Soc 111 INTRODUCTION TO ANTHROPOLOGY

APPLYING ANTHROPOLOGY

APPLYING ANTHROPOLOGY

• How can change be bad?

• How can anthropology be applied to

medicine, education, and business?

• How can the study of

anthropology fit into a career path?

• How can change be bad? The Coca Cola

example.

• Applied anthropologists help determine

whether change is needed and how it will

work.

• Innovation succeeds best when it is

culturally appropriate. McDonald’s,

Starbucks and Ford have learned that

fitting is more profitable than trying to

Americanize local habits.

The Role of the

Applied Anthropologist

• Applied anthropology: One

of two dimensions of anthropology;

use of anthropological data, perspectives,

theory, and techniques

to identify, assess, and solve

contemporary social problems

involving human behavior and

social and cultural forces,

conditions, and contexts.

Early Applications

• Application was central concern of early

anthropology in Great Britain (colonialism)

and U.S.(Native American policy).

– Academic anthropology

grew most after World War II.

– During the 1970s, some anthropologists found

jobs with international organizations, government, business, hospitals, and schools

Applied Anthropology Today

• Modern anthropology is usually seen as a helping profession. Removed from thecolonial perspective.

• Applied anthropologists use ethnographictechniques in both foreign and domesticsettings while living with and learning fromlocal people.

• Anthropology’s holistic perspective (biology, society, culture and language) permitsevaluation of many issues that affect people.

Roles for 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 may threaten them.

• Helping a community preserve its culture in

the face of threat and disaster.

Development Anthropology

• Development anthropology: Branch of applied anthropology that focuses on social issues in, and the cultural dimension of, economic development. It also plansand guides policy.

Ethical dilemmas often confront development anthropologists. Foreign aid usually doesn’t gowhere it’s most needed but is spent on political,

economic and strategic priorities based on maximizing interest.

Development Anthropology

• Commonly stated goal of recent development policy is to promote equity

– Increasing equity: results in reduced poverty and a more even distribution of wealth.

– However, wealthy and powerful people oftenresist projects that threaten their vestedinterest.

– Negative equity impact is generated whenwealth disparities are widened. (irrigation, fisheries)

Strategies for Innovation

• Development anthropology can help sort the needs of people and fit projects accordingly.

• To maximize social and economic benefits, projects must: 1.be culturally compatible

2.Respond to locally perceived needs

3.İnvolve men and women in planning

4.Harness traditional organizations.

5.Be flexible.

Strategies for Innovation

• Avoid overinnovation: trying to achieve toomuch change• Projects that fail are usually ones that are

economically and culturally incompatible.

• Avoid underdifferentiation: the tendency

to view the so-called less-developed countries

as being more alike than they are.

• Neglecting cultural diversity and adopting a

uniform approach to deal with deifferent sets of

people.

Indigenous Models

• In some nations, governments acts as an agent of the people.

– Madagascar and Malagasy

– “Descent groups” organized before the origin of the state

– Descent group is a kin group composed of peoplewhose social solidarity is based on their belief thatthey share common ancestry. It proved preadapted toequitable national development.

Urban Anthropology

• Urban anthropology: the cross-cultural

and ethnographic and biocultural study of

global urbanization and life in cities

– Proportion of world’s population

living in cities has increased

since the Industrial Revolution

– UN estimates that about one-

sixth of the earth’s population

live in urban slums

Urban Anthropology

• Urban Versus Rural

– Robert Redfield: focused on

contrasts between rural

and urban contexts in 1940s

• Urban (impersonality) and rural (face-

to-face relations) represent different

social systems.

• Applying anthropology to urban

planning starts by identifying the key

social groups in the urban context

Urban Anthropology

• Cities are centers through which culturalinnovations spread to rural and tribal areas.

• Migrants bring rural practices and beliefs tocities and take urban patterns back home.

• One role for urban anthropology is to helprelevant social groups deal with urban institutions, such as legal and social servicesthat they might be unfamiliar with.

• Traffic lights and crossing the streets(Diyarbakır)

Medical Anthropology

• Medical anthropology: comparative,

biocultural study of disease, health

problems, and health care systems

– Examines which diseases and

health conditions affect a

particular population, and why

– Determines how illness is socially

constructed, diagnosed, managed,

and treated in various societies

Medical Anthropology

• Disease: a scientifically identified health

threat caused by a bacterium, virus,

fungus, parasite, or other pathogen

• Illness: a condition of poor health perceived or felt by an individual

– Various ethnic groups and cultures recognize different illnesses, symptoms, and causes and have developed different health care systems and treatment strategies for them.

How can applied anthropologists help to improve the large health disparity between indigenous people and

other populations?

1. Identifying the most pressing health problems that indigenous communities face

2. Gather information on solutions to those problems

3. Implement solutions in partnership with the agencies and organizations that are in charge of public health programmes for indigenous populations.

Medical Anthropology

• Health care systems: beliefs,

customs, and specialists concerned

with preventing and curing illness– Personalistic disease theories:

illness caused by sorcerers, witches, ghosts, or ancestral spirits

– Naturalistic disease theories: illness explained in impersonal terms

– Emotionalistic disease theories: assume that emotional experiences cause illness (e.g., susto)

• Health problems in industrial nationsare caused as much by economic, social, political and cultural factors as pathogens.

• Modern stressors such as pollution, poor nutrition, dangerous machinery, isolation, poverty, homelessness, substance abuse.

Anthropology and Business

• Anthropologists may acquire a unique

perspective on organizational conditions

and problems.

–Ethnography and observation

–Cross-cultural expertise

–Focus on cultural diversity

APPLYING ANTHROPOLOGY

• Anthropology’s breadth provides knowledge and an outlook on the world that are useful in many kinds of work

• Knowledge about the traditions and beliefs of many social groups within a modern nation is important in planning and carrying out programs that affect those groups.