PREFACE
SOLVING PROBLEMS ANTHROPOLOGICALLY
Ever since anthropology has existed as a research discipline it has had a practical, problem-solving aspect, although this has attracted more attention in recent years. Historically this aspect of anthropology has been called applied anthropology. As the number of anthropologists who apply their knowledge and skills to activities other than basic research and teaching has increased, so has the number of different terms for practical activities. Besides applied anthropology, many other terms are used for the different forms of practice, including: practicing anthropology, development anthropology, action anthropology, research and development anthropology, and advocacy anthropology. In addition to these, an increasing number of anthropologists engaged in practical employment call themselves practicing anthropologists; they may not choose to call what they do applied anthropology. All of these terms carry meanings appropriate to specific circumstances, which are considered in this book. We will use applied anthropology as a general label for the entire array of situations and approaches for putting anthropology to use. In doing this we must recognize that some will disagree with this usage.
The text is based on a number of my experiences dealing with the applications of anthropology. The first was special training in applied anthropology at the University of Arizona, including an internship served with the tribal government of the Gila River Indian Reservation doing manpower research and other activities. The second consisted of experiences as a development administrator for the Tohono O'odham Tribe of Arizona. This provided first-hand experience in community development as an intervention process. The third experience is nineteen years of teaching applied anthropology at the University of Kentucky.The fourth experience is the creation and ongoing management of the Applied Anthropology Documentation Project, an archive for applied anthropology technical literature. This has brought me in contact with the written products of applied and practicing anthropologists. The fifth area of experience consists of a number of activities done in conjunction with the Society for Applied Anthropology and the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology. In conjunction with the Society for Applied Anthropology I have served as chair of the Ethics Committee during the period when the current ethics statement was developed, and I served as the editor of the first two editions of theGuide to Training Programs in the Applications of Anthropology
( 1987). I am working with both the Society for Applied Anthropology and the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology in their efforts at developing standards for training in applied anthropology.
The view of applied anthropology expressed here has both research and intervention aspects. It provides anthropologists with a number of effective action strategies that can be used to assist communities in reaching their goals within the context of self-determination. Applied and practicing anthropologists can draw upon experiences from the past as effective guides for work in both intervention and research; thus, knowledge of history is very useful. Activities done by anthropologists in both the past and present provide choices for problem solving. The foundation of most of the techniques presented here is the ideology of self-determination by communities and individuals. The research techniques presented also have at their base the idea of systematically identifying local viewpoints and needs as these relate to development efforts or program functioning.
SHARING A TRADITION OF PRACTICE
While this book is intended to teach the reader how to put anthropology to use, reading it is not the best way to learn this skill. The way to learn it is to do it, especially, when possible, under the supervision of a qualified applied anthropologist. Basically, it is too much an art to convey efficiently through books, term papers, and other more traditional assignments; one needs direct experience. So why read this book? The answer is simple enough: many applied anthropologists work in isolation, operating in agencies or firms that hire few other anthropologists. They spend time tracking over the saw ground and solving many of the same problems in ways that may seem to them unique. This book attempts to describe applied anthropology in its breadth and to build a shared tradition of practice, as much as to teach some techniques of application. It is useful to grasp the breadth of activity found in anthropological practice because it helps us see the power of the ideas produced within the discipline. That discovery will enhance our own ability to be effective users of anthropological knowledge. Further, the knowledge presented in this book will help link the experiences associated with contemporary practices to those of the past.
The basic point is a simple one: there are many kinds of anthropological practice, and knowledge of these different ways of practice is useful for the applied or practicing anthropologist. Not all useful practices are represented in this book.
ORIENTATION OF THE TEXT
Before we go on to consider the content of the book, it is useful to say something about its orientation. While this text presents approaches that are useful in many different settings and political traditions, it will be immediately clear that the tradition of application drawn upon and presented is that of anthropologists from the United States of America. There are, however, other national traditions that also present useful experiences for us to consider. For example, contemporary Canadian applied anthropology is undergoing very rapid development ( Price 1987), and application has been at the core of Mexican anthropology since the 1917 revolution. Certainly, one could consider other regional traditions as well.
The value orientation of the applied anthropology described in this text is consistent with the political culture within which it developed, that is, it is pragmatic and democratic. It is pragmatic in that it stresses practices that work to achieve people's goals. It is democratic in that all the approaches, whether they are for research or intervention, have at their core the commitment to discover and communicate the community's perspective. A function of the democratic orientation is a consistent regard for the interests of the local community. You will see these attributes manifested continually throughout the text. You may find it useful to regard these features as a kind of bias.
