Anthropology Put to Work

Front Cover
Les Field, Richard G. Fox
Berg, Jun 15, 2007 - Social Science - 257 pages

How do anthropologists work today and how will they work in future? While some anthropologists have recently called for a new "public" or "engaged" anthropology, profound changes have already occurred, leading to new kinds of work for a large number of anthropologists. The image of anthropologists "reaching out" from protected academic positions to a vaguely defined "public" is out of touch with the working conditions of these anthropologists, especially those junior and untenured. The papers in this volume show that anthropology is put to work in diverse ways today. They indicate that the new conditions of anthropological work require significant departures from canonical principles of cultural anthropology, such as replacing ethnographic rapport with multiple forms of collaboration. This volume's goal is to help graduate students and early-career scholars accept these changes without feeling something essential to anthropology has been lost. There really is no other choice for most young anthropologists.

 

Contents

Introduction
1
1 Anthropological Collaborationsin Colombia
21
2 Gray Spaces and Endless Negotiations
44
3 Collaborating to Meet the Goals of a Native Sovereign Nation
65
4 Doing Cultural Anthropology and Disability Studies in Rehabilitation Training and Research Contexts
85
5 In Praise of Reckless Minds
103
6 What Do Indicators Indicate?
129
7 Working Anthropology
149
8 Potential Collaborations and Disjunctures in Australian Work Sites
161
9 The Dilemmas of Working Anthropology in TwentyfirstCentury India
181
10 Ethnographic Alchemy
201
11 Reflections on the Symposium
217
References
225
Index
253
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About the author (2007)

Richard G. Fox is President Emeritus, Wenner-Gren Foundation and an Adjunct Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Les Fields is Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico.