical aid was sent, but there was little
communication or coordination with the local community, and people became so
suspicious of outsiders that when they returned with the second outbreak, there was
armed resistance to their activities. The research showed how the problem lay in the
aid agencies’ lack of understanding of local history, how diseases were perceived and
also how they were managed. They were also misled by stereotypes about African
medicine. ‘Western public health officials ignored the fact that indigenous people
have their own strategies for disease control and prevention’ (Abraham 2007: 35).
Partly as a result of this work, the World Health Organisation (WHO) revised its
guidelines for responding to Ebola outbreaks.
Curtis Abraham also points to Ted Green’s work, which further affirms the need
for treating local understandings with respect. Green has spent several decades work-
ing in sub-Saharan Africa, and is familiar with indigenous contagion theories. He
notes that people are well aware of the causes of disease, and how contagion spreads,
and have specific protocols for quarantine. Programmes that cohere with local
methods and actively support and make use of them are far more likely to work.
WHO has also taken this advice on board, and is now directing its efforts towards
working with and incorporating indigenous medical practices into aid programmes
(in Abraham 2007).
Understanding local perspectives is particularly critical in dealing with issues such
as the AIDS epidemic, which has been so devastating in Africa. Adam Ashforth’s
work looks at how the spread of this disease is entangled with ideas about witchcraft,
which has been seen, traditionally, as a central factor in illness. ‘Cases of premature
death or untimely illness in Africa are almost always attributed to the action of
invisible forces, frequently those described as “witchcraft”. Thus the HIV/AIDS
epidemic is also ‘an epidemic of witchcraft’ (Ashforth 2004: 147). Because of the
distrust this engenders, the disease therefore poses a threat not only to human health,
but also to the stability of democratic governance in the region:
The implications of a witchcraft epidemic are quite different from those of a
‘public health’ crisis . . . when suspicions of witchcraft are at play in a community,
problems of illness and death transform matters of public health from questions
of appropriate policies into questions concerning the fundamental character and
legitimacy of public power in general – questions relating to the security, safety
and integrity of the community. (Ashforth 2004: 142)
In the last few years I have worked in three main settings. First, in extending my Ph.D. research, I assisted
in the development of culturally appropriate evaluations of indigenous residential alcohol and drug treatment
centres. Acute and chronic social and health problems associated with substance misuse among indigenous
people is regarded as a national issue, and while residential treatment programs are seen as essential, health
professionals, researchers and indigenous people running these programs say that they lack the tools to assess
their effectiveness. My research was designed to explore and measure appropriate outcomes both during and
post treatment. It drew upon participatory action research, and was initiated and controlled by the organizations
themselves (Chenhall 2007, 2008). The research, which was part of a National Health and Medical Research
training fellowship in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, now informs national and international debate.
It has demonstrated that the process of designing health evaluations can lead to organizational change related
to both the focus and delivery of treatment.
Australia has low rates of tuberculosis but there are still high rates in immigrant and indigenous communities.
A few years ago, a colleague and I conducted a study of tuberculosis in a North Arnhem Land community
(Grace and Chenhall 2006). We found that the limited level of awareness and knowledge about the cause and
symptoms of tuberculosis, and the reluctance of Aboriginal people to visit health clinics, contributed to late
presentation of active TB, and lack of compliance with treatment. A number of issues were related to this,
including cultural understandings of healing, lack of funding to support dedicated treatment, and the difficulties
that local Aboriginal community leaders face in trying to influence the way in which funding is allocated and
policies determined.
My other major research interest is in changing trends in substance misuse in remote indigenous communities,
with a specific focus on youths. In recent research in the Northern Territory, another anthropologist and I have
explored a number of issues related to the growing use of cannabis, petrol sniffing, and teenage pregnancy
(Chenhall and Senior 2006, 2007; Senior and Chenhall 2008).
Given the recent ‘interventionist’ policies of the Australian government around restricting access to alcohol
within indigenous communities, our research showed that other types of drug use, specifically cannabis use,
has grown. The research therefore elicited significant media and political attention, and an unintended result
was the introduction of harsher penalties and fines associated with the possession and trafficking of cannabis.
This did not align with our recommendations, which focused on the provision of health and education services
to address the underlying social determinants of substance misuse (Carson et al. 2007). So the translation of
research to effective policy change is not as simple as it seems.
Drug and alcohol abuse and prostitution often occur in the same socio-
economic arena. Pamela Downe’s work involves both advocacy and research with
prostitutes in Costa Rica (1999) and Edward Laumann’s (2004) research in Chicago
considers the complexity of ‘sex markets’ and how these intersect with social net-
works and sexually transmitted diseases. He also considers sexual violence and its
social and cultural context.
Many social problems are related to mental health issues and, while these are
often regarded as an individual matter, how they are dealt with at a social level
is critical. There are wide cultural variations in how mental health problems are
understood and encompassed, and anthropological insights into these variations are
useful in informing both the management and treatment of problems. They also
reveal changing attitudes: for example, Emily Martin’s work examines attitudes to
mental conditions like manic depression and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder). She observes that, because ideas about ‘what makes an individual’ are
becoming more open to constant change and fluidity, these conditions ‘have been
undergoing a dramatic revision in American middle-class culture, from being simply
dreaded liabilities, to be especially valuable assets that can potentially enhance one’s
life’ (Martin 2006: 84). Cultural attitudes to mental health also have to be considered
in relation to physical issues: not just genetic, diet and lifestyle factors, but also
wider social, cultural and ecological influences requiring what Roger Sullivan and
his research collaborators have called a ‘bio-cultural analysis’. Their research in Palau
was directed towards trying to discover why there was, most particularly among the
men in the population, one of the highest incidences of schizophrenia in the world
(Sullivan et al. 2007).
More extreme mental health issues often intersect with crime, and there has
been considerable media interest in analyses of the social causes of crime, and, more
particularly, in the solving of crimes. Forensic anthropology features regularly in
novels, television programmes and films, and has been made famous by programmes
such as Silent Witness. The role of the forensic anthropologist is usually to identify
bones and determine the cause of death: she or he will begin by determining whether
the bones are human, and will then look for indications of age, gender, and ancestral
origin. Dental records are useful, as are old fractures and signs of diseases, hair
samples, blood type, and of course DNA. In general, this work is not as dramatic
as that depicted on television, but there are some famous cases: for example Alfred
Harper (1999) describes the role of forensic anthropology in identifying tiny bone
and tooth fragments and thus solving a case in Connecticut, after a murderer had
disposed of his wife’s body in an industrial woodchipper. In recent years, forensic
anthropologists have also been involved in identifying the victims of genocide in
countries such as Rwanda and, unfortunately, the need for this kind of work is
increasing.