Depending on the circumstances, the approaches can be both radical and conservative. In some cases, these different kinds of applied anthropology can be used to slow and redirect change that political authorities are advocating. In other cases, the practices discussed here can be used to transform communities into more powerful organizations, giving control where none existed previously. It is important for you, the reader, to realize these features are at the core of all the approaches to using anthropology that are discussed here. Applied anthropology is not about getting people to change against their will, it is about helping people express their will. Yet the framework for action that we discuss here is practical; it has to do with the job market, and it has to do with politics, power, and will.
Although most of the technique chapters have to do with change-producing strategies, this book is also about cultural persistence. You will notice that even in the more explicit change-producing approaches there is a strenuous commitment to identifying the community perspective in the development process. None of the approaches involve unilateral imposition of development goals from outside the community. The basic task is to foster acceleration of the adaptation process. Sometimes expressed simply as "getting more" for the community, the process involves creating a better adaptation for the people of the community. Adaptation questions are ultimately survival questions. Therefore, we should recognize that community-defined development aided by the applied anthropologist is basically a culture-conserving activity.
IS IT ANTHROPOLOGY?
This book does not ask the question, "Is this anthropology?" The question itself is viewed as basically destructive from both intellectual and action perspectives in that it generally limits competition and protects vested intellectual interests. In the case of applied anthropology the question is particularly problematic. Further, if we look at the effect of applied anthropological work on the rest of the field through time we can see that applied work often has functioned as the cutting edge of the discipline. Consequently, applied anthropologists have always been the targets of the "but is it . ." refrain. As we permanently set aside the "but is it anthropology?" question, we should be reminded of more relevant questions: "What is the problem?,""What are the solutions to it?," and most important, "What are the skills and knowledge necessary to implement the solution?"
CONTENT OF THE BOOK
The book is divided into four parts. The first part, "Introduction and Overview," includes chapters intended to provide background for better understanding the core of the text, as presented in Parts II and III. The fourth part of the book deals with some issues of the professional's role.
The first chapter, entitled"The Domain of Application,"
will consider both the relationship between theoretical and applied anthropology and the content of contemporary anthropologists' work situations. An explicit definition of applied anthropology is presented to give the reader a more systematic and comprehensive understanding of what applied anthropologists do. The relationship between application and theory is seen as poorly understood within the discipline. Two aspects of the relationship between theory and application are stressed. First, good knowledge of theory is a necessity for the applied anthropologist because it guides research and increases the scope of applicability of the information obtained. Second, theory that is useful to the applied anthropologist will concern variables that can be acted upon. The chapter maps out a strategy for self-instruction concerning potential employment situations.
The second chapter, entitled"The Development of Applied Anthropology,"
provides a synthesis of the history of applied anthropology from the standpoint of developments in the United States. This synthesis is based on work done in conjunction with the Applied Anthropology Documentation Project at the University of Kentucky. Among the points made in this chapter: the theoretical and applied aspects of anthropology have developed simultaneously, and, to a large extent, activities in the academic realm have often been motivated or at least rationalized by the information needs of governments, research funding organizations, and other policy research consumers.
The "Introduction and Overview" section of this book concludes with a chapter on ethics, organized around fundamental principles for ethical professional behavior. These principles are derived from the "Statement of Ethical and Professional Responsibilities" of the Society for Applied Anthropology. The research component of this chapter discusses the core of ethical research practice: informed consent, voluntary participation by informants, and the issue of risk. The discussion of ethics is expanded to include consideration of the conflicts that may exist between the different groups with which anthropologists work. Although most research or action situations can be carried out without facing overly difficult dilemmas, even very simple situations can turn into a labyrinth of apparently insoluble conflicts. While it is best to be prepared for these problems, they cannot all be anticipated because real learning requires experience. Situations of irreconcilable conflict are easy to read about, and can even be discussed around seminar tables with some benefit, but being faced with harmed communities, betrayed colleagues, and unfulfilled contracts is quite another thing. All these complexities aside, it is important to understand that standards of ethical practice need not be viewed solely as constraints, but more importantly as good guides for effective professional action. Indeed, ethical behavior is more often than not the most effective action.
