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SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 242 – PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGYWEEK 1
[Lecture 1: What is Public Anthropology?]
Social Anthropology
- The study of human societies and cultures across the globe and in any setting.
- The taken for granted. The anthropologist takes nothing for granted.
- Making the unfamiliar familiar, and the familiar unfamiliar.
- Focus on the everyday.
- Public anthropology = a form of anthropological expression.
The Ivory Tower
- “A state of privileged seclusion or separation from the facts and practicalities of the
real world” (Oxford Dictionary).
Critical Thought and Social Action in the History of Anthropology
- Ideas travel between the ‘ivory tower’ and the ‘real world’.
- Anthropology and colonialism.
o Racialisation, racial hierarchies, racist ideas.
o Talal Asad. Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (1973).
- Involvement… limited.
o Observing and documenting. NOT intervening.
- The anthropological gaze turned inward (reflexivity as central).
o Self-critique rather than potential for application.
- Yet, some still saw an important role for anthropology.
o Activist anthropology of the 1970s and beyond.
o Intervention on behalf of poor and powerless.
A Militant Anthropology
- Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1995)
o Problematise role of anthropologist as ‘bystander’.
o “In each case I have had to pause and reconsider the traditional role of the
anthropologist as neutral, dispassionate, cool and rational, objective observer
of the human condition” (Scheper-Hughes 1995:410).
o Proposes a committed and morally engaged anthropology.
1
,Moral Relativism
- Cultural relativism: a person's beliefs, values, and practices should be understood
based on that person's own culture, rather than be judged against the criteria of
another.
- Moral/Ethical relativism: moral judgments are true or false only relative to some
particular standpoint and that no standpoint is uniquely privileged over another.
Disagreement over what constitutes ‘moral’ and no judgement can be made based
on these disagreements.
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
o Universality coupled with a humanist approach.
Observer vs. Witness
- Observation: passive act that implies neutrality.
- Witnessing: active, responsive, reflexive, morally committed.
- Observer: accountable to science.
- Witness: accountable to history.
- The primacy of the ethical.
o To name wrongs, to judge, to intervene.
o “But above all, it’s about recognition. To not look, to not touch, to not record
can be a hostile act, an act of indifference and of turning away” (Scheper-
Hughes 1995:414).
We should not be accommodating to the suffering of others.
Public Anthropology
- Challenges hegemonic constructions and framings.
o Hegemonic = ruling or dominant.
- Upend popular narratives (about race, culture, gender, poverty, etc).
- Offers alternative framings.
- Goal:
o Understand hegemonic structures.
o Instil a sense of public accountability.
o Crossing the divide between the ivory tower and the world of the public.
o Complicated ideas translated into widely intelligible and engaging language.
2
,In Conclusion
- Public anthropology = a form of anthropological expression.
- Challenges hegemonic framings & ideas.
- Bridge the gap between ivory tower and the ‘real’ world (while questioning the
existence of that gap as well).
- What role should anthropology play in broader society?
o Bystander vs militant?
3
, [Lecture 2: Complexity made Legible: The World through an Anthropological Lens]
QUESTION 1 – WHAT MAKES THIS DISCIPLINE PARTICULARLY SUITED FOR
UNDERSTANDING AN SOCIAL PHENOMENON?
- Critical approach:
o Challenges the status quo.
o Point to flaws.
o Raise new questions & offers fresh perspectives.
- Main topic of interest: human beings
o (Anthropos = human)
- Method: Fieldwork or ethnography*
Ethnography: The recording and analysis of a culture or
society, usually based on participant-observation and
resulting in a written account of a people, place or
institution.
o Participant observation & interviews.
o Immersive experience.
o Insider’s perspective – placing beliefs and behaviours within cultural context.
Dual position as insider (understand) and outsider (critical distance).
o Everything is connected (political, economic, social, cultural; local, global).
Remnants of classic holistic approach.
Key Concepts
- Generalisation: A general statement or concept obtained by inference from specific
cases (to generalise).
- Essentialism: The view that every entity has a set of attributes that is necessary to
its identity and function.
- Homogenisation: The process of making things uniform or similar.
- Othering: To view or treat a person or group of people as intrinsically different from
and alien to oneself. The term describes the reductive action of labelling a person as
someone who belongs to a subordinate social category defined as ‘other’.
Homework for the Rest of your Life
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