It will be plain from the above account that there is enormous diversity in the
range of work done by anthropologists in relation to health, and a range of sub-
disciplinary areas of expertise have emerged – for example, medical anthropology,
biological anthropology, nutritional anthropology and forensic anthropology.
Because anthropology invariably considers the context of social behaviour, there is
also a considerable body of work concerned with the institutions that deal with
health issues.
DEFINING IDENTITY
Human beings spend a lot of time and energy ‘creating’ themselves and others, and
formulating ideas about social identity: who ‘we’ are, and who ‘they’ are. They do this
in a host of ways: through language, performance, art, material culture, ritual and
other media. Every human society, small or large, has a vision of its own characteristics,
and defines these in comparison to others. There are many sub-divisions of identity
according to things like gender and sexuality, age, class, education, political ideology,
religious beliefs and so on. Larger societies contain sub-cultural groups: indigenous
communities; ethnic groups; immigrant populations; rural and urban inhabitants.
And there are more specialized groupings, defined by profession, or by their interest
in particular sporting activities. Some years ago, Benedict Anderson (1991) coined
the now well-known phrase ‘imagined communities’ to describe how people
identify themselves, and there are many such communities: social, professional and
ideological. They can be quite specific: for example the scientific communities that
span the globe are not large, but they share a common professional identity. And
people are linked by other common interests, for example in music or art.
While there is a tendency to assume that the arts (in whatever form) are a kind
of non-essential ‘add-on’ to culture, anthropologists take the arts seriously. They see
identity and how it is represented as a vital part of human life, and recognize that
it plays a key role in conflicts between groups at a local, national and international
level; in arguments over land and resources; and in the maintenance of cultural
diversity. Understanding how people deal with issues of identity and representation
is therefore practical as well as absorbing, and many anthropologists are thus closely
engaged in understanding the processes through which identity is constructed and
expressed. This chapter considers some of the work that researchers do in this area.
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140 what anthropologists do
through which they learned ‘how to be men’ in a very tough arena (Strang 2001b).
In fact, as illustrated by Barry Smart’s (2005) work on sporting celebrities, there is
now an entire ‘anthropology of sport’ that considers the many social meanings that
are expressed through sporting activity.
Issues of equality for women in the workplace can be found everywhere. Gillian
Ranson, for example, conducts research with female engineers in Calgary ‘looking
at the ramifications of increasing female participation in one of the last bastions of
male domination’ (Ranson 2005: 104). One of her major questions was whether
they would remain in this field ‘for the long haul’ (Ranson 2005), and what their
experiences revealed about gender relations and professional opportunities for
women in contemporary Canada.
There are many ways to consider the effects of gender relations in different soc-
ieties. As we saw in earlier chapters, gender is also an important factor in defining
ownership of and access to resources, and it commonly affects access to education
too, as is illustrated by Anna Robinson-Pant’s research on women and literacy in
India and Africa, which draws a relationship between literacy and the degree of
equality that women are able to achieve (Robinson-Pant 2004).
RACE, NATIONALISM AND SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS
The other key marker of identity that exerts a major influence on people’s lives is
that of race. Although most anthropologists would say that the idea of race is an
invention – a cultural device for describing ‘the other’, which has little or no genetic
foundation – the concept nevertheless retains a lot of popular currency. Citing Levi-
Strauss, one of anthropology’s founding fathers, Clifford Geertz (1986) pointed out
that every culture hopes to define itself by resisting those that surround it. This
idea is very evident in discourses about race, which speak directly to fundamental
ideas about what human beings are composed of: in a literal sense, blood and genes,
but also in a wider sense, knowledge, beliefs and ideologies – all of which can be
seen as containing an identity vulnerable to ‘pollution’ by otherness (see Douglas
2002[1966], Strang 2004).
Part of what anthropologists do in relation to race is to consider how ideas about
it are created and upheld. For example, Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban’s (2005) work
examines ‘how racism happens’ in America, looking at the biological and cultural
ideas, and the social and spatial arrangements that allow racist assumptions to
persist in many communities. Gillian Cowlishaw’s (1998) research charts how ideas
about race are expressed in relationships between Aboriginal people and the wider
Australian population; and Peter Wade (2002) considers the implications of concepts
of race in the United Kingdom’s increasingly multicultural society.
Popular ideas about racial identity have rarely produced positive visions of
‘the other’, and many anthropologists, whose profession necessarily includes an
appreciation of diversity, have worked hard to combat racist stereotypes and their
effects: for example – as we have seen in previous chapters – acting as advocates for
beleaguered minority communities, openly criticizing racist policies and practices,
and mediating in conflicts. As in other areas of research, an essential part of this
task is cultural translation: the communication of different realities and experiences
of life, creating a more fully informed ‘representation’ of identity that serves as a
positive alternative to the stereotypes that sometimes appear in the media. In
Australia, for example, Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus (1999) have been part
of a lively intellectual movement to make visible the hidden history of Aboriginal
people since colonization. In the UK, Brian Street (1975) wrote critically about the
way that ‘savages’ have been portrayed in English literature over time, and Jeremy
MacClancy (2002) has be at pains to show that ‘the other’ is ‘exotic no more’.
However, ideas about racial identity are not invariably negative: for example
Carol Trosset’s (1993) classic ethnography of Welsh communities shows that where
stereotypes originate within – where people identify themselves as a racial group with
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142 what anthropologists do
certain characteristics – then this can be a positive and binding mechanism. Thus
the Welsh people have revived their own language and brought it back into everyday
use, and, in doing so, have achieved a stronger sense of identity. On the other side
of the planet, Aboriginal Australians have been astute in subverting negative media
stereotypes of themselves as ‘primitive’, ‘pre-modern’ people, reconstructing them
in more positive terms that valorize ‘traditional’ ecological knowledge, long-term,
sustainable environmental management and ‘harmony with nature’ (Hendry 2006),
and which stress the artistic creativity that their culture enables (Kleinert and Neale
2000).
Like race, nationalism is also a potentially double-edged sword. It can serve as a
way of thinking about identity that encourages solidarity and a sense of community;
or as a way of defining ‘the other’ in negative terms and dealing with them aggressively.
