The Use of Anthropological Knowledge Under NEPA

Abstract

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) legally mandates extensive use of social science knowledge in governmental decision-making. In so doing, it creates a context for considering problems of social knowledge utilization. Social scientists and policy researchers, while increasingly noting the use (or non-use) of social science in policy, tend to overlook the uncommon dimension to this issue resulting from NEPA's legal mandate for professional social science research. This paper reviews some existing concepts of knowledge utilization, relates them to recent work in applied anthropology, and develops the theme of NEPA's importance as a law mandating social knowledge use. It also suggests that NEPA's legal mandate creates significant opportunities to extend a more effective professional identity for applied anthropology. First, anthropologists working in this area can become familiar with the relevant law and legal scholarship, and contribute to its development. Second, in practice under NEPA,...