A collection of essays on social value and practical application of Social Anthropology
2020, Routledge
“This book tells stories of the prominent ‘applied anthropologists’ and shows how to involve your local social scientist. Go and get it.”
- Editors: Dan Podjed, Meta Gorup, Pavel Borecký and Carla Guerrón Montero
- Authors: editors + Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Lenora Bohren, Joana Breidenbach, Sarah Pink, Steffen Jöhncke, Tanja Winther, Sophie Bouly de Lesdain, Rikke Ulk, Jitske Kramer, Anna Kirah and Riall Nolan
- Publisher: Routledge, 2020
- Language: English
- Paperback: 194 pages, 30 b/w illustrations
- Price: 20 EUR
- My contribution: author and editor
- Key words: applied anthropology, paradigm shift, social value
Why the World Needs Anthropologists
Why does the world need anthropology and anthropologists – now perhaps more than ever? This collection of eleven essays and an introductory and concluding discussion, written by prominent academic, practicing, and applied anthropologists answers this provocative question.
In an accessible and appealing style, each author in this compilation inquires about the social value and practical application of the discipline of anthropology. Contributors note that the problems the world faces at a global scale are both new and old, unique and universal and that solving them requires the use of long-proven tools as well as innovative approaches. They highlight that using anthropology in relevant ways outside academia contributes to the development of a new paradigm in anthropology, one where the ability to collaborate across disciplinary and professional boundaries becomes both central and legitimate.
Contributors share their career paths and the explicit ways in which they use their anthropological skills and knowledge outside and inside academia, addressing topics as varied as sustainability, organizational change, social entrepreneurship, and development. They also provide specific suggestions to anthropologists and the public at large on practical ways to use anthropology to change the world for the better.
This one-of-a-kind volume will be of interest to fledging and established anthropologists, social scientists, engineers, designers, managers, and other experts working closely with anthropologists, as well as the general public.
Pavel Borecký and Carla Guerrón Montero – Back to the Future of Applied Anthropology
a book chapter
This chapter discusses the future of applied anthropology as foreseen by the contributors to this volume. It focuses on five axes as points of connection and divergence they identify as central to the narratives of the volume’s participants.
These axes include: navigate the ethics of change; own it; expand the skill set; collaborate, co-create and study up; and recommend. It centres on the theoretical and methodological approaches that make anthropology the next ‘big thing’.
Table of Contents
- Why Does the World Need Anthropologists – Dan Podjed (Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts) and Meta Gorup (Ghent University, Belgium)
- Ethnography in All the Right Places – Thomas Hylland Eriksen (University of Oslo, Norway)
- Living in and Researching a Diverse World – Lenora Bohren (Colorado State University, USA)
- What Is It Like to Be an Anthropologist? – Joana Breidenbach (betterplace.org, Germany)
- Anthropology in an Uncertain World – Sarah Pink (Monash University, Australia)
- Making Anthropology Relevant to Other People’s Problems – Steffen Jöhncke (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
- Searching for Variation and Complexity – Tanja Winther (University of Oslo, Norway)
- An Anthropologist’s Journey from the Rainforest to Solar Fields – Sophie Bouly de Lesdain (Electricité de France, France)
- Anthropologists Make Sense, Provide Insight and Co-Create Change – Rikke Ulk (Antropologerne, Denmark)
- Open Up the Treasure of Anthropology to the World – Jitske Kramer (HumanDimensions, Netherlands)
- The Practitioner’s Role of Facilitating Change – Anna Kirah (Kirah Co, Design without Borders, Norway)
- Do We Really Need More Anthropologists? – Riall Nolan (Purdue University, USA)
- Back to the Future of Applied Anthropology – Pavel Borecký (University of Bern, Switzerland) and Carla Guerrón Montero (University of Delaware, USA)