Robert Foster’s (2002) work traces how, through engagement with Western material
culture, disparate (and often warring) communities in Papua New Guinea have
begun to develop the idea of a ‘nation’ which can engage more collectively – and
perhaps more effectively – with a wider global context. Alternatively, anthropologists
such as Jane Cowan (2000), working in Macedonia, and Joel Halpern and David
Kideckel (2000), working in the former Yugoslavia, have focused on how ideas of
nationhood have led neighbouring communities into bitter internal conflicts. This is
a complex issue in post-colonial settler societies too. In New Zealand and Australia,
for example, indigenous groups have long fought for an egalitarian bicultural ap-
proach, but as Erich Kolig’s (2004) research has shown, contemporary pressures to
encompass multiculturalism can often override these negotiations.
In addition to races and nations, there are other cultural and sub-cultural groups
that share a common identity. As noted in Chapter 4., large social movements such
as environmentalism also form distinct communities, linked by a shared ideology.
Such movements can be based on class: for example, Sharryn Kasmir (2005) con-
ducted research in a large automobile factory in Tennessee, examining how class
identities were mobilized to resist a labor-management partnership and assert worker
identification. Religions have often formed the basis of large social movements, and
many ethnographers have turned their attention to the study of religious groups, thus
Joel Robbins’ (2007) work considers the anthropology of Christianity, and Simon
Coleman’s (2007) research on religious language and ritual has led him to consider
new forms of worship via technologies such as the Internet. Tanya Luhrmann works
with neo-Pagan communities in London, and notes the long history of ‘alternative’
social and religious movements:
I took myself off to London to conduct fieldwork among a subculture of people
– several thousand at least – who thought of themselves as, or as inspired by,
the witches, wizards, druids, kabbalists and shamans of mostly European lore.
They met in different kinds of group: ‘covens’, ‘lodges’, ‘brotherhoods’ – which
all ultimately descended from a nineteenth century group – the Golden Dawn
– created by three dissident Freemasons in the heyday of spiritualism and
psychical research. (Luhrmann 2002: 121)
There are other ‘virtual’ communities enabled by Internet connections too. For
example, Steven Klienknecht conducts research on the transnational subculture
of computer ‘hackers’ whose common interest lies in breaching the boundaries of
institutions and their systems. Given the potential mayhem that such hacking can
create, understanding the motivations of this group is important.
REPRESENTING IDENTITY
How do people ‘show and tell’ who they are? As implied in the previous section on
education, language itself is a key ‘plank’ of identity, containing specifically cultural
categories, concepts and values, and this is why retaining traditional languages is
often seen as central to the ability of minority groups to ‘hold their own’ in larger
multicultural societies. Just as reviving the Welsh language has been an important
development in defining Welshness, indigenous communities all around the world
struggle to keep their own languages alive. Linguistic anthropologists have long
played a vital role in this endeavour, often recording entire language ‘orthographies’
so that they are available to younger generations even if local language usage lapses for
a while (as often happens when small-scale societies are disrupted by colonialism).1
In Australia, prior to the colonial era, there were several hundred different lang-
uage groups, many of which also had special ‘religious’ languages for ritual occasions,
so there is a lot of work to be done to preserve what remains of this extraordinary
diversity. In the Aboriginal community where I work in North Queensland, for
example, there are three different language groups: Yir Yoront, Kokobera and Kunjen.
Since the 1930s, a number of linguistic specialists have worked there: Barry Alpher
(1991) wrote a vast lexicon of the Yir Yoront language; Phillip Hamilton (1994)
compiled an orthography for the Kokobera people, and Bruce Sommer (1972) did
long-term research on the Kunjen language.
Similar kinds of work have been done for a long time in many parts of the world:
in New Zealand, for instance, Joan Metge’s (1976) work has underlined why an
insistence on the teaching and use of Maori is central to the indigenous community’s
identity and, in North America, Keith Basso’s (1996) research with the Western
Apache also draws attention to the importance of seeing how language relates to
‘place’, which he maintains is essential to understanding people’s belief systems and
their relationships with their environment.
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144 what anthropologists do
Because minority groups often find that their traditions are subsumed by those
of the larger societies they inhabit, language retention and political resistance to
absorption or assimilation are often closely intertwined. At times, language use itself
becomes a point of contention, and this is amply illustrated by Jacqueline Urla’s
(2006) research on the Basque language revival movement in northern Europe.
She has been chronicling the Basque people’s efforts to preserve Euskara, reputedly
the oldest living language in Europe. Her research reports the government’s closure
of the Euskara language newspaper and the arrest of its editorial board (who were
accused of collaborating with the terrorist group, ETA). The local populace was
outraged, and tens of thousands of people took to the streets to demonstrate against
the government’s decision:
To the many protesters, the closing of the Basque newspaper signifies an entirely
new level of intervention, namely an extension of the anti-ETA clampdown into
the domain of media and culture, and effectively the criminalisation of Euskara
itself . . . Now that terrorism is perceived to be everywhere, we can expect to see
an increase in this kind of repressive action . . . [but] the determined citizens of
the Basque Country have not been easily silenced. They have raised money and
organised to set up a new Basque-language newspaper. (Urla 2006: 2–3)
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146 what anthropologists do
cultural production, bringing together the Aboriginal painters, art critics, and
ethnographers, in addition to curators, collectors and dealers: in short, an
‘artworld’. (Myers 2006: 495)
There are many other approaches to the study of art in anthropology. Ruth
Phillips (2006), for example, looks at the ‘souvenir art’ produced for tourists by ind-
igenous communities, and Robert Thompson explores traditions of artistic criticism
in sub-Saharan Africa: ‘Yoruba art critics are experts of strong mind and articulate
voices who measure in words the quality of works of art . . . Yoruba artistic criticism
may occur at a dance feast where the excellence of sculpture and motion becomes a
matter of intense concern’ (Thompson 2006b: 242).
As Thompson’s work implies, not all ‘art’ is concerned with paintings or sculpture.
Many groups wear clothes and objects that are major identity signifiers, and there
is also the ultimate form of social identification, in which people paint, tattoo or
scarify culturally meaningful designs onto their own bodies. All of these things serve
to manifest people’s identities – to concretize them in physical terms.
Less tangible expressions of identity are equally important, and performances of
songs, dances, stories, plays and so on are often a central part of community self-
expression. For instance, Pernille Gooch’s (1998) work with the Van Gujjar people
of Uttar Pradesh showed how public performances offered positive opportunities for
them to present beneficial representations of their culture as ‘the voice of nature’.
