Anthropology Program Research Articles

Sonja Luehrmann/Соня Люрман (1975–2019)

Sonja Luehrmann/Соня Люрман (1975–2019) William G. Rosenberg (bio) Sonja Luehrmann was one of the brightest lights ever to graduate from Michigan’s rigorous joint-degree program in history and anthropology – itself quite a luminous cluster of stars. With native fluency in German, English, and Russian, and near native competency in less exotic languages like French, Bulgarian, Mari, and even Japanese, she had the rare ability to understand diverse cultures through lived experience as well as the celebrated anthropological gaze, and in social contexts where natives like myself were immediately attracted by her cultural and linguistic fluency. Through it all – her upbringing and schooling in Germany, undergraduate work at Berkeley, graduate study in Frankfurt and Ann Arbor, and especially her years of work among the Mari people in the hinterlands of Russia’s Mari El republic – Sonja remained her own person. I vividly remember worrying about her when she wrote during her dissertation research that she intended to take a dip in a frozen lake near Yoshkar-Ola on the Great Feast of Epiphany on January 19, to better bond with local Russian Orthodox Christians, a focus of her research. She responded to my apprehension by gently castigating me – if one can be gently castigated – for well-meaning concern that was detrimental to her scholarship. Sonja was always clear about her priorities. In addition to her husband Ilya Vinkovetsky and her children, who spoke fluently in three languages by the time they entered grade school, one of these priorities was religion. For someone like myself who tends to think of faith as a problematic filter to objectivity, Sonya never wavered in her determination to keep the two in proper balance, nor in her gentle (again) efforts to set me straight on the subject. Indeed, her determination to understand fully religious life in Mari El in all its dimensions was driven by her [End Page 313] appreciation of how important it was to the ways the local faithful navigated the Soviet system, and especially the ways it was institutionally resurrected, so to speak, after the collapse of the USSR. Faith also clearly sustained Sonja through the many tribulations of field research in what most might consider a wilderness, as it clearly did when she experienced the trials of any academic career. In this way, too, she was a wonderful student as well as, with the passage of time, a friend. She accepted criticism thoughtfully; with intelligence and grace, she defended positions that I and others thought might be modified; and she greatly valued her relationships with smarter and less smart student and faculty colleagues alike. (Among her other achievements, she brought the largest cohort of friends to her dissertation defense that I’ve ever seen at Michigan.) Even after she settled into her career at Simon Fraser, her letters always reflected her “centeredness,” a word I am thinking is probably not in the official anthropology lexicon. I first got to know Sonja when she took my seminar in Russian and Soviet history in 2003 (I think) – in any case a long time ago. Sonja wrote a stunning paper titled “Colonial Politarism and Comparative State Power: Post-Soviet Ethnography Goes to Alaska,” one of the few over many years that I’ve saved in my files. I’m not usually at a loss for criticism, but had little to offer in this case, besides a few uninteresting comments, except a strong recommendation that she send it out for publication – a price I told her she had to bear for doing such impressive work. (The essay was soon published in Slavic Review, and was a cornerstone of Sonja’s first book, Alutiiq Villages under Russian and U.S. Rule published by the University of Alaska Press in 2008.) I recovered my critical voice to a degree when she was working on her dissertation. I had some doubts about her argument that the techniques of Soviet antireligious propaganda in Mari El provided fertile methods for post-Soviet religious proselytizing, and raised them with her along the way as well as at her dissertation defense. In typical fashion, Sonja both had confidence in her own analytical judgment and enough respect for my criticism to return to...

The Social Network of US Academic Anthropology and Its Inequalities

ABSTRACTAnthropologists often call attention to the problems posed by social inequality, but academic anthropology also reproduces many of the very inequalities that its practitioners work to critique. Past research on US academic hiring networks has shown evidence of systematic inequality and hierarchy, attributed in significant part to the influence of academic prestige, which is not necessarily a reflection of merit or academic productivity. Using anthropology departments’ websites, we gathered information on all tenured and tenure‐track faculty in PhD‐granting anthropology programs in the United States, totaling 1,918 individuals in all. For each faculty member, we noted their current institution and PhD‐granting institution, which we treated as a “tie” between those academic programs. With those data, we applied both statistical and social network analysis (SNA) methods to explain variation in faculty placement as well as the network's overall structure. In this article, we report on our findings and discuss how they can be used to help rethink academic reproduction in American anthropology. [academia, anthropology, social inequality, hiring networks, social network analysis]

50 ANOS DA PEDAGOGIA DO OPRIMIDO: LER A REALIDADE E CONSTRUIR A ESPERANÇA

APRESENTAÇÃO DO DOSSIÊ TEMÁTICO

The Council for Museum Anthropology Program in San José

Anthropology NewsVolume 59, Issue 6 p. e180-e189 November/December Online Content The Council for Museum Anthropology Program in San José Diana E. Marsh, Diana E. MarshSearch for more papers by this author Diana E. Marsh, Diana E. MarshSearch for more papers by this author First published: 12 August 2019 https://doi.org/10.1111/AN.1028AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume59, Issue6Special Issue: Silicon ValleyNovember/December 2018Pages e180-e189 RelatedInformation

Why is History Didactics Needed in History (Non-pedagogic) Studies?

[article in Lithuanian; abstract and key words in English]
 The purpose of this article is to answer the following question: why is history didactics needed in history (non-pedagogic) studies? The article begins with the existing definitions of the concepts of the didactics and history didactics as well as their statuses as academic disciplines. Further attention is paid to the German program of history didactics, an acquaintance with which has caused certain changes in the study programs at the Faculty of History of Vilnius University. The article concludes with a discussion of the reception of the German ideas in the studies of this faculty. The novelty of the article can be seen in the first attempt to scientifically legitimize the teaching of the history of didactics in history studies and to dispute the tradition, a popular one in Lithuania, of dissociating the research on teaching from the studies of historical consciousness, historical culture, memory etc. The article revealed that studies of history (non-pedagogy) can be substantially enriched by those history didactics that, with the help of the categories of historical consciousness and historical culture, treat history teaching (learning) as a part of daily communication and as an integral aspect of human life practice. Such a concept is typical of the German program of history didactics, associated with the 1960s and 1970s. The German program of history didactics was chosen as a theoretical basis when constructing the subject of history didactics for the Master’s Program in History (1997) of the Faculty of History in Vilnius University and when constructing the subject (later the module) of history didactics for the Bachelor’s Program in Cultural History and Anthropology (2003, 2012). German theory presents not only the framework for subject/module themes but it also serves as a theoretical basis that allows to conceptually combine the problems of historical consciousness, academic history, historical culture and school history. It is likely that the concept of history didactics, which goes beyond the school limits, will eventually return the consideration of conceptual issues to the discipline of Lithuanian history didactics.

Experiences in Applying to and Attending Biological Anthropology Programs Focused on Human Skeletal Biology

Because of the lack of forensic anthropology degree-granting programs, forensic anthropologists have traditionally attended programs that grant general anthropology degrees while performing human skeletal biology (HSB) research. In order to examine potential changes in competition for HSB graduate programs and to generally inform the community of trends and the current state of HSB graduate programs, the authors generated an electronic survey, distributed from June 2016 to April 2017, soliciting responses from anyone with current or past experiences attending HSB graduate programs. Among other results, respondents indicate that GPA remains an important factor for acceptance in graduate programs, with the average respondent GPA of 3.6 and all faculty respondents indicating a preferred minimum GPA at or above 3.0 (with an average faculty response of 3.3). The average combined GRE score of respondents was 312, although 56% of faculty respondents indicated that they did not have a preferred minimum GRE for applicants. Letters of recommendation and personal statements were ranked highest by faculty in degree of importance in graduate student applications. Debt accrued by degree varied greatly among individuals, but 69% of respondents had full funding for their doctorate. Notably, 90% of respondents recommended students take some time off between degrees. The results of this survey promote a general awareness of HSB graduate program environments. The information provided can be used to better prepare students in biological anthropology, including those pursuing forensic anthropology, for success in their academic journey.

