1
2018-2019 HUMANITIES CENTER BROWN BAG SERIES Training Anthropology Students for the 21st Century Workforce in Detroit: Tensions and Research Integrity Issues in a Collaboration with Corporate Partners Andrea Sankar, Anthropology, Professor & Chair, Director Medical Anthropology, and Co-Director SWAN; Yuson Jung, Anthropology, Associate Professor For more info about the Humanies Center, call (313) 577-5471 or visit www.research2.wayne.edu/hum FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC Thursday, February 7, 2019 12:30PM-1:30PM Rm. 2339 Faculty Administraon Bldg Anthropologists oſten find themselves in a posion to explain their relevance to the larger public, especially in a polically charged neoliberal environment where working for big companies sll comes with some trepidaon for anthropology students crically engaging with issues of social jusce. Research collaboraons with corporate partners not only offer a meaningful immersive “real life” experience, but also a community engagement opportunity, both of which provide producve training. Yet, collaboraons also create dilemmas for teachers in explaining the value and applicaon of anthropology training along with principles and strategies for reconciling possible conflicng goals and findings with a corporate agenda. In this paper, we examine our collaboraon with Chevrolet-GM in product development research to eliminate texng while driving and improve road safety. The project involved 10 Masters-level students who combined their research praccum with learning to collaborate as a team. We explore the opportunies and challenges of corporate collaboraon in student training, examining the considerable benefits accruing to students, including employment for some, along with issues of research integrity and the dilemmas posed for faculty leading these projects. We discuss how to culvate meaningful collaboraons with corporate partners that make anthropology educaon relevant, resilient, and adapve to the 21st century workforce. Andrea Sankar is Professor of Anthropology and past editor of Medical Anthropology Quarterly: The Internaonal Journal of Culture and Health. Her research examines how values, meanings, relaonships and pracces of care, for the self, for others, for the community, and for the environment, influence the health and well-being of individuals and communies. She conducts basic and translaonal research on this and related quesons using large-scale qualitave and mixed methods research as well as ethnographic and case study methods. Yuson Jung is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Wayne State University. Her research explores issues of consumpon, food polics, globalizaon and postsocialism. She is the author of Balkan Blues: Consumer Polics aſter State Socialism (Indiana University Press, 2019) which examines everyday consumer experience in postsocialist Bulgaria. Her work has also appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, and she is the co-editor (with Jakob Klein and Melissa Caldwell) of Ethical Eang in the Postsocialist and Socialist World (University of California Press, 2014). Andrea Sankar Anthropology Professor & Chair, Director Medical Anthropology, and Co-Director SWAN Yuson Jung Anthropology Associate Professor
