Introduction: Uses of Applied Ethnography in Community, Health, and Development by Anthropologists with Master’s Level Training

Abstract

The papers in this issue of Practicing Anthropology are dedicated to the memory of Delmos Jones for the challenge that he presented several years ago to those of us who are involved in the training of anthropologists at the Master's level. He offered this challenge while serving as a discussant on a session at the 1995 meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) that had been organized by a group of anthropologists trained at the Master's level. These anthropologists were wrestling with the difficulty of differentiating the knowledge and skills that they brought to their jobs from the contributions of their co-workers who were graduates of other disciplines and professions. Professor Jones commented that this was a weakness of those trained with in Master's programs in applied anthropology, and he argued that such programs did not have the time in the one or two years that was needed to complete them to adequately provide students with the necessary training in ethnographic research methods and anthropological theory. Such grounding in the methods and theories of the discipline, he suggested, was necessary for developing a strong professional and disciplinary identity. Professor Jones questioned whether such applied programs were a disservice to the students trained in them, and possibly a disservice to the discipline as a whole because they lacked this dimension. His position was that anthropology and anthropologists would be better served by abolishing such programs and providing only anthropological training in doctoral programs, where students would be grounded in the research methods and theories that would provide them a strong anthropological identity whether they were working in applied or academic settings.