The perils and prospects for an engaged anthropology. A view from the United States

Abstract

In this article I will argue for the vital importance and urgent need for an engaged anthropology. There are a host of critical social issues that anthropologists are currently researching where our qualitative methodologies, in-depth field research, and knowledge of local languages and cultures give us vital insights into the sources of social problems and also potential remedies for some very pressing societal dilemmas. In the United States we have come to realise that we need to do three things as we become increasingly engaged with the world: first, transform our relations with the public in order to overcome entrenched stereotypes and foster current images that accurately depict anthropology today; second, continue to change our relations with the communities we work with, by attending to their concerns in formulating research questions and by viewing them as equal partners in carrying out research and educational activities; and third, work out effective ways of doing research on critical social issues that will expand the influence of anthropology in political arenas and policy debates. Engaging with policy experts, the public and the press can have its perilous side since we have to communicate our research findings more effectively and to overcome public perceptions about who anthropologists are and what we do. The public holds stereotypes of cultural anthropology, condensed images that reduce our work to what Micaela di Leonardo has termed ‘Halloween costumes’ (Di Leonardo 1998: 31). Many of these are images that are based on anthropology’s occupation of what Rolph Trouillot calls the ‘savage slot’ (Trouillot 1991), in other words the niche that the discipline long ago carved out for itself as the scientists who study the ‘primitives’. In the past we have been complicit in constructing at least one of these costumes: the one di Leonardo labels as ‘noble savage/noble anthropologist’ (1988: 32‐6). In other words, American anthropologists in the past often preferred to portray themselves as studying primitive cultures for what they could learn about their own contrasting customs better to understand or even reform themselves. The prototype of this trope is Margaret Mead’s Coming of age in Samoa (1928), in which Mead used an analysis of Samoan adolescence to critique American ways of dealing with puberty. But there are other stereotypes that many of us would reject. For example, there is the charge that anthropologists are really ‘barbarians at the gate’ (Di Leonardo 1988: 40‐3). In this stereotype, anthropologists are viewed as those who over-value the practices of other cultures, hawking cultural relativism to naive undergraduates and by implication denigrating the classics and western civilisation. This is a perspective often promulgated