Similar functions are apparent in anthropological research on dance, as illustrated
by John Norman’s (1970) classic text on the ‘Ghost Dance’ of the Sioux, and Joy
Hendry’s (2006) survey of a number of indigenous communities, which underlined
the importance of dance and performance in their efforts to communicate a particular
cultural identity. As Simone Abram, Jacqueline Waldren and Don MacLeod point
out, identity often comes to the fore when local communities ‘perform’ for tourists:
‘People continue to represent their ‘identity’ in terms of folkloric costumes . . . and
practices such as music, dance, cuisine, etc. and assert the authority of their local
knowledge by claiming their status in terms of identity’ (Abram, Waldren and
MacLeod 1997: 5).
a n t h r o p o l o g y, a r t a n d i d e n t i t y 147
148 what anthropologists do
There are only a few British colonies left, so I found an island in the Caribbean called Montserrat. Hey, I was
paying my way with loans and teaching, so I felt entitled to such a fieldwork destination.
Montserrat was amazing! A small, tear-shaped island in the Caribbean with very friendly people, little
tourism, lots of Carnival and calypso, and an unusual connection with Ireland – some Montserratians are known
controversially as ‘the Black Irish’ of the Caribbean. I was there looking at colonial relations when suddenly a
volcano erupted. I was evacuated and left most of my clothes and possessions behind except for my notebooks.
I came back to St Andrews and experienced all sorts of culture shock in reverse. I’d left the island so quickly
that part of me was still there. Every time I did the laundry, the vibrations from the spin cycle would give
me palpitations, and I would sweat as my body took me back to the island, the eruption and the earth
tremors.
After writing my Ph.D. thesis I got a job in a Sociology department as the token anthropologist. My work
shifted to looking at reactions to the volcano, and living with risk. I then took over the editorship of the
journal Anthropology in Action and began working with groups of anthropologists around the world, going
to conferences and bringing conference panels to press by encouraging them to publish their latest applied
anthropology in the journal. Check it out online!
To cut a longer story short, in 2003 I moved to Belfast where I currently teach anthropology. Having taken
up dancing as a hobby while writing my Ph.D. thesis, I found lots of interesting connections with my work in
the Caribbean, examining people’s ideas about risk and community: who to dance with, who to avoid, and why,
and how people narrate and order their everyday lives. I still write about what is going on on Montserrat, but
am also more broadly interested in people who dance. At the moment I’m writing about dance as an informal
therapy for getting over clinical depression, comparing dancers in Belfast with dancers in Sacramento, CA (I
know – that choice of fieldsite again, but someone has to do it). In Belfast the salsa dancers come together
and it is a way for Protestants and Catholics to integrate and get over the past Troubles; in Sacramento the
salsa dancers come together and it is a way for latino migrants to recreate their ‘everynight life’ and to feel at
home in a different country, even if it is just for a few hours. Same dance, different meanings. This fascinates
me.
I’d do it all the same again if I could. Anthropology gives me that space/excuse to explore. I’ve never
regretted the anthropology route, although I have worried about what would have happened if I had missed
the subject entirely.
Tourism has, in many ways, replaced the colonial frontier as the place where
different cultures meet and perform their identities to each other. With globalization
it has become a major industry (see Reid 2003), and one in which major political
and economic inequalities become highly visible (Coleman and Crang 2002). Less
powerful groups face difficult choices about engaging in tourist industries in order
to make a living, or resisting pressure to ‘perform themselves’ for the gratification of
wealthier groups. Thus Xianghong Feng asks ‘who benefits?’ when areas are opened
up to tourism:
The Chinese government is making tourism an important rural development
strategy. Local governments and outside developers jointly manage and develop
natural and cultural resources to increase tourism revenues. The government
sells development and management rights to large for-profit corporations . . .
Pleasant climate, stunning views, ‘colorful’ ethnic minority cultures, and the
newly discovered and partially restored Ming Dynasty ‘Southern China Great
Wall’ are the primary tourist attractions in Fenghuang County. This project
impacts 374,000 people, made up of 29 national minorities and representing 74
percent of the local population. Some researchers argue that this public-private
partnership successfully produces profits for developers and creates economic
growth. The present research uses a power and scale perspective to identify the
preliminary socioeconomic impacts of this capital-intensive development model
on local communities [and] to identify the decision-makers, document the
distribution of social power, and identify the flow of costs and benefits through
the tourism system. (Feng 2008: 207)
However, unless subject to a repressive regime, host communities are not passive
recipients of the effects of tourism: they often find multiple ways to negotiate re-
lationships in ways that also fulfil their own needs. This is nicely illustrated by Assa
Doran’s research in the city of Varanasi:
Contemporary studies of tourism in the ‘Third World‘ often focus on the far-
reaching economic, cultural and environmental consequences of tourism on local
populations. Scholars have argued that guest/host interactions reflect a relation
of domination in which . . . wealthy Western tourists travel in search of the exotic
Orient. The tourists are then served and catered to by local communities who
are dependent on their business. Such polarities tend to privilege the ‘guests‘ as
the purveyors of change, while the creative and innovative practices of the host
group are rendered invisible . . . I examine the boatmen of Varanasi and their
role as culture brokers, negotiating the sacred city for visitors . . . I look at the
multiple strategies and tactics that boatmen have developed to satisfy their needs
and desires to their own advantage . . . the boatmen are quick to ‘tune in’ to those
with whom they are dealing. Moreover, the close encounters that boatmen have
with tourists enable them to view Western culture as well as their own local
culture critically. (Doron 2005: 32)
Tourism is therefore a fruitful site for research into the representational issues
that these ‘cultural meetings’ engender and into the complex social, economic and
political relationships that ensue
Along with dance and performance, music is an important part of representa-
tional expression, and there is a large anthropological subfield of ‘ethnomusicology’
devoted to studying music in communities all around the world. This field is very
diverse, containing, for example, Fiona Magowan’s (2007) research, which examines
a n t h r o p o l o g y, a r t a n d i d e n t i t y 149
150 what anthropologists do
the songs and rituals used for mourning in Northern Australia, and Greg Booth’s
(2000) work on the music of Bollywood.
The study of art and performance builds on a longstanding anthropological
interest in formal rituals and ceremonies. All human societies have rituals: these are
often religious or semi-religious in nature, and intensely laden with cultural meanings.
As the influential theorist Victor Turner said, the performance of a ritual celebrates
the ‘values, common interests and moral order’ of a group, and so transcends its
divisions, binding it together (Turner 1982: 10). Rituals are therefore very revealing
of cultural ideas, offering an abiding source of insights into particular worldviews.
Thus Pnina Werbner has used her research on Christmas rituals in Western societies
to consider how these create a ‘moral economy’ of honour and debt and reproduce
social relations. They also, it would appear, establish hierarchical relations between
parents and children and between rich and poor, as well as excluding non-Christian
ethnic groups from the performance of ‘the nation’ at Christmas time (Werbner
1996).