CRIANÇAS ATIVAS, APRENDIZAGEM E AFRO-BRASILIDADE: PENSANDO O APRENDIZADO AFRO-BRASILEIRO NA CASA DE SANTA BÁRBARA

This work aims to make a discussion inspired by the texts and debates raised in the discipline Anthropology of Education of the Graduate Program in Anthropology of UFSC. I intend to bring the categories discussed in the room, as a child, learning, and therefore also reflect on the notion of education, knowledge and knowledge, thinking from the space of worship to Iansa (Santa Barbara) professed by the Mota and Assis family in Aguada, Carmopolis / Sergipe, where the presence of Afro-Brazilian culture is intense and intensified. I also start from my experience as a member of this family and also from the cult, seeking to perceive the children and their experiences from this point of interlocution. The objective is to discuss how children's participation in the space of worship is, how they observe, experience and take that reality to themselves, thus creating a learning process about being, and about what is to be an integral part of an African matrix cult .

In Memoriam: Michael Cooper (1930–2018)

In MemoriamMichael Cooper (1930–2018) Kate Wildman Nakai Michael Cooper, editor of Monumenta Nipponica from 1972 to 1997, died peacefully in Honolulu, Hawaii, on 31 March 2018 after a short illness. He was just a month short of his eighty-eighth birthday. In Japan, as he would undoubtedly point out were he writing this piece, this is a felicitous marker of longevity. Michael was born in London on 25 April 1930. He paid great attention to people’s birthdays and to remembering them with a card. Perhaps as a gentle reproach to those less conscientious and kind about such matters than he, on occasion he remarked that his birthday could be easily recalled because it was the same as Oliver Cromwell’s. After completing his secondary education at the Jesuit school Beaumont College, Old Windsor, Michael entered the Society of Jesus in September 1948. He spent the next six years at Jesuit training centers in the United Kingdom and Spain. The time spent in Spain likely fostered the skills in Spanish and Portuguese that he later would put to use in his research on the Western encounter with Japan in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This stage of his education concluded with a year of philosophical studies at Manresa College, London, in 1953–1954. The following year Michael was sent to Japan, where he embarked on two years’ study of Japanese at the Jesuit language program in Taura, Yokosuka. The school’s proximity to Kamakura encouraged exploration of that city’s temples and other sites and led him to become, in the words of the blurb to his historical guidebook Exploring Kamakura: A Guide for the Curious Traveler (Weatherhill, 1979), a “confirmed Kamakura buff.” The same blurb reports that the guidebook is based on “notes taken during his student days.” Later he would often enjoy leading friends and visitors on personal tours to his favorite spots. Click for larger view View full resolution In the classroom at Sophia (late 1950s). Sophia University Archives. Michael spent two further years in Japan teaching English at Sophia University and working in the university’s public relations office before going back to the UK in 1959 for four years of theological studies at Heythrop College, then located near Oxford. Presumably it was during this time that the general course of his subsequent academic path was set. He once mentioned that Pedro Arrupe, later superior general [End Page 179] of the Society of Jesus and from 1958 to 1965 head of its Japan Province, instructed him to obtain a degree in anthropology with the idea that he would eventually return to Tokyo and take up the editorship of MN. In 1963 Michael entered the two-year program in social anthropology at the University of Oxford, at the time the usual preliminary step for pursuing an advanced degree there in the subject. Having obtained a diploma in social anthropology, he proceeded to the doctoral course and was awarded his doctorate in 1969. Oxford was a center of the “cultural translation” approach to social anthropology associated with E. E. Evans-Pritchard, with whom Michael studied. Evans-Pritchard emphasized the importance of immersing oneself in the language and culture of the society that was the object of one’s research. Only in this way could one grasp what things meant in their original context and, on that basis, translate them accurately into the mode of understanding basic to one’s own language. Michael would adopt cultural translation as both a topic to investigate and a principle to apply. The core of Michael’s dissertation was a translation from the Portuguese into English of the account of Japanese life and customs compiled by the Jesuit missionary João Rodrigues in the first decades of the seventeenth century. The research that Michael did for his dissertation was subsequently published in three forms. In 1973 he brought out a somewhat abridged version of Rodrigues’s lengthy work as This Island of Japon: João Rodrigues’ Account of 16th-Century Japan (Kodansha International). A complete annotated translation eventually appeared under a slightly revised title as João Rodrigues’s Account of Sixteenth-Century Japan (The Hakluyt Society, 2001). Michael produced...

