What Can Anthropologists Do?: Applied Anthropology in a Conflict-Ridden World

This work examines the role of anthropology in conflict, post-conflict studies, and conflict resolution. Present research has asserted that Anthropology as a discipline must move forward with greater involvement in domestic and international conflict resolution, but no scholar nor activist has taken that leap. All anthropological research in conflict has pertained to forensic anthropology, expert witness testimony, and post-conflict ethnographic research— all completed after conflict has already ended. Many anthropologists have recommended involvement in actual conflict resolution, and many have advocated for further Ethnographic Peace Research. However, the role of anthropology continues to be questioned by the discipline itself as well as governmental agencies and other academic disciplines. Despite these objections, the agreement by the majority of anthropologists in conflict studies is that Anthropologists have the skills necessary to participate and aid in conflict resolution

Reading Between the Lines: Using Citations to Understand Anthropologists’ Reading Patterns

Academic libraries want to collect the materials most useful to researchers, yet how can libraries know how successful they are? While Berkeley’s George and Mary Foster Anthropology Library collects data on which books circulate, it is difficult to evaluate how materials are actually being used to further the discipline of anthropology. In this article, we examine sources cited by our a) faculty members, b) dissertation writers, and c) honors thesis students to better understand how anthropologists read when conducting research. This paper compares materials used across subfields and research levels to highlight patterns in citations within this discipline, leading to new insights that will improve collection development among anthropology librarians

Diverse Student Experiences in Higher Education: Implications for the Anthropology Classroom

The articles in this special collection were presented at the Society for Applied Anthropology meeting in 2018 on a panel affiliated with the organization’s Issues in Higher Education Topical Interest Group. This topical interest group focuses on examining how ongoing shifts in student demographics, financial challenges, and national policy impact decision-making and practice at all levels of the institution in complex ways. The articles in this collection explore educational experiences and needs of college students from their perspectives within the broader context of a rapidly changing higher education landscape and with a focus on applying this knowledge to teaching practices in the anthropology classroom. The authors present ethnographic research on students’ experiences, discuss implications of findings for the anthropology classroom, and provide concrete strategies that instructors can implement to address students’ needs. In doing so, they bring together two fields of study that often appear in the literature as separate areas of focus – the anthropology of higher education and the teaching of anthropology

Troubling futures: can participatory design research provide a generative anthropology for the 21st century?

This essay argues there is value in considering participatory design as a form of generative anthropology at a time when we recognise that we need not only to understand cultures but to change them towards sustainable living. Holding up the democratically-oriented practices of some participatory design research to definitions of anthropology allows the essay to explore the role of intervention in social process. And, challenging definitional boundaries, the essay examines design as a participatory tool for cultural change, creating and interogating futures (and the idea of futures). In analysing how designing moves towards change in the world, the essay brings together design research and concepts from anthropology to help us better understand and operationalise our interventions and pursue them in a fair and sustainable manner

What kind of theory for anthropological demography?

This paper argues that demographic anthropology has, for most part, imported rather than exported theory. Yet, the discipline has the potential to generate important rethinking of population, culture, and their interaction. After discussing the state of the field and the challenges that must be faced in developing new theoretical approaches in demographic anthropology, the paper suggests a framework for research based on the related ideas of the "demographic conjuncture" and "construal."anthropological demography, culture and population, demographic anthropology, social theory

THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE EVOLUTION OF EMPIRICISM

[The text examines methodological consequences of anti-metaphysical turn of British empiricism in the field of anthropology. I argue that this shift reinforces anthropology in its descriptive and interdisciplinary form, because destruction of metaphysically grounded subjectivity carried out in the course of evolution of empiricism provides epistemological legitimization of the idea of anthropological research as morally neutral and religiously indifferent procedure. In the final part of the article the difficulties caused by application of this new methodology are emphasized.

Creating a Dialogue: Bringing Anthropology to the University Campus

Traditional academic anthropology centers on fieldwork and the production of publications that contribute to a growing body of scholarship. In the past several decades, this collective knowledge has primarily circulated only within the discipline itself; in addition, the present day structure of academic anthropology has played a role in its isolation from other disciplines and the general public (Checker et al. 2010). This state of affairs is partially due to the expansion of the discipline in the 1960s, which made it financially possible to support many discipline-specific books, book series, and journals geared exclusively toward trained anthropologists rather than the lay public. This shift removed many anthropological arguments to an exclusive, professional-only realm resulting in decreased dialogue with audiences outside of the discipline (Borofsky 2011). But all is not lost. A growing field in the discipline, applied anthropology, branches away from this traditional academic model and is pushing the boundaries of what is considered anthropological research

Legality, race, and inequality: An interview with Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz

Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz is an assistant professor of anthropology at Loyola UniversityChicago. Her 2011 book, Labor and Legality, explores the work and social lives ofundocumented busboys in Chicago. Since 2011, Gomberg-Muñoz has been conductingethnographic research with mixed status couples as they go through the process oflegalization; a book manuscript based on that research is in the works

Where did anthropology go?: or the need for 'human nature'

I was recently asked the question: “Where did anthropology go? ” by a psycholinguist from a famous American university. She was commenting on the fact that she had tried to establish contact with the anthropology department of her institution, hoping that she would find somebody who would contribute to a discussion of her main research interest: the relation of words to concepts. She had assumed that the socio- cultural anthropologists would have general theories or, at least, ask general questions, about the way children’s upbringing in different cultures and environments would constrain, or not constrain, how children represented the material and the social world. She was hoping for information about exotic societies in order to gain a broader cross-cultural perspective. She was hoping that her enquiry about a topic that is inevitable in any discussion about culture would be equally central to the three disciplines of psychology, linguistics and anthropology, and would therefore be an ideal ground for constructive co-operation, that is, one where the different parties could articulate and challenge the theories on which their different disciplines are built. In fact she found that nobody was interested in working with her, but what surprised her most was the hostility she perceived, caused, not only by the suggestion that cultural social anthropologists were interested in simple exotic societies, but even more by the idea that they might be interested in formulating and answering general questions about the nature of the human species and that, therefore, their work could be compatible with disciplines such as hers. The lack of any generalising theoretical framework within which her research interest might find a place is not surprising when we look at what kind of thing is done in many university departments under the label social or cultural anthropology. Take for example the interests listed on the web site of th