Rituals are wonderfully expressive of cosmological ideas, and any ethnographic
account examining a society’s beliefs must surely consider how these are manifested
in formal ceremonies. The ethnographic canon abounds with examples that provide
insights into the intangible: for example, Silvia Rodgers’ research on the rituals that
are carried out to launch Navy ships considers how these animate and personify a
belief in the ship as a female being:
If the ceremony of launching looks at first sight like the transition rite that
accompanies the ship as she passes from land to water, it soon becomes clear
that the critical transition is from the status of an inanimate being to that of an
animate and social being. From being a numbered thing at her launch, the ship
receives her name and all that comes with the name. This includes everything
that gives her an individual and social identity, her luck, her life essence and her
femininity . . . This ceremony is unique in our society . . . in that it symbolically
brings to life an artefact. Members of the Royal Navy, and indeed the merchant
navies, talk about a ship as having a life, a soul, a spirit, a personality and a char-
acter of her own. (Rodgers 2006: 231)
a n t h r o p o l o g y, a r t a n d i d e n t i t y 151
152 what anthropologists do
For anthropologists, working in museums is not just about designing and ex-
plaining exhibitions; it is also about mediating relationships and exchanges of
information between different cultural groups. John Stanton works at the Berndt
Museum at the University of Western Australia, and notes two major develop-
ments: first, the ethical need, coupled with demands from the cultural groups being
represented, for greater participation of these communities in the direction and
management of museums. Second, the development of research, exhibition and
education programmes that link museums more closely with the communities that
are (or were) the source of the artefacts on display, and involve them directly in
exhibition design and research (Stanton 1999). Thus, as Mary Bouquet and Nuno
Porto observe (2005), museums are now involved in a collaborative and dynamic
process of cultural production (see also Bouquet 2001).
Anthropologists work for or advise all kinds of museums, ranging from the large
established national museums, to the small museums that communities initiate in
order to represent themselves. There is a rapidly increasing number of the latter
in many local and indigenous communities, sparked by political desires for self-
representations, and by the enlarging tourist trade around the world.
a n t h r o p o l o g y, a r t a n d i d e n t i t y 153
154 what anthropologists do
The tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 firmly placed improvised
memorial sites or spontaneous shrines as a phenomenon on the world map. In
the collective emotional outpouring that followed, memorial sites were erected
all over the world with flowers, candles, letters, drawings, messages, stuffed
animals and toys . . . Similar behaviour was displayed in reaction to the untimely
death of other beloved public personalities – for example Elvis Presley in 1977
and Olof Palme in 1986 . . . however it was not until after Princess Diana’s
death that public memorialisation of death found an elaborate format with an
enduring ritual form and symbolic repertoire . . . Such memorials therefore make
ideal subjects for case studies of how national (and international) memory is
constructed. (Margry and Sanchez-Carretero 2007: 1)
a n t h r o p o l o g y, a r t a n d i d e n t i t y 155
156 what anthropologists do
At Penn’s Annenberg School, one of my professors needed a cultural anthropologist because he had a research
grant from the National Science Foundation for fieldwork that gave cameras to Navajo people. He intended to
ask them to make 16 mm films about their own lives. So, during the summer of 1966, I became a research
assistant for a project, Through Navajo Eyes (Worth and Adair 1997). This yielded a kind of excitement that
has lasted for over 40 years.
As a recent graduate, following my experience with the Navajo, I approached the Pennsylvania Hospital and
the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic with a proposal to make 16 mm films with local teenagers. Seeking an
integration of urban anthropology and visual anthropology, and with methods, results and new questions from
the Navajo Project, I wanted to demonstrate that one did not need to travel 2,000 miles and work with an
indigenous group to record cultural differences in films. My colleagues and I theorized that, as a multicultural
society, Philadelphia contained many different ways of seeing the ‘same’ surroundings. My intention was to
demonstrate that if filmmaking was introduced in a ‘neutral’ manner (at least in theory), the technology could
be sensitive enough to record this diversity. I asked how different groups of teenagers saw themselves and
understood their own lives, living within an urban environment. For instance, how might ethnicity, social class
and gender influence their filmmaking? In this way I began to research the relationships among socio-cultural
variables and patterns of visual communication.
As a consultant at the clinic, I was able to develop the concept of ‘socio-documentary filmmaking’ with
culturally diverse groups of adolescents. The first project was with a group of African-American girls, former
gang members (the ‘Dedicated Soul Sisters’) who had been identified as potential teenage mothers. When the
film they created was presented to clinic personnel, the psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers were
delighted that they could get to know their client populations in new and significant ways. The films offered
them what they felt was a transparent ‘window on life’ view of their ethnically diverse patrons. In this way,
clinic staff appropriated my academically driven efforts to their own needs relating to the practical matters of
a child guidance clinic, and I was thrown into doing applied visual anthropology.
In 1995 I went to work with Michael Rich, a medical practitioner in Boston who had introduced VIA (Video
Intervention/Prevention Assessment), a research method in which children and adolescents with chronic medical
conditions are given the opportunity to create video diaries, and asked to ‘teach your clinicians what it means
to live with your condition’. The narratives address their experience of illness, health and health care, and
are used to improve both in-take clinical procedures (especially questionnaires) and several phases of medical
education, both of which are aimed at improving patient care.
My research has remained focused on the relationships between medical, visual and applied anthropology,
and this has satisfied several long-term interests. Early questions about anthropology and film communication
find a comfortable home next to medical concerns and a need to contribute new knowledge to the problems
of ‘being human’. In a world that seems to be increasingly visual, new understandings and applications of how
people look at something, how they see and understand the world and, in turn, how they communicate that
information to others through visual technology take on a parallel significance. Combining forms of photography
and videography with anthropology for use in applied contexts has proven to be fascinating and challenging
work in a field that is still in its infancy.
CONCLUSION
APPLYING ANTHROPOLOGY
In this text, I have simply tried to give a brief overview of the kinds of things that
anthropologists do in some of the main areas of human social and cultural activity.
However, with a theoretical and methodological ‘toolkit’ that enables researchers to
understand and articulate social behaviour, there is really no area of human life in
which anthropology cannot be applied, and it is potentially useful in any and all of
them.
I have been doing applied anthropology for 30 years. I have had a wonderful time and plan on continuing
to do so, since I get to work with outstanding people in many different fields, and get to work cross-culturally
on many different projects.
