Applied Anthropology in the Post-Vietnam Era: Anticipations and Ironies

Abstract

One of the more revealing remarks concerning applied anthropology has been offered by Claude Levi-Strauss (141) who, while suggesting that applied work ought to be considered the most important aim of the discipline, confessed that he had little personal interest in the subject. Applied endeavor in anthropology is typically viewed as lacking in intellectual rigor, ethically suspect, unimaginative, bereft of theoretical sophistication, and somehow essential to our future. Unfortunately, it has been our tradition to approach applied anthropology as an attitude or employment opportunity, rather than as a major subfield in its own right. This means that application is almost inevitably viewed as a partial and dependent expression of discipline, general­ ly a use of some other perhaps purer inquiry, or at best as a real stimulus for the more profound labors of theoreticians and basic researchers. To the extent that this is held to be true, both general anthropology and our applied concerns are left wanting-the one with no way to express its practicality, and the other with no way to advertise its rigor. This observation leads me to a definition of applied anthropology as the field of inquiry concerned with the relationships between anthropological knowledge and the uses of that knowledge in the world beyond anthropology. While applied anthropologists are properly interested in the outcomes of their work (ranging through such professional issues as the employment of their colleagues and the public good of their endeavors) , I maintain that the discipline of applied anthropology ought to be expressed as a scholarly,