Download CHAPTER 18: APPLYING ANTHROPOLOGY

CHAPTER 18: APPLYING ANTHROPOLOGY
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
This chapter introduces students to the work of applied anthropologists in the fields of education,
medicine, business, and development. It examines the role of application in the history of the discipline
and identifies the predominant aims of contemporary applied anthropology. It also discusses urban
anthropology and the factors that may contribute to the success or failure of development programs.
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
1.
Understand the relationship of academic and applied anthropology; the kinds of work in which
applied anthropologists from all four subfields may engage; and the aspects of anthropology which
make it uniquely valuable in application to social problems.
2.
Consider the historical approaches to applying anthropological knowledge which Kottak describes
and the ethical issues raised through these. Know the three different roles or actions Kottak
identifies for applied anthropologists today.
3.
Know what development anthropology is and what development anthropologists do. Understand the
factors that may contribute to the success or failure of development projects.
4.
Identify how anthropological research has contributed to the field of education and to particular
school environments.
5.
Know what academic and applied urban anthropologists study and the contemporary world context
of urban growth in which they conduct their research. Consider the ways anthropologists have
investigated social relations in urban and rural settings.
6.
Know the subject matter and scope of medical anthropology. Identify the three different kinds of
disease theories and consider how they differ. Think about how academic and applied medical
anthropologists study the relationship of biomedicine and other health-care systems existing around
the world, as well as the work of health-care specialists.
7.
Know the key features of anthropology applied in the field of business and the types of research in
which anthropologists are likely to engage.
8.
Consider how people utilize anthropology degrees in different occupations.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Applying Anthropology
A. Applied anthropology refers to the application of anthropological perspectives, theory, methods,
and data to identify, assess, and solve social problems.
B. Many applied anthropologists work for groups that promote, manage, and assess programs aimed
at influencing human behavior and social conditions, including change and development abroad
and social problems and policies in North America.
C. Applied anthropologists come from all four subfields of anthropology.
1. Biological anthropologists work in public health, nutrition, genetic counseling, substance
abuse, epidemiology, aging, mental illness, and forensics.
2. Applied archaeologists work in cultural resource management, contract archaeology, public
educational programs, and historic preservation.
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3. Cultural anthropologists work with social workers, businesspeople, advertising professionals,
factory workers, medical professionals, school personnel, and economic development experts.
4. Linguistic anthropologists frequently work with schools in districts with a wide range of
languages and dialects spoken.
D. One of the most valuable tools in applying anthropology is the ethnographic method.
II.
The Role of the Applied Anthropologist
A. Application was a central concern of early anthropology in Great Britain (in the context of
colonialism) and in the United States (in the context of Native American policy).
B. Modern applied anthropology differs from earlier approaches to applying anthropological
knowledge in the context of World War II, British colonialism, and Native American policy in
the United States.
1. During World War II, a number of American anthropologists studied Japanese and German
culture “at a distance.”
2. Malinowski advocated working with the British Empire to study indigenous land tenure to
determine how much land should be left to the natives and how much the empire could
seize.
3. Colonial anthropologists faced, as do some of their modern counterparts, ethical problems
posed by their inability to set or influence policy and the difficulty of criticizing programs in
which they have participated.
C. Academic and Applied Anthropology
1. Academic anthropology expanded after World War II, when the baby boom fueled the
growth of the American educational system.
2. Students’ interest in anthropology increased especially during the Vietnam War, when many
anthropologists protested the superpowers’ disregard for “Third World” peoples.
3. Applied anthropology began to grow in the 1970s, with many anthropologists finding jobs
with international organizations, governments, businesses, hospitals, and schools.
D. Applied Anthropology Today
1. Modern applied anthropology usually is seen as a helping profession, devoted to assisting
local people, as anthropologists speak up for the disenfranchised in the international political
arena.
2. Applied anthropologists are more likely to adopt a local, grassroots perspective in
approaching a problem than to consult with officials and experts.
3. Because anthropologists are experts on human problems and social change, and because they
study, understand, and respect cultural values, they are highly qualified to suggest, plan, and
implement policy affecting people.
4. Proper roles for applied anthropologists include:
a. Identifying locally perceived needs for change.
b. Working with local people to design culturally appropriate and socially sensitive change.
c. Protecting local people from harmful policies and projects.
III. Development Anthropology
A. Development anthropology is the branch of applied anthropology that focuses on social
issues in, and the cultural dimension of, economic development.