In the examples that I have given about ‘what anthropologists do’, I have deliber-
ately not drawn a distinction (which I think is a false one) between anthropologists
located in universities, those who are employed by other institutions, or those
who freelance as consultants or advisors. In reality, all of us apply anthropology
in a variety of ways: those of us in university posts – because we generally conduct
research directly with communities – often do research that can readily be described
as ‘applied’, and even the most abstract theorizations filter into policy and practice.
Anthropologists working as consultants or employed by other kinds of institutions
also have a contribution to make to theoretical developments in the discipline, and
to the ethnographic canon.
INTERDISCIPLINARY ANTHROPOLOGY
A discussion about interdisciplinarity is really beyond the scope of this book, but it
is worth saying a few things about it. Anthropologists often find themselves working
in collaboration with people from other scientific disciplines: not just within the
social sciences, but increasingly with the natural sciences too: in the environmental
arena with botanists, biologists, ecologists, hydrologists and climatologists; in areas
of governance with political scientists and economists; in education and health
with sociologists and psychologists; in the health field with medical specialists; in
urban planning and housing with architects and engineers; in museums and other
representational spaces with art historians and archaeologists; in the legal arena with
lawyers. The list could go on, with a fairly infinite diversity of possible disciplinary
combinations.
Collaborative research is a challenging undertaking, especially in conjunction
with natural science disciplines, whose conceptual approaches are much more special-
ized than the broader frame offered by anthropological theory. Like any relationship
between very different parties, it takes some effort to achieve a good balance (see
Strang 2007). However, interdisciplinary projects can also be immensely creative
and rewarding, leading to new and imaginative solutions to complex problems.
Some people feel that interdisciplinarity is the shape of things to come. With larger,
more complex issues they say, such as environmental degradation and globalization,
we need to bring a range of analytic approaches to bear in order to get anywhere. In
response to this trend, funding agencies are encouraging collaborative approaches,
and pushing the natural and social sciences to work together.
Anthropologists have an advantage when it comes to engaging with other dis-
ciplines: their training in cultural translation means that they are well prepared to
learn the ‘inside’ perspective of other disciplinary languages and ways of thinking.
This not only makes them good collaborators, it can also make them good mediators
between disparate groups in an interdisciplinary project. Intellectually, anthropo-
logy offers several major contributions to interdisciplinary research. A holistic ‘let’s
see the whole picture’ theoretical approach can provide a helpful frame for more
specialized disciplinary models. Anthropology also provides useful ethnographically
grounded insights into the complexities of the local context in which the work is
taking place, illuminating ‘the people side of the equation’ and revealing the social
and cultural issues that drive human behaviour. For example, in my own work with
UNESCO I work mainly with ecologists and hydrologists who chart the physical
effects of human activities on river systems. Part of the task of the social scientists in
the programme is to consider what drives these activities in social and cultural terms.
In reality, it has been equally important for us to develop conceptual frameworks
that everyone can engage with, and to do a lot of ‘cross-cultural translation’ (and
sometimes conflict resolution) between the various disciplines.
TRANSFERRING ANTHROPOLOGY
Not everyone who trains in anthropology goes on to employment as ‘an anthro-
pologist’. Some use it as a strong foundation for further training; others simply carry
their anthropological skills into different areas of work. One of the beauties of the
discipline is that it provides forms of expertise that are eminently transferable to
other career paths. The most obvious directions are the ‘people oriented’ careers,
such as social work, human resources, counselling, conflict resolution, mediation,
education, charity/NGO work, diplomacy, government, conservation, tourism,
legal work . . . Anthropological skills even come in useful for politicians, for example
Mo Mowlam studied anthropology at Durham University before rising to a senior
position as New Labour’s Northern Ireland Secretary. She was
. . . a refreshingly different politician who gave New Labour a lot of its original
zing. She helped to modernize her party and to beat a new path towards peace in
Northern Ireland. Much of this stemmed from her personality, but the breadth
of her political understanding and her effectiveness in handling people and
communities demonstrate the continued value of training in anthropology for
policy makers and politicians. (Bilsborough 2005: 28)
conclusion 159
160 what anthropologists do
There are many less obvious avenues opened up by training in anthropology too,
such as employment in social science publishing, science writing, and journalism.
Marcus Helbling, for instance, found it easy to make use of his anthropological
training in becoming a sports journalist:
I’ve never worked as an anthropologist: I started working as a sports journalist
during my studies. But I’ve always tried to find anthropological issues in sports.
I just got the chance to start working as a print journalist for a newspaper. Today
I work as a TV-journalist for Swiss television. Most anthropologists are open
minded, with sensitivity and interest for ‘the other’. They have the advantage of
being scientists with a broad approach – and research methods in anthropology
can often be used in journalism as well. (personal communication, 2006)
Robert Morais put his anthropological career to one side for quarter of a century
before finding it irresistible to start analysing and writing about the meetings in
which he participated (see Chapter 6):
In 1981, I left academic anthropology and became an advertising executive . . .
In mid-2006, I joined a marketing research and consulting firm. After a
quarter of a century of work in the field, this is my first report . . . Based upon
participation in thousands of creative meetings between 1981 and 2006 while
employed at large and mid-sized American advertising agencies [it] aligns closely
to what Sherry . . . terms ‘observant participation’ and to Kemper’s assertion that
‘advertising executives are ethnographers in the strict sense of the word’. (Morais
2007: 150)
RITES OF PASSAGE
Miranda Irving
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
After successfully completing a first degree in anthropology I was lucky enough to go on to do some postgraduate
research in Palembang, Sumatra. Fieldwork was fun, challenging, emotionally intense, stimulating, gruelling and
inspiring all at once. It was a true ‘rite of passage’. The plan was to go on to work in social research, preferably
abroad. At the time, however, I found that I couldn’t continue on to complete a Ph.D.
Nevertheless, the experience of learning and ‘doing’ anthropology gave me a particular perspective, which I
carried into other areas of work. For example, soon after my postgraduate research, I found work as a temporary
secretary for several months. My longest assignment was in a government typing pool in Bedford. The typing
pool was a great example of ‘culture’ in the workplace. As I sat at my desk, in a room with rows of other
typists, tapping away at the typewriter keys, I observed the group of which I had become a temporary part.
The ‘pool’ was just like a society in microcosm: it had its own rituals, behavioural codes, hierarchies, divisions
and conflicts. Though my observations added little to my work, being part-participant and part-observer of this
mini society livened up what was otherwise an extremely boring job.
At other times, my anthropological background has been more directly useful. Several years on, I was
employed as a research assistant on a community care project, commissioned by a local community council
in Sussex. The job involved straightforward fieldwork: participant observation and face-to-face interviewing of
elderly people and members of their support network to ascertain their perceptions of the provision of care.