The second part of this book,"Interventions in Anthropology,"
contains chapters descriptive of six intervention techniques that have been developed within anthropology or with substantial participation by anthropologists. These modes of intervention are presented using, where appropriate, the prototypical case as the starting point in the discussion.
In the fifth chapter, research and development anthropology is exemplified by the Vicos Project, which was directed at establishing an independent community of former serfs in highland Peru. The sixth chapter discusses community development as it was applied to bring about improved aspects of life in a number of communities on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation in southern Arizona. The seventh chapter is about a kind of advocacy anthropology. Advocacy anthropology is depicted using a Chicago Community Mental Health Project in which anthropologists, working with activists in the Chicago Latino community, used their research skills to increase the political power of the Latino community and to improve available health, education, and recreational facilities in an area of Chicago's South Side. In the eighth chapter, cultural brokerage is illustrated by a case study based on Miami's Community Mental Health Project, which used anthropological knowledge and skills to develop and maintain a linkage between five different ethnic communities in Miami and a large county hospital.
The ninth chapter, new to this edition, is on social marketing. In the described project the goal was the promotion of breastfeeding among low-income women in the southeastern United States.
Action anthropology, research and development anthropology, and community development are similar in approach, purpose, and result. Each varies somewhat, and it can be argued that each represents a somewhat different array of techniques to achieve certain goals. All of these approaches can be used to achieve development of different kinds at the community level. To varying extents, these approaches all stress what has been called developmental change--change that improves a community's long-term adaptability. One can often observe two parallel strands of development in projects that use these approaches. The first is more public and results in physical transformations and improved services, and serves as a medium for the second. The second thread is more obscure and results in strengthened community organization and improved decision making. It is more focused on educational change, and results in the creation of social structures rather than physical structures. The three approaches vary enough to provide a set of alternatives for dealing with different development problems in different kinds of communities.
Advocacy anthropology and cultural brokerage seem better suited to complex urban environments. Advocacy anthropology is used here as a general term for situations in which the anthropologist is directly working on behalf of community groups. This often entails working in opposition to more powerful political forces. The approach that is used to illustrate advocacy anthropology was developed by Stephen Schensul. This type is quite different from the three approaches described above. Here, the anthropologist acts more as a research auxiliary to community leadership than as a direct change agent, as is the case in action anthropology, research and development anthropology, and community development. Certainly, this is not to say that the anthropologist is not involved in the action-in fact, the advocacy process requires very close affiliation between the anthropologist and the community. The anthropologist's role reflects the development of increased political sophistication of ethnic minorities in American cities as much as a shift in the way anthropologists work. This is simply an appropriate adjustment to changes in ethnic communities.
Cultural brokerage, too, seems appropriate to contemporary urban ethnic politics. In this approach, developed by anthropologist Hazel H. Weidman, the anthropologist serves as a link between a community service-providing institution, such as a hospital, and an ethnic community that receives services from the institution. In contrast with the other approaches, the primary goal of cultural brokerage is not change per se, but increased efficiency through effective culture contact. That is, cultural brokerage aims at improving services for ethnic groups through enhanced communication, as well as changing the service provider and the ethnic community.
Social marketing makes use of techniques derived from commercial marketing to promote new behaviorals that are socially useful, such as safer sex, smoking reduction, and changes in diet. These efforts benefit from the anthropologist's research skills and community knowledge.
The third part of this book is entitled"Policy Research in Anthropology."
The tenth chapter provides an overview of anthropology as a policy science by discussing various application domains. This chapter contains an expanded version of the discussion on policy that appears in Chapter 1. A special section on using policy research data is also included. Anthropologists are on both the producing and using ends of policy research these days. In fact, one anticipates that more and more anthropologists will take on the role of policy maker as they gain experience in the agencies and firms that employ them.
The next two chapters,"Social Impact Assessment"
and"Evaluation,"
provide practical instruction in the two most important policy research areas. The chapter on social impact assessment (SIA) describes a generalized approach for doing this type of analysis. It is important to note here that SIA is usually done in response to a set of agency guidelines. Social impact assessment is most often done in response to specific federal laws, such as the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, and consequently is limited to domestic situations in the United States. This chapter contains an extended illustrative case, an SIA done for a dam and reservoir project to be built on the Rio Grande in New Mexico. Other projects are mentioned in order to describe some of the variety of such research efforts.