1. Development anthropologists help to plan and guide policy.
2. Foreign aid usually does not go where it is most needed, and planners’ interests do
not always coincide with the best interests of local people.
B. Equity
1. A commonly stated goal of recent development policy is to promote equity.
2. Increased equity means reduced poverty and a more even distribution of wealth.
3. Wealthy and powerful people typically resist projects that threaten their vested
interests.
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IV. Strategies for Innovation
A. In planning development projects, using anthropological expertise to ensure cultural
compatibility is cost-effective.
B. To maximize social and economic benefits, development projects must be culturally
compatible, respond to locally perceived needs, involve men and women in planning and
carrying out the changes that affect them, harness traditional organizations, and be flexible.
C. Overinnovation
1. Development projects must avoid overinnovation (too much change) if they are to be
successful.
2. People generally resist development projects that require major changes in their daily
lives.
3. Development projects need to be sensitive to traditional cultures and the specific,
down-to-earth concerns of people.
D. Underdifferentiation
1. Underdifferentiation is the tendency to overlook cultural diversity and view lessdeveloped countries as more alike than they truly are.
2. Many development projects incorrectly assume either individualistic productive units
that are privately owned by an individual or couple and worked by a nuclear family,
or cooperatives that are at least partially based on models from the former Eastern
bloc and Socialist countries.
3. The most humane and productive strategy for change is to base the social design for
innovation on traditional social forms in each target area.
E. Third World Models
1. The best models for economic development are to be found in target communities.
2. Realistic development promotes change but not overinnovation, by preserving local
systems while making them work better.
3. The Malagasy example illustrates the potential benefits of basing development
programs on traditional social forms (e.g., descent groups).
4. Native forms of social organization will not inevitably break down into nuclear
family organization, impersonality, and alienation as countries are drawn into the
world capitalist economy.
5. Descent groups, with their traditional communalism and corporate solidarity, have
important roles to play in economic development.
V. Anthropology and Education
A. Anthropology and education refers to anthropological research in classrooms, homes, and
neighborhoods.
B. Anthropological research highlights the need to accommodate cultural differences in the
classroom, because children’s attitudes toward education and reactions to various pedagogical
techniques are shaped by their cultural backgrounds.
VI. Urban Anthropology
A. Human populations are becoming increasingly urban.
B. Urban anthropology is the cross-cultural and ethnographic study of global urbanization and
life in cities.
C. Urban versus Rural
1. Robert Redfield was an early student of the differences between rural and urban
contexts.
2. Cultural diffusion or borrowing occurs as people, products, and messages move
between urban and rural social systems.
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3. The most humane and productive strategies for change, whether in a rural or an urban
context, build upon existing social forms, such as kin-based ethnic associations,
occupational groups, social clubs, religious groups, and burial societies.
VII. Medical Anthropology
A. Medical anthropology has both academic (theoretical) and applied (practical) dimensions, and
includes both biological and sociocultural anthropologists.
B. Medical anthropology focuses on issues such as which diseases affect different populations,
how illness is socially constructed, and how one treats illness in effective and culturally
appropriate ways.
1. Disease is a scientifically identified health threat.
2. Illness is a condition of poor health perceived or felt by an individual.
C. The incidence of different diseases varies among societies, and cultures interpret and treat
illness differently.
D. The spread of certain diseases, like malaria and schistosomiasis, has been associated with
population growth and economic development.
E. There are three basic theories about the causes of illnesses.
1. Personalistic disease theories blame illness on agents such as sorcerers, witches,
ghosts, or ancestral spirits.
2. Naturalistic disease theories explain illness in impersonal terms (e.g. Western
biomedicine, which attributes illness to organisms, accidents, or toxic materials).
3. Emotionalistic disease theories assume emotional experiences cause illness (e.g.,
susto among Latino populations).
F. Health-care Systems
1. All societies have health-care systems consisting of beliefs, customs, specialists, and
techniques aimed at ensuring health and preventing, diagnosing, and treating illness.
2. All cultures have health-care specialists (e.g. curers, shamans, doctors) who emerge
through a culturally defined process of selection and training.
G. Health-Care Specialists
1. All cultures have health-care specialists (e.g., curers, shaman, doctors).
2. Health-care specialists emerge through a culturally defined process of selection and
training.
