Transcript Applied anthropology

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Applying Anthropology
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What Is Applied Anthropology?
The Role of the Applied Anthropologist
Academic and Applied Anthropology
Urban Anthropology
Medical Anthropology
Anthropology and Business
Careers and Anthropology
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Applied Anthropology
• American Anthropological Association
(AAA) recognizes two dimensions
– Academic anthropology – includes cultural,
archaeological, biological, and linguistic
anthropology
– Applied anthropology – application of
anthropological data, perspectives, theory,
and techniques to identify, assess, and solve
contemporary social problems
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Applied Anthropology
• Has many applications
– Medical
– Development
– Environmental
– Forensic
– Physical
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Cultural Resource
Management (CRM)
• Branch of applied archaeology aimed at
preserving sites threatened by dams,
highways, and other projects
– Involves not only preserving sites but
allowing their destruction if they are not
significant
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What Is Applied Anthropology?
• Practicing anthropologists practice their
profession outside of academia
• Applied anthropologists work for groups
that promote, manage and assess
programs and policies aimed at
influencing human behavior and social
conditions
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The Role of the
Applied Anthropologist
• Combats ethnocentrism – tendency to
view one’s own culture as superior and to
apply one’s own cultural values in judging
the behavior and beliefs of people raised in
other cultures
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The Role of the
Applied Anthropologist
• Proper roles of applied anthropologists:
– 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
and projects that threaten them
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Table 2.1 The Four Subfields and
Two Dimensions of Anthropology
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Academic and Applied Anthropology
• Academic anthropology grew most after
World War II
– During 1970s, and increasingly thereafter,
most anthropologists still worked in academia
but others found jobs with international
organizations, government, business,
hospitals, and schools
– About half of students graduating with PhDs in
anthropology will have careers outside
academia
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Theory and Practice
• Ethnographers study societies firsthand,
living with and learning from ordinary
people
– Theory aids practice, and application fuels
theory
– Anthropology’s systemic perspective
recognizes that changes don’t occur in a
vacuum
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Urban Anthropology
• Urban anthropology is the cross-cultural
and ethnographic and biocultural study
of global urbanization and life in cities
– Human populations becoming increasingly
urban
– UN estimates that about a sixth of earth’s
population living in urban slums
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Urban Anthropology
• Urban vs. Rural
– Robert Redfield focused on contrasts
between the rural and urban contexts in
the 1940s
– In any nation, urban and rural represent
different social systems
– Applying anthropology to urban planning
starts by identifying the key social groups
in the urban context
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Medical Anthropology
• Unites biological and cultural
anthropologists in the study of disease,
health problems, health-care systems, and
theories about illness in different cultures
and ethnic groups
• Disease – scientifically identified health
threat caused by a bacterium, virus,
fungus, parasite or other pathogen
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Medical Anthropology
• Illness – condition of poor health
perceived or felt by an individual
• Scientific medicine – distinguished
from Western medicine, a health-care
system based on scientific knowledge
and procedures, encompassing such
fields as pathology, microbiology,
biochemistry, surgery, diagnostic
technology, and applications
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Medical Anthropology
• Different ethnic groups and cultures
recognize different illnesses, symptoms,
and causes
– Disease varies among cultures
– Spread of certain diseases, like malaria and
schistosomiasis, associated with population
growth and economic development
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Medical Anthropology
• Personalistic disease theories – blame
illness on such agents as sorcerers,
witches, ghosts, or ancestral spirits
• Naturalistic disease theories – explain
illness in impersonal terms
• Emotionalistic disease theories –
assume emotional experiences cause
illness (e.g., “susto”)
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Health-care systems
• Beliefs, customs, specialists, and
techniques aimed at ensuring health and
preventing, diagnosing, and treating illness
– All cultures have health-care specialists (e.g.,
curers, shaman, doctors)
– Curer – specialized role acquired through a
culturally appropriate process of selection,
training, certification, and acquisition of a
professional image; a cultural universal
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Western Medicine
• Biomedicine surpasses non-Western
medicine in many ways
– Thousands of effective drugs
– Preventive health care
– Surgery
• Medical anthropologists serve as
cultural interpreters between local
systems and Western medicine
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Western Medicine
• Despite its advances, Western medicine is
not without its problems
• Overprescription of drugs and tranquilizers
• Unnecessary surgery
• Impersonality and inequality of the patientphysician relationship
• Overuse of antibiotics
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Anthropology and Business
• Anthropologists may acquire unique
perspective on organizational conditions
and problems
• Applied anthropologists act as “cultural
brokers” to translate managers’ goals or
workers’ concerns to the other group
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Key features of
anthropology for business
• Ethnography
• Cross-cultural expertise
• Focus on cultural diversity
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Careers in Anthropology
• Anthropology’s breadth provides
knowledge and an outlook on the world
that are useful in many kinds of work
– Knowledge about traditions and beliefs of
many social groups within a modern nation
is important in planning and carrying out
programs that affect those groups
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