Transcript kottakanth15_ppt_ch03

Anthropology
Appreciating Human Diversity
Fifteenth Edition
Conrad Phillip Kottak
University of Michigan
McGraw-Hill
© 2013 McGraw-Hill Companies. All Rights Reserved.
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Applying Anthropology
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APPLYING ANTHROPOLOGY
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The Role of the Applied Anthropologist
Development Anthropology
Strategies for Innovation
Anthropology and Education
Urban Anthropology
Medical Anthropology
Anthropology and Business
Careers and Anthropology
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APPLYING ANTHROPOLOGY
• How can change be bad?
• How can anthropology be applied to
medicine, education, and business?
• How can the study of anthropology fit into a
career path?
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RECAP 3.1: The Four Subfields and Two Dimensions
of Anthropology
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THE ROLE OF THE APPLIED
ANTHROPOLOGIST
• Early application:
• Application was central concern of early
anthropology in Great Britain and U.S.
• Connection between early anthropology and
colonialism
• Use of anthropology during WWII
• Study “culture at a distance”
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ACADEMIC AND APPLIED
ANTHROPOLOGY
• Academic anthropology grew most after
World War II
• During 50s and 60s most American
anthropologists were college professors
• During the 70s and 80s, some anthropologists
found jobs with international organizations,
government, business, hospitals, and schools
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APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY
TODAY
• Modern anthropology usually seen as helping
profession
• Speak up for disenfranchised
• Highly qualified to suggest, plan, and implement
policies affecting people
• Identifying needs for change that local people
perceive
• Working with those people to design culturally
appropriate and socially sensitive change
• Protecting local people from harmful policies
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DEVELOPMENT
ANTHROPOLOGY
• Branch of applied anthropology that focuses
on social issues in, and the cultural
dimension of, economic development
• Ethical dilemmas often confront development
anthropologists
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EQUITY
• Commonly stated goal of
recent development policy
is to promote equity
• Increased equity: means
reduced poverty and more
even distribution of wealth
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STRATEGIES FOR INNOVATION
• Development anthropology can help sort
needs of people and fit projects accordingly
• Projects that put people first
• Ensure socially compatible ways to implement
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OVERINNOVATION
• Avoid overinnovation: trying to achieve too
much change
• Projects that fail are usually ones that are
economically and culturally incompatible
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UNDERDIFFERENTIATION
• Avoid underdifferentiation: tendency
to view so-called less-developed countries
as being more alike than they are
• Ignoring cultural diversity, contrasts
• Adoption of uniform approach to deal with
different sets of people
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INDIGENOUS MODELS
• Occasionally, governments
act as an agent of people
• Madagascar and Malagasy
• “Descent groups” organized
before the origin of the state
• Realistic development
promotes change but
not overinnovation
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ANTHROPOLOGY AND
EDUCATION
• Research extends from classrooms into
homes and neighborhoods
• View children as cultural creatures whose
enculturation and attitudes toward education
belong to a context that includes family and peers
• Sociolinguists and cultural anthropologists work
side by side
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URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY
• Cross-cultural and
ethnographic study of
urbanization and life in cities
• Proportion of world’s
population living in
cities has increased since
the Industrial Revolution
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URBAN VERSUS RURAL
• Robert Redfield:
contrasted rural and
urban contexts in 1940s
• Urban and rural represent
different social systems
• Applying anthropology to
urban planning starts by
identifying the key social
groups in urban contexts
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MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
• Comparative, biocultural study of disease,
health problems, and health care systems
• Examines which diseases and health conditions
affect a particular population, and why
• Determines how illness is socially constructed,
diagnosed, managed, and treated in various
societies
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MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
• Disease: scientifically identified health threat
caused by a bacterium, virus, fungus,
parasite, or other pathogen
• Illness: condition of poor health perceived
or felt by an individual
• Ethnic groups and cultures may recognize
different illnesses, symptoms, and causes and
have developed different health care systems
and treatment strategies
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MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
• Health standards are cultural constructions
that vary in time and space
• Personalistic disease theories: illness blamed on
such agents as sorcerers, witches, ghosts, or
ancestral spirits
• Naturalistic disease theories: illness explained in
impersonal terms
• Emotionalistic disease theories: illness blamed on
emotional experiences (susto)
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MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
• Health care systems: beliefs, customs,
specialists, and techniques aimed at ensuring
health and diagnosing and curing illness
• Curer: one who diagnoses and treats illness;
often a shaman
• Scientific medicine: based on scientific
knowledge and procedures
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MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
• Western medicine
• Industrialization and globalization
spawned own health problems
• In U.S., good health an
ethical imperative
• More personal treatment
of illness might benefit Western
systems
• Medical anthropology considers
impact on ideas about life, death, and
personhood
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ANTHROPOLOGY AND
BUSINESS
• Anthropologists may acquire
unique perspective on
organizational conditions
and problems
• Ethnography and observation
• Focus on cultural diversity
• Cross-cultural expertise
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CAREERS AND
ANTHROPOLOGY
• Anthropology’s breadth provides knowledge
and an outlook that are useful in many kinds
of work
• Breadth is anthropology’s hallmark
• Knowledge about traditions and beliefs of social
groups within a modern nation is important in
planning and carrying out programs that affect
those groups
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