H. Scientific Medicine
1. Despite its advances, scientific medicine is not without its problems.
a. Overprescription of drugs and tranquilizers
b. Unnecessary surgery
c. Impersonality and inequality of the patient-physician relationship
d. Overuse of antibiotics
2. Biomedicine surpasses non-scientific treatments in many ways.
a. Thousands of effective drugs are available to treat myriad diseases.
b. Preventive health care improved during the 20th century.
c. Today’s surgical procedures are safer and more effective than comparable nonbiomedical techniques.
I. Medical Development
1. Successful health interventions must fit into local cultures and be accepted by local
people.
2. Medical anthropologists can serve as cultural interpreters in public health programs,
which must pay attention to native theories about the nature, causes, and treatment of
illness.
J.
Medical anthropologists increasingly are examining the impact of new scientific and
medical techniques on ideas about life, death, and personhood.
VIII. Anthropology and Business
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A. Anthropologists who study business settings, or who are employed by companies, may
acquire a unique perspective on organizational conditions and problems; act as “cultural
brokers,” translating the goals of executives/managers or the concerns of workers to the other
group; or even study how consumers with different cultural backgrounds use products.
B. For business, key features of anthropology include: (1) ethnography and observation as ways
of gathering data, (2) cross-cultural expertise, and (3) focus on cultural diversity.
IX. Careers and Anthropology
A. Anthropology’s breadth provides knowledge and an outlook on the world that are useful in
many kinds of work.
B. Anthropology majors go on to medical, law, and business schools and find success in many
professions that often have little explicit connection to anthropology.
X. Anthropology Today: Culturally Appropriate Marketing
A. Each time an international company expands into a new country, it must devise a culturally
appropriate strategy for fitting into the new setting.
B. McDonald’s had a difficult time creating culturally appropriate advertising when it first
expanded into Brazil.
C. McDonald’s enjoyed greater success when it began adapting to preexisting Brazilian eating
habits, rather than trying to Americanize them.
LECTURE TOPICS
1.
Discuss the overlapping histories of “applied” and “academic” anthropology that Kottak
identifies in the chapter (e.g., in Malinowski’s work on land tenure during British colonialism).
What ethical dilemmas, as well as opportunities for advocacy, arise in the funding, use, and
dissemination of anthropological knowledge?
2.
Bring an applied anthropologist into the classroom to discuss his or her work.
3.
Discuss various notions of what constitutes development among people in areas targeted for
development, among anthropologists, and among professional development workers. What are
some of the problems and concerns encountered by anthropologists wishing to contribute to
development projects?
4.
Discuss the coexistence of medical systems in the United States, where biomedicine appears
socially dominant. Describe some of the numerous medical practices, involving for example
ethnobotanical knowledge and religious healing, which coexist with biomedicine in the
contemporary United States.
5.
Discuss some of the advantages and problems of an anthropological approach in representing and
“identifying locally perceived needs for change,” one of the roles/actions Kottak identifies for
applied anthropologists. While exposing one to people’s daily practices, values, and beliefs, how
would ethnographic research simultaneously demonstrate the widely varying, multifaceted ideas
and desires people may have regarding marked social change?
SUGGESTED FILMS
The Talking Skull: Forensic Anthropology
1998 26 minutes
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This film traces the efforts of forensic anthropologist Dr. Michael Charney and medical examiner Dr.
Mary Case to study the remains of a murder victim. From Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
Birth and Belief in the Andes of Ecuador
1994 28 minutes
Women in four Andean communities discuss their beliefs and practices of pregnancy, birthing, infant
care, breastfeeding, and post-partum seclusion and treatment of the body. Their discussions also touch
upon beliefs regarding gender differences in the “natures” and needs of infants. From the University of
California Extension Center for Media and Independent Learning.
No Place to Hide: The UN’s Peacekeeping Efforts
1995 51 minutes
Hosted by Sir Brian Urquhart, head of UN peacekeeping in the 1970s and ’80s, this film presents the
history of the UN’s peacekeeping efforts and discusses the future of these operations. A United Nations
production.
Series: Global Issues in Our Developing World
This series presents case studies that address problems and issues common to various developing
countries around the world. Each film compares a common theme in three different developing countries.
4-part series, 30-33 minutes each. Titles in the series: Ecology and the Environment: Galapagos,
Mauritania, Madagascar; Economic Development: Colombia, Bolivia, India; Human Rights: Haiti,
Turkey, Oman; Drugs and Health: Peru, Uganda, Turkey. From Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
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