Formulação e implementação da ação afirmativa para pós-graduação do Museu Nacional

RESUMO O trabalho analisa a política de ação afirmativa instituída na pós-graduação em antropologia social do Museu Nacional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. O objetivo é contribuir com a literatura e analisar a formulação e a implementação das ações afirmativas para pós-graduação de uma perspectiva crítica. Destaca-se a importância da participação conjunta dos corpos discente e docente na elaboração e discussão da proposta, bem como o fato de se terem levado em consideração as barreiras enfrentadas por negros e indígenas no ingresso à pós-graduação e o papel do processo tradicional de seleção na manutenção desses obstáculos. Contudo, não se mostra suficiente que os programas apenas criem mecanismos para ingresso desses grupos na pós-graduação, sendo indispensável a formulação de políticas de permanência.

President Trump’s Moving Targets

President Trump’s Moving Targets

Working at the National Institutes of Health: Developing a New Set of Cross-Over Skills as an Applied Medical Anthropologist

This article reviews a portion of my professional career in academia and outside of academia for the purpose of highlighting the cross-over professional development skills that I learned to use in different fields of expertise. Although I had received my academic doctoral training at an applied medical anthropology program (Wayne State University, Detroit, MI) in the 1980s and a few years later completed a postdoctoral fellowship program which earned me a Masters of Public Health degree (MPH) from Emory University (Atlanta, GA), I really did not know what it was truly like to be a public health professional until I was hired, trained, and worked for the National Institutes of Health. Cross-over skills are skills that allow a professional to transfer to another high-skilled professional job successfully. It is not until I immersed myself in a completely different work setting when I discovered that these cross-over professional development skills were advantageous to my professional career.

Legados africanos: palavra enunciadora de simbolismos étnicos

As diferentes etnias produzem formas simbólicas, uma destas formas é através das imagens que a palavra enuncia, sendo assim, podemos afirmar que ao entrar em campo para estudar sobre etnicidades, o que os pesquisadores/as autores/as fazem é buscar entender quais formas simbólicas permeiam os universos estudados. Para pensar acerca desses universos é que tomo simbolismos étnicos enunciados pelas imagens que a palavra Legados Africanos carrega. A amplitude do trato com a categoria analítica legado africano pode se mostrar nas diversas obras de diferentes autores e autoras, estudiosos das etnias africanas no Brasil, seja nas dimensões da cultura, da religião, das questões raciais negras, da linguística e outras. Mas aqui, o propósito é tomar as produções monográficas escritas por alunas e alunos, os quais orientei no curso de Pós-Graduação Lato Sensu em Antropologia com Ênfase em Culturas Afro-brasileiras para entender esses universos simbólicos. Neste sentido que, durante as orientações estava a lhes alertar que um curso de Antropologia com Ênfase em Culturas Afro-brasileiras, não poderia desprezar a categoria central de análise e interpretação que é legado africano no Brasil, salvo se, e somente se, a metodologia tratasse do objeto numa abordagem reducionista que excluísse, negasse e silenciasse as reminiscências africanas. As produções elaboradas por esses discentes nos indicou que os simbolismos presentes na palavra legados africanos enunciam que não são vistos como saberes de pertencimento étnico e sim como crenças.

A volta da Cobra Canoa: em busca de uma antropologia indígena

Este texto, escrito a quatro mãos, trata do processo das Políticas Afirmativas no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia da Universidade Federal do Amazonas (UFAM). Ele descreve o enfrentamento dos desafios e o desenvolvimento de um exercício de reflexividade na busca de uma antropologia indígena.

Finding Dr. Dobyns: Processing the Henry F. Dobyns Collection, University of Arizona Libraries