I travelled to three idyllic villages, attended day care centres, sat in on community functions and went into
people’s homes. The elderly people I interviewed were so unique, each one with their own particular strategies
for staying healthy, connected, useful and safe. Lots of cups of tea were consumed, and interviews – which
should have taken only an hour – went on for much longer as we fell into deep conversation.
On a personal level I found it intriguing how each person had built up networks of support to ensure they
were cared for, and it was a lesson for my own future old age.
But there was also a more practical side to the research. I spent another month writing up a report for
the community council, and along with my supervisor, made some policy recommendations on the basis of
our findings and analysis. The report was published by the community council and distributed nationally and
internationally. As a ‘voice of the people on the ground’, anthropology can have a valid and important role in
the implementation of policy, and I like to think that my report played some part in this.
Fate then took me to Oman. I was there as an expatriate wife, but soon made contacts and landed a job
as a consultant sociologist with a major engineering consultancy. They were undertaking an irrigation project
in the rural areas of the country, and needed input from a social scientist. At first I was asked to help design
a farm survey. They wanted to develop a broad questionnaire, which would be taken to all the farmers in
the area. The aim was to get a general idea of the social and familial structures within the region, and how
these relate to both farming practices and the very complex existing irrigation systems known as falaj. On
the strength of this work, I was put forward for a couple of other projects: one, looking at traditional fishing
practices along the coast, and another assessing the viability of placing dams in a remote and mountainous
part of the country.
Since that time I have moved countless times. As a ‘trailing spouse’, always on the move, I have not been able
to pursue a coherent career let alone find jobs in social research. This does not mean that my anthropological
skills and experience have gone to waste though. For me, anthropology is a way of viewing life and you bring
this with you, whatever you do. Anthropology helps us to understand ourselves and our interactions with others
from within a broader framework. It leads us to comprehend another point of view, see the many sides of an
argument and never assume that ideas, or ways of being, are fixed. It reveals the richness of life and enables
an acceptance of diversity.
When I returned to the UK I decided to take a more journalistic path. My background in anthropology was
extremely useful in this too, not only in terms of researching and interviewing techniques, but in having note
taking, observation and general analytical abilities too. And finally, twenty-three years on, I have managed to
return to university get on with finishing that Ph.D.
conclusion 161
162 what anthropologists do
conclusion 163
APPENDIX 1
STUDYING ANTHROPOLOGY
In most educational systems there are three major levels of study in anthropology:
undergraduate degrees, master’s degrees, and doctorate degrees. At an undergraduate
level anthropology can be readily combined with ‘sister’ subjects like archaeology,
history, political science, sociology, human geography, and potentially with other
areas, such as development studies, environmental studies, education, psychology,
business management, architecture and urban planning. Many undergraduate
courses also have an honours year, which leads students towards research and further
study.
It is sometimes possible to shift across to anthropology from other disciplines at
a master’s level, by doing an intensive taught course, possibly followed by a second
year focused on research.
An honours undergraduate degree, or a master’s in anthropology are both useful
qualifications for carrying anthropological skills into a variety of careers. With either
one of these it is also feasible to consider doing the doctoral research that is the major
qualification for practising as a professional anthropologist. When students reach
this stage, they usually look for a university department that can provide experienced
supervision in the area that they want to study. Sometimes they make a direct
approach to the person whose research they feel their interests relate to most closely.
As anthropology is one of the ‘original’ scholarly disciplines, it is offered in most
good universities. In thinking about where to study, prospective students should
consider whether a university has a well-established anthropology department, and
whether this is staffed by professional anthropologists who, as well as being teachers,
are also active researchers.
All of this information is readily available on university web sites, and a quick
search will find lists of universities in each country, and their contact details. Most
are also happy to send prospective students further information, and many hold
open days and career days at which it is possible to meet and talk to staff. University
web sites also list the people who are specifically responsible for student applications
at each level of study.
Prospective students might also want to visit the web sites of anthropology
associations and the journals that publish anthropological research to get a wider
view of what is going on in the field (see Appendix 3 for a list of these).
appendices 165
APPENDIX 2
SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR
FURTHER READING
ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS
Agar, M. (1996), The Professional Stranger: An Informal Introduction to Ethnography, 2nd edn,
New York: Academic Press.
Pawluch, D., Shaffir, W. and Miall, C. (eds) (2005), Doing Ethnography: Studying Everyday
Life, Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press.
appendices 167
168 appendices
appendices 169
170 appendices
appendices 171
172 appendices
Gell, A. (1998), Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hendry, J. (2006), Reclaiming Culture: Indigenous People and Self-representation, New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Kleinert, S. and Neale, M. (eds) (2000), The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Morphy, H. (1998), Aboriginal Art, London: Phaidon.
Morphy, H. and Perkins, M. (eds) (2006), The Anthropology of Art: A Reader, Oxford:
Blackwell.
Power, D. and Scott, A. (2004), Cultural Industries and the Production of Culture, London,
New York: Routledge.
Robertson, J. (2005), Same-Sex Cultures and Sexualities: An Anthropological Reader, Malden,
MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Selwyn, T. (ed.) (1996), The Tourist Image, Chichester: Wiley.
Shackel, P. and Chambers, E. (eds) (2004), Places in Mind: Public Archaeology as Applied
Anthropology, London: Routledge.
Smart, B. (2005), The Sport Star: Modern Sport and the Cultural Economy of Sporting Celebrity,
London: Sage.
Trosset, C. (1993), Welshness Performed: Welsh Concepts of Person and Society, Tucson:
University of Arizona Press.
Wade, P. (2002), Race, Nature and Culture, London: Pluto Press.
APPENDIX 3
OTHER RESOURCES
C-SAP (Birmingham)
http://www.c-sap.bham.ac.uk
Wenner-Gren Foundation
http://www.wennergren.org/
ANTHROPOLOGY JOURNALS
American Anthropologist
http://www.aaanet.org/publications/ameranthro.cfm
Anthropology in Action
http://Berghahn Booksbooksonline.com/journals/aia/
Anthropology Today
http://www.therai.org.uk/pubs/at/anthrotoday.html
Oceania
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/publications/oceania/oceania1.htm
Practicing Anthropology
http://www.sfaa.net/pa/pa.html
http://www.aaanet.org/publications/anthrosource/
http://vlib.anthrotech.com/
appendices 175
GLOSSARY
glossary 177
NOTES
Acknowledgements
1. In order of appearance in the text these are: Markus Weilenmann, Marzia Balzani, Mary-Ellen
Chatwin, Yongjun Zhao, Ruth Dearnley, Scarlett Epstein, Ted Green, Paul Sillitoe, Kay Milton,
Danny Dybowski, Saffron James, Cris Shore, Stuart Kirsch, Ralph Bishop, Patricia Sachs, Patricia
Hammer, Sherylyn Briller, Nancy Pollock, Rachael Gooberman-Hill, Richard Chenhall, Marion
Droz-Mendelzweig, Jonathan Skinner, Richard Chalfen, Robert Trotter, Miranda Irving.