The twelfth chapter deals with evaluation research. For certain kinds of evaluation tasks traditionally trained anthropologists are quite well equipped. This chapter focuses on those tasks that best fit the traditional array of research skills. Basically, we can say that anthropologists are usually best prepared to evaluate smaller scale programs or local components of larger national programs. One might also say that ethnography works best in evaluation strategies that respect qualitative data or are interested in the community perspective. The potential of anthropologists goes much beyond the qualitative evaluation of smaller programs. Because of this, the chapter describes a variety of evaluation modes, including a number of case presentations.
The last chapter of this section of the book deals with technology development research. In this type of research the anthropologist's goal is to increase the cultural appropriateness of new technology as it is developed. The case used to illustrate this kind of research is from the Farming Systems Research literature. The illustrative case is a research effort done in the Sudan as part of the International Sorghum and Millet Project.
The intervention component (Part II) and the policy research component (Part III) are the core of this text. These intervention and research approaches represent most of the major types of practice found in contemporary American anthropology. There are many other activities, most of them specific to particular new occupations for anthropologists, which are an important part of the total picture. Many of these activities are commented upon throughout the text. Increasingly, these diverse areas of practice will come to dominate applied anthropology.
Below is an outline of the major approaches presented in this text. Cultural resource assessment and social soundness analysis are briefly treated in Chapter 10, "Anthropology as a Policy Science." Major Types of Anthropological Practice,
I. Intervention Anthropology
A. Action Anthropology
B. Research and Development Anthropology
C. Community Development
D. Advocacy Anthropology
E. Cultural Brokerage
F. Social Marketing
II. Policy Research A. Social Impact Assessment
B. Evaluation Research
C. Technology Development Research
D. Cultural Resource Assessment
The fourth and concluding section of this book includes one chapter, entitled "Making a Living." This last chapter focuses on skills that are important in anthropological practice. Above all, anthropologists need to be able to produce useful knowledge for their clients. Important communication skill areas that are discussed include report writing and proposal writing. Many anthropologists find that these skills are extremely important in their jobs. Some would say they were hired because of these skills, not for their ability to do cultural analysis or ethnography. Proposal writing holds an especially enticing lure, since it often allows one to create one's own employment, either in self-organized consulting firms, or for various other organizations, including universities, agencies, and firms. A variety of organizational skills are treated in this chapter. In addition, this chapter also looks at the role of the consultant. Topics discussed include: why people use consultants, different styles for being a consultant, and marketing your skills as a consultant.
The chapter gives practical advice on employment. The core of the chapter is about the job search and its component parts. It includes the selection of appropriate education and training experiences, selecting appropriate courses, how to build marketable credentials, investigating the domain of application, writing resumes, and carrying out job interviews. Survival skills after employment are also discussed. These include networking and collaboration, and skill maintenance.
ABOUT THE REVISED EDITION
In preparing the revised edition, I reviewed the text line by line and eliminated any statements that the intervening six years had made obsolete, and I added updates on particular issues. I entirely replaced or added new sections, including sections on the use of policy research and on needs assessment. Chapter 2, on the history of applied anthropology, received special attention, which resulted in new bibliographic references. Chapter 9, on social marketing, is entirely new, and is representative of a new approach to application. Finally, I updated the lists of further reading that follow each chapter. cted.
Acknowledgments
Many people have assisted in the preparation of this book. These people include Tom Arcury, George Castile, Erve Chambers, Kathleen DeWalt, Tony DiBella, Shirley Fiske, George Foster, Tim Frankenberger, Art Gallaher, Sue-ellen Jacobs, Gil Kushner, John Peterson, Jay Schensul, Steve Schensul, Norm Schwartz, Rich Stoffle, Allen Turner, M. G. Trend, Tom Weaver, and Bob Wulff. I especially appreciate the assistance provided by Carol A. Bryant and Doraine F. C. Bailey in developing the chapter on social marketing. I wish to thank Hazel Weidman for materials on culture brokerage and Billie R. DeWalt for information on farming systems research. I thank Barbara Rylko-Bauer for allowing me to use materials from our essay,"A Framework for Conducting Utilization-Focused Policy Research in Anthropology,"
to be published inSpeaking the Language of Power: Communication, Collaboration and Advocacy
, ed. David Fetterman,
Publication Information:
Publication Title: Applied Anthropology: An Introduction. Contributors: John Van Willigen - author. Publisher: Bergin & Garvey Publishers. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Page Number: xviii. Publication Year: 1993
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Author: John van Willigen
