Comments on: Doing Anthropology in Public

By: Anthropology roundup: “anthropology + design: anne galloway”… « Erkan's Field Diary

Sat, 01 Mar 2014 11:50:38 +0000

[…] Doing Anthropology in Public […]

By: Remedios Vago (@VagoRemedios)

Remedios Vago (@VagoRemedios) — Sat, 22 Feb 2014 02:09:43 +0000

Thank you for pointing out the many ways in which anthropologists and their work can be known to the public without splashing their names across headlines or bylines. In fact, anthropology and anthropologists are in the public far more than you suggest.

However, anthropological expertise is not drawn from ethnography, it is drawn from our holistic study of human beings, human societies, and the human condition of which ethnography is one of many important tools. The ethnographic method is not unique to anthropology — it is used in everything from sociology to market research. One of the most important ways we can help make anthropologists more visible is to promote our field in all its many forms.

Anthropologists who study or work in the fields of public health, heritage and cultural resources, museums, education, and the like, but who do not use ethnography as their primary methodology contribute — or can contribute — as much who’s work is based on ethnography. Anthropologists have profoundly local insights, but they also draw on fundamentally comparative research as well. Just a friendly reminder from an anthropologist who has never conducted an ethnography but hopes his work will have an impact in the world (and will be appreciated and plugged by his friends and colleagues).

By: efeinblatt

efeinblatt — Fri, 21 Feb 2014 05:40:43 +0000

Kerim, ‘public intellectuals’ is a peculiar term to use in a context (and I assume you’re speaking of the US since you referred to the NYTimes piece) that is so anti-intellectual. There are rare serious public discourses – and I’m not speaking of academia here, which is more privileged than public – around issues that do/should matter to people whether it has to do with their general well being or simple intellectual curiosity. The forums for this just don’t exist – not NPR or NYTimes, which have willingly dumbed themselves down over the past decade to increases listeners/readers – because we live within a general culture that actually reviles thoughtfulness and reflection, doesn’t see the benefit and play of intellectual banter, and reveres any kind of shortcut to understanding anything. Harsh, I know, but come on….
I lived in France during the Reagan decade and worked in the Fashion Industry, and I swear if Andreé Glucksmann, or Régis Dubray, or Alain Finkielkraut, or BHL weighed in on any important or not so important but provocative issues of the day, it was the talk of the town so to speak. And I was the Fashion Industry! The most popular TV program was Apostrophe, which was about books, and it aired on a Friday night! Ideas swirled and were part of the fabric of French life where there was room and respect for the public intellectual. Nothing in the US comes close to this. Maybe Sontag in her heyday and Chomsky when people paid attention….but that was a different time indeed.

By: Rex

Rex — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 19:13:09 +0000

Thanks for that post Kerim. I sometimes feel like asking “when will we have too much public anthropology?” or “what if we had a public anthropology and no one knew it?”

Its worth asking what would satisfy anthropologists in the public arena — will we not be happy unless we have another Margaret Mead striding colossus like over American discourse? Because realistically, that sort of thing doesn’t happen that often.

By: anthrocharya

anthrocharya — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 19:01:22 +0000

I’m putting that on a t-shirt! That aside, I’ve always wondered why, for example, NPR segments on human evolution might bring on an expert who is, say, an evolutionary psychologist rather than an anthropologist. As a discipline, we have failed to gain traction in the public sphere, particularly in the matter of putting ourselves forward as experts. Your post offers a thought-provoking set of reasons for that. Maybe not the only ones, but this gives me a good place to begin thinking about something I’ve been struggling with. Thanks, Kerim.