Introduction
1. Shore (1996) and MacClancy (2005) have written about how anthropology has often been portrayed
in the media.
2. There are some excellent introductory texts providing more detail on ‘what anthropology is’ – for
example Eriksen’s What is Anthropology? (2004) and Coleman and Simpson’s Discovering Anthropology
(1998) (see also Hendry 1999, Metcalf 2005, Haviland et al. 2006).
3. In America, for example, archaeologists regard their profession as coming under the larger umbrella
of anthropology, while in the UK and Europe these are seen as separate (albeit closely related)
disciplinary areas.
4. Anthropology is sometimes regarded as having two major strands: social anthropology and cultural
anthropology. The differences between these vary from country to country, reflecting the different
trajectories that the discipline has taken over time.
5. Professional anthropology associations have detailed ethical guidelines, and these are regularly
updated to keep pace with changes in the kind of work that practitioners do. Most universities also
have strict research-ethics codes and meeting these is a formal prerequisite for any research activity.
Professional and institutional codes generally require social researchers to try to ensure that their work
with communities is mutually beneficial. They provide guidance on issues such as asking permission
to do research, consulting host communities about the design of research projects, maintaining
the confidentiality of data when necessary, and ensuring that the people who provided the data
have access to the research findings. They also cover more complex issues, for example relating to
intellectual property rights. The ethical guidelines of associations are generally available on their web
sites, some of which are listed in the appendices to this volume.
6. There have been long-running discussions amongst educators about the potential for introducing
students to anthropology at a secondary school level. It has begun to make an appearance in various
forms, as ‘social studies’ and so forth, and at the time of writing there are moves, for example in the
UK, to bring it into the curriculum more formally.
Chapter 1 Anthropology and Advocacy
1. ‘Ethnobotany’, ‘ethnobiology’ and ‘ethnoscience’ are all terms describing the localized expertise
accumulated through a group’s engagement with a particular environment over many centuries.
These are can be subsumed under the broader heading of ‘traditional ecological knowledge’.
2. See his autobiography in Chapter 6.
3. Globalization is the transformation of local or regional phenomena to a global scale; an idea of a
unified global society and economy.
4. ‘Social movements’ occur when ideologies spread across groups, nationally or internationally,
encouraging pressure for change. Other (loosely related) examples include the feminist movement;
the civil rights movement; the peace movement; and the New Age movement. More recently,
anthropologists have considered the ‘counter-movements’ opposing globalization, initiated by
indigenous networks and other groups critical of this process.
5. The process of creating culturally specific maps, which often challenge dominant representational
forms, has also been called ‘counter-mapping’.
notes 179
180 notes
3. ‘Traditional’ is a somewhat disputed term academically but I use it here as indigenous groups often
do, to indicate the customs, beliefs and knowledges that prevailed prior to colonization.
4. See also Posey and Plenderlieth (2004), Hornborg and Kurkiala (1998).
5. A film was made about Lansing’s work in 1989 for the United Kingdom’s Channel 4 Fragile Earth
series. Directed by Andrew Singer, it is called ‘The Water Goddess and the Computer’.
6. ‘Political ecology’ is the study of how social, political and economic factors affect environmental
issues.
7. Fortun (1999: 240) charted the long-term outcomes for the various groups involved in the Bhopal
disaster of 1984, in which an explosion at a Union Carbide plant in India released pesticides over
the city, killing an estimated 10,000 people and creating long-term physical and economic harm to a
further 600,000.
8. ‘Discourse analysis’ is the process of analysing and revealing the ideas and values embedded in
particular discourses.
9. See also Strang (1997).
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INDEX
index 207
208 index
national identity, 48, 54, 134, 142 media, see communications media
see also nationalism mediation, see conflict resolution
racial identity, 141–2, 154 mental health, 82, 86, 132–3, 137
see also race, stereotypes methods, 3–7, 22, 47, 99, 105, 109
religious identity, 36, 138 cultural mapping, 22, 60
see also art, film and photography, ethnography, 2–3, 5–7, 21, 89, 109
representation fieldwork, 3, 5–7, 9, 163
illness, see disease fieldwork examples, 16, 24, 34, 35–6, 72,
interdisciplinarity, 45, 47, 74, 158–9 79, 85–6, 88, 97, 104–5, 110, 120, 123,
internet, see communications media 125, 142, 148, 156, 160–1
irrigation, see water management focus groups, 109, 110, 111, 128,
interviews, 6–7, 101, 126, 128, 161
kinship, 24, 42, 118, 134 literature review, 5, 7
see also genetics, human reproduction oral histories, 122, 144–5, 153
knowledge, 89 participant observation, 5, 7, 161
anthropological, 5, 17, 32–3 surveys, 101, 110, 111, 114, 146
indigenous, local, 15, 44–8, 91, 147, 153 visual anthropology, 7, 151, 154–6
traditional ecological, 16, 21–2, 61–5, 142 see also film and photography
traditional health, 42, 46, 117, 119, 121, see also participatory action research
131–2 migrants, see refugees
mining, 16, 96–7, 126
land claims, 19, 21–3, 126, 152–3 mining heritage, 153
native title, 20 see also cultural heritage
see also rights: land and resources multiculturalism, 88, 89, 90, 99, 112, 141–3
language, 103–4, 120, 138, 145 biculturalism, 142
discourse, 28, 31, 65, 70, 88, 95, 141 see also cultural diversity
discourse analysis, 38, 65, 95–6, 105, multiple realities, 43, 46, 57, 76
137 museums, 91–2, 151–2, 154
minority and indigenous, 12, 90–1, 142–4 see also art, communications media, cultural
see also literacy, pedagogies heritage, performance, tourism
law, 18, 20, 21, 23–5, 72, 83, 85, 92, 98 music, 60, 119, 138, 146–7, 149–50
regulation, 86, 94, 95, 114, 123 see also art
literacy, 91, 140 myths, 45, 68, 89, 98, 102, 128
see also language see also cosmology, religion, worldviews
index 209
210 index