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Window on Humanity
Conrad Phillip Kottak
Third Edition
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
Overview
• Role of the applied anthropologist
• Development anthropology
• Applying anthropology
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Anthropology and education
Urban anthropology
Medical anthropology
Anthropology and business
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Dimensions of American anthropology:
– Academic or theoretical anthropology
– Applied anthropology
• Applied anthropology
– Application of anthropological data, perspectives,
theory, and methods to identify, assess, and solve
contemporary social problems
– All four subdisciplines
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Early applications
– Application was a central concern of early
anthropology in Great Britain (during colonialism) and
in the U.S. (Native American policy)
– Modern applied anthropology differs from earlier
approaches
• During World War II, a number of American anthropologists
studied Japanese and German culture “at a distance”
• Malinowski advocated working with the British Empire to
study indigenous land tenure
• Colonial anthropologists faced ethical problems posed by their
inability to set or influence policy
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Academic and applied anthropology
– Academic anthropology expanded after World War II
– Students’ interest in anthropology increased during
Vietnam War, when many anthropologists protested
superpowers’ disregard for “Third World” peoples
– Applied anthropology began to grow in the 1970s many anthropologists found jobs with international
organizations, governments, businesses, hospitals, and
schools
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Applied anthropology today
– Applied anthropologists are likely to adopt a local,
grassroots perspective in approaching a problem
– Appropriate roles for applied anthropologists:
• Identifying locally perceived needs for change
• Working with local people to design culturally appropriate,
socially sensitive change
• Protecting interests of local people
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Development anthropology
– Branch of applied anthropology that focuses on social
issues in, and the cultural dimension of, economic
development
– Development anthropologists help to plan and guide
policy
– Foreign aid usually does not go where it is most needed
– Planners’ interests do not always coincide with the best
interests of local people
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Development anthropology
– Equity
• Commonly stated goal of recent development policy
is to promote equity
• Increased equity means reduced poverty and a more
even distribution of wealth
• Wealthy and powerful people typically resist
projects that threaten their vested interests
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Strategies for innovation
– 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
• Be flexible
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Strategies for innovation
– Overinnovation – too much change
• Development projects must avoid overinnovation if they are to be
successful
• People generally resist development projects that require major
changes in their daily lives
• Development projects need to be sensitive to traditional cultures and
the specific concerns of people
– Underdifferentiation – tendency to overlook cultural diversity and
view less-developed countries as more alike than they truly are
– Most humane and productive strategy for change is to base the
social design for innovation on traditional social forms in each
target area
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Strategies for innovation
– Third World models
• Best models for economic development are to be
found in target communities
• Realistic development promotes change but not
overinnovation, preserving local systems while
making them work better
• Descent groups, with their traditional communalism
and corporate solidarity, have important roles to play
in economic development
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Anthropology and education
– Anthropological research in classrooms, homes,
and neighborhoods
– Recognizes the influence of family, peers, and
society on students’ enculturation and attitudes
toward education
– Highlights the need to accommodate cultural
differences in the classroom
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Urban anthropology
– Cross-cultural and ethnographic study of global
urbanization and life in cities
– Increasing urbanization worldwide
– Cultural diffusion (borrowing) between urban
and rural social systems
– Applied urban anthropology
• Most humane and productive strategies for change
build upon existing social forms
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Medical anthropology
– Study of disease, health problems, health care systems,
and theories about illness in different cultures and
ethnic groups
– Academic (theoretical) and applied (practical)
dimensions
– Includes anthropologists from all subfields
– Disease – a scientifically identified health threat
– Illness – a condition of poor health perceived or felt by
an individual
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Medical anthropology
– Theories about the causes of illness:
• Personalistic disease theories – illness caused by
agents such as sorcerers, witches, ghosts, or
ancestral spirits
• Naturalistic disease theories – impersonal
explanations of illness (e.g., Western biomedicine
attributes illness to organisms, accidents, or toxic
materials)
• Emotionalistic disease theories – illness caused by
emotional experiences (e.g., susto in Latin America)
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Medical anthropology
– Health-care systems
• Beliefs, customs, specialists, and techniques aimed at ensuring
health and preventing, diagnosing, and treating illness
• Health-care systems are universal (all societies have them)
– Western vs. non-Western medicine
• Advantages and disadvantages of Western medicine
(biomedicine)
• Differences between scientific medicine and Western medicine
per se
• “Holistic” perspective of non-Western medicine
• Applied medical anthropology
– Public health programs must take local theories about the nature,
causes, and treatment of illness into account
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Medical anthropology
– Medical anthropologists increasingly examine how
new scientific and medical techniques impact ideas
about life, death, and personhood
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Anthropology and business
– Anthropologists’ contributions to business:
• Study organizational conditions and problems
• Mediate between executives/managers and workers
• Observe how consumers with diverse cultural backgrounds
choose and use products
– For business, key features of anthropology include:
• Ethnography and observation as ways of gathering data
• Cross-cultural expertise
• Focus on cultural diversity
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.
CHAPTER 18
Applying Anthropology
• Careers and Anthropology
– Anthropology’s breadth provides an excellent
foundation for many careers
– Anthropology majors go into medicine, law,
business, and other professions with little
explicit connection to anthropology
© 2008 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All right reserved.