Finding Dr. Dobyns:Processing the Henry F. Dobyns Collection, University of Arizona Libraries Lisa E. Duncan (bio) In August 2010, I was contacted by an archivist in Special Collections at the University of Arizona Libraries about a position processing a recently acquired archival collection. The archivist said the library had received a donation of an anthropologist's professional and personal papers. The collection was also quite large, a challenge I relished. I was interested. A few years earlier, I had graduated with my bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona's School of Anthropology. The anthropologist had graduated from the same program in the 1950s. I immediately applied for the position—and once hired, I moved to Tucson to process the Henry F. (Hank) Dobyns Papers. I would spend the next two years of my career almost exclusively in the company of Dr. Dobyns—or at least his papers, and the memories and stories of those who knew him.1 The experience defined me as an archivist. The size and complexity of the Dobyns collection tested my skills—and often my sanity—but, ultimately, it made me a better archivist. Henry F. (Hank) Dobyns (1925–2009) was an applied anthropologist and ethnohistorian. Dr. Dobyns spent much of his career working with native peoples of North and South America. Born in Tucson, he was raised in Casa Grande, Arizona. He graduated with a BA and MA in anthropology from the University of Arizona, and received his PhD in anthropology from Cornell University. Dr. Dobyns worked on land and water cases for several southwestern tribes and on the Cornell Peru Project, which was affiliated with the U.S. Peace Corps; he also worked at several universities, including the University of Arizona.2 He never retired, and remained active in research projects. Because of his connection [End Page 716] to the university as a graduate of its anthropology program and his friendship with anthropologist Richard Stoffle and his wife, Carla, former dean of the University of Arizona Libraries, Dobyns chose Special Collections as the repository for his papers and library. It was a natural fit. Dobyns published extensively on the native peoples of the Southwest and is best known for his work in historical demography, including "Estimating Aboriginal American Population: An Appraisal of Techniques with a New Hemispheric Estimate" and Their Number Become Thinned: Native American Population Dynamics in Eastern North America (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983). On my first day, I was introduced to the Dobyns collection as it stood: 600 office boxes and 8 filing cabinets, located on opposite floors of two separate library buildings and stored in four different rooms. Just seeing all of the material at once was impossible. Over the previous two years, the University of Arizona Special Collections staff had picked up the collection from Dr. Dobyns's homes. They described what they found. Dr. Dobyns had dedicated every available space to his research. Notes, manuscripts, and files were in nearly every room. Dr. Dobyns was known for meticulous and extensive research, and he was a prolific author.3 He had kept everything: Every scrap of paper, every notebook, and every file on a topic of interest were included. This is what made my job so interesting—and difficult. I had never worked on a collection which did not fit on a couple of tabletops, let alone one which flowed out of one room to another—and then another—and to still another room and another. While I was apprehensive about the size of the collection, I was excited about jumping into a new project, especially one which fit my interests so well. I had recently graduated from the University of Arizona's School of Information Resources and Library Science (SIRLS). I had several years of training in archival processing as a graduate assistant in Special Collections at the University of Arizona and I had processed collections in other institutions. I was—I am—detail-oriented, organized, and obsessed with timelines. I had confidence in my skills, abilities, and experiences. I was confident that I could tackle such a large project. Confident, that was, until I saw "the quarantine room." My first task with the...

A ANTROPOLOGIA NO BRASIL: É A INTERDISCIPLINARIDADE POSSÍVEL?

A história da Antropologia no Brasil foi dividida em três fases: 1. Os pioneiros; 2. Período formativo; e 3. Fase contemporânea. Os principais eventos e exemplos de figuras paradigmáticas foram apresentados com relação aos dois primeiros períodos, enquanto para o terceiro foi fornecida uma lista de todos os presidentes da Associação Brasileira de Antropologia. A seguir desenvolveu-se abordagem similar para as quatro subáreas em que a Antropologia é tradicionalmente subdividida: Antropologia Social/Cultural; Arqueologia; Linguística; e Antropologia Física/Biológica. A pergunta feita no final é se a interação entre essas subáreas é possível. A resposta é de que uma abordagem verdadeiramente interdisciplinar é difícil, mas parece ser o melhor caminho para pesquisas de ponta. Sugere-se, portanto, uma abertura maior dos Programas de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia brasileiros à contratação de especialistas nas quatro subáreas, através de montagens de projetos de cunho nitidamente interdisciplinares. Palavras chaves: História da Antropologia; Antropologia no Brasil; Interdisciplinaridade.

THE FOUR-FIELD MODEL OF ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES

This paper assesses the historical and institutional origins of anthropology in the United States in order to understand the development of the four-field model, the persistence of which is considered distinctive of anthropology in the United States. An Atlantic Enlightenment saw the origins of anthropology in the United States. The four fields of anthropology can be traced to the Enlightenment. The four fields were brought together in the context of museums and learned societies in the 19th century United States. The focus of anthropology changed in the early 20th century with the placement of anthropology in the context of the university and the German concept of the defended dissertation as the principal gateway to professionalization (introduced by Boas). Four-field anthropology programs also existed in diverse countries, but did not persist except in the US beyond the early years of the 20th century. Anthropology in the US as a four-field discipline grew throughout the 1930s. After World War II, the discipline expanded greatly in the United States, partly due to the G.I. Bill as well as to increased demand for anthropology courses. Anthropology continued to grow in terms of numbers of institutions offering the PhD and numbers of new doctorates in the field into the 1970s, stabilizing around 400 per year. The usual rank order in number of doctorates per field per year continues to be the same in the early 2000s as it was thirty years ago: cultural anthropology, archaeology, physical anthropology, linguistic anthropology. The four field unity of the discipline came under critical scrutiny in the late 20th century, with the principal criticism being that the holism of the four fields appears to be a function of 19th century museum mentality, but the four fields regardless of cleavages have nevertheless remained together in the same departments in most universities. That trend appears to be continuing in general at the present time in the United States. Keywords: four fields of anthropology, history of anthropology, US university system.

Introductory Statistics in a Business Anthropology Program

Introductory statistics courses in bachelor’s degree programs in higher education are often challenging to both teachers and learners. In 2012 our institution launched a bachelor’s degree program in Market and Management Anthropology (MMA), a field of study in which qualitative research plays a vital role. Quantitative methods are regarded as a supplement to the armada of anthropological tools such as participant observation or informal and structured interviews. This makes the design and conduct of an introductory course in statistics even more challenging. In this paper I discuss the curriculum, the lecturing, the exercises and software used, and the assessment form for this new target group of students. Despite the qualitative nature of the bachelor’s degree program in MMA, a basic understanding of what statistics can (and cannot) do is essential. The curriculum turned out to be almost the same as that for any other introductory course in statistics, say, one for economics students. However, a stronger focus on nonparametric techniques is meaningful.

Embattled Bodies, Embattled Places: War in Pre‐Columbian Mesoamerica and The Andes. Edited by Andrew K. Scherer and John W. Verano. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks. 2014. 424 pp. ISBN 978‐0‐88402‐395‐1 (Cloth)

American Journal of Physical AnthropologyVolume 158, Issue 3 p. 523-523 Book Review Embattled Bodies, Embattled Places: War in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and The Andes. Edited by and . Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks. 2014. 424 pp. ISBN 978-0-88402-395-1 (Cloth) Patricia M. Lambert, Patricia M. Lambert Anthropology Program, Utah State University, Logan, UTSearch for more papers by this author Patricia M. Lambert, Patricia M. Lambert Anthropology Program, Utah State University, Logan, UTSearch for more papers by this author First published: 14 July 2015 https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.22794Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume158, Issue3November 2015Pages 523-523 RelatedInformation

Applying Anthropology to the Campus Dining System: Reflections on Working with Community Food Assessments and the Real Food Challenge

When the Oregon Food Bank began conducting Community Food Assessments in 2009, they enlisted graduate students in Oregon State University's (OSU) applied anthropology program to examine the impact of the university on food security in Benton County. We present the results from two food sustainability assessments undertaken at OSU from 2010-2014. We reflect on the process of engaging in community-led alternative food projects.

Introduction to Practicing Anthropology in the Private Sector: Reflections on Work Experiences and Opportunities for the Future of Business Anthropology

Practicing anthropology in the private sector has been ongoing since the 1970s, when the number of anthropologists graduating with Ph.D.s exceeded the number of available academic positions in the United States, and when these anthropologists found employment in business and industry (Baba 1994). In the decades since, the potential for anthropologists' employment in the private sector is seemingly ever-increasing, as for-profit organizations continue to grow globally, encounter unfamiliar markets, focus more on customer needs, and require innovation (see, e.g., Cefkin's 2009 discussion on the growth of ethnography as a desired corporate competency). Although there are several MA and Ph.D. programs that focus specifically on business and design anthropology, the steps toward building a career and doing meaningful work as a business anthropologist remain relatively unclear for many anthropologists trained in traditional anthropology programs or in applied training programs that focus more on public sector employment.