Hey folks, welcome back I hope everyone is still enjoying,
as much as possible, living online. So we’re going to start now what is the end of the semester.
We have three lectures left and this one I want
to take some time to talk a little bit about how we apply anthropology in a broader sense.
Since the beginning of the semester we’ve been
talking about anthropology as being this discipline
where we define the framework within which humanity exists.
More than studying humans by themselves is understanding humans in context,
and everything we’ve done so far,
from the beginning of the semester all the way
to this point has been dedicated to understand how we can build this context.
How we can actually build up a framework that
defines humanity and then lets us understand the diversity of humans,
past and present. So today we’re going to take a little bit of everything we talked before from our past,
from our biological basis, all the way from our cultural basis,
and all the different aspects that define our
identity and see how anthropologists apply this
and how the anthropologies contribute to actually
current questions and current issues that we see in our society.
SO applied anthropology is actually one of the subfields of anthropology.
We even have like a whole society for applied anthropology nowadays,
which is a society of professionals dedicated
to use anthropology and apply it into different contexts.
So the applications of anthropology or anthropological perspectives theories,
methods, and data can actually be used to identify,
to solve, and to assess several contemporary problems,
right? So mostly because ethnographic methods are this
idea of going and talking to people and helping us to build this context of relevance,
this context of meaning for different cultures
for different root groups actually help us a lot in defining what are the goals,
what are the priorities, what are the directions that several different governments,
institutions, officers, etc. should apply by to improve the overall quality of life on the planet.
So as everything else, applied anthropology has changed over time.
Nowadays this is a sub-discipline within anthropology
who’s dedicated to contribute to actually social and political current problems.
To have helped us contribute to the general improvement of the planet,
but it has not actually been always the case.
When anthropology actually applied started it
was more of a discipline dedicated to understand cultural diversity in particular.
To understand non-European and non-western type of culture.
Almost as a way to describe or to characterize the non-west,
or the western cultures in contrast of those cultures who were not Western.
So, the application of anthropology was always a
concern for early anthropologists in the Great Britain and in the US,
but this concern was not necessarily tied to larger social and political questions.
For example, Molinos Malinowski actually debated and defended
that a practical anthropology should focus on
the diffusion of European culture into European societies,
which to a very colonial view of anthropology in general.
During World War 2 as well, a number of American anthropologists were asked
to study Japanese and German culture as a distance
as a way to prove our ability to understand their
motivations and their ability to actually improve
the advantage of the US over the enemy nations in a sense.
So you see that it starts with a way of disseminating
and giving an advantage to specific cultural
backgrounds and nowadays it has been shifted
towards a larger-with a larger goal of rather
than like reinforcing ways by which we can defend
the values of the majority also to open the possibility
of understanding this broader context and conceptualizing
what better what our human diversity,
biological, cultural diversity really are.
So, both academic and applied anthropology actually expanded in the last decade.
Particularly after the second world war,
the academic anthropology, the research and the research focused anthropology
is something that in particular expanded over
the last several decades and a lot of the things
that we discussed during the semester actually applied to this kind of investment,
understanding anthropology, etc. The overall interest in understanding other cultures also increase most,
a lot in the last several decades,
particularly in the US during the Vietnam Wars where you
have like a public interest in understanding different perspectives,
where you have already this exchange of information
that allows people to have access to choose to change ideas to notions from other cultures,
especially in the context of a turbulent war,
where the public opinion was not necessarily in favor of what was doing.
So, you see a shift towards application that forced
anthropologies to consider the wider social values and implications of the research.
So, this is the beginning of ultimately the shift that we’ve been talking about.
This idea that rather than being a colonialistic
type of discipline trying to expand the values
of specific nations towards the rest of the planet,
it becomes a discipline that slowly tried to
find a space in actually giving voice to minorities
and giving better understanding of how we can
use diversity to understand better culture diversity
and biological diversity to create better solutions for human societies in general.
So, today the applied anthropologists see their work
as radically removed from the colonial enterprises that we’re talking about.
So it starts with this development of a strong
code of ethics where basically the idea here
is for you to privilege and give value and give
voice to all of the cultures rather than to try
to minimize it or like make it subordinate to larger majorities.
It’s this idea of basically bringing it up to view,
bringing it up to context where everyone can basically,
every single individual, every single culture has a voice has a presence in the planet.
So, in that sense, anthropologists become,
in this context, very highly qualified to identify the locally perceived needs.
To work with local people to design culturally
appropriate socially sensitive change and also to protect the interests of local people Again,
this is, I cannot highlight enough how this is a significant 180 degree change,
or shift, from the initial perspective of anthropology as a curiosity discipline,
as a discipline just trying to find ways by which to expand the agenda of the western nations,
you become a discipline with a larger focus on protecting interests of local people,
of local cultures. There are several of these within the application of anthropology,
there are several like sub-disciplines,
several areas that have become quite well-developed
that have shown interest and strong contributions to our understanding of cultural diversity,
and I’m going to use this lecture to highlight a few of them,
but then again if you guys want to learn more
about this series of other classes they offer
we address this or even material that I can share with you,
so reach out to me, let me know,
and we can have more discussions about this.
The first one I want to introduce very briefly
is what we call development anthropology which
is a branch of applied anthropology focused on social issues.
And in the culture of the mention of economic
development this idea of us seeing how development can be promoted,
how development what can be promoted following
the guidelines and interest of local cultural realities.
So development anthropologists carry out several
development policies and help to guide policy in several different ways,
so they’ve been working closely with foreign
aid to try to bring relief and help to cultures
that are struggling to adjust or be incorporated
in a global reality and also work directly with
planners whose interests do not always coincide with the best interests of locals.
So, this idea that they are acting almost as brokers,
as knowledge brokers, as cultural brokers between local culture or
within local realities and foreign and planners
which usually are not in close touch with local realities.
So ultimately a lot of the development that happens,
a lot of the goals in the planet as well are
associated with building up equity or increasing equity.
So, it’s a very commonly stated goal of recent development policy worldwide to improve equity.
Also get it right and equity is quite different
than equality because equality is quite well
illustrated here in our cartoon where like equality
is where everyone has access to the same amount
of resources and equity in a sense is where
like you’re building up the giving and focusing
resources on those individuals who need the resources the most.
And while this is a really interesting idea,
the problem with equity is that you need to understand
really well the context or reality of each of
the individuals associated with this process of development,
of each of the cultures associated or societies
that we discuss with this process of development
and in this context that anthropologists actually have to build up,
anthropologists can help us identify what is the realities,
what is the individual realities of everyone
in this type of development project to identify
what is the most equitable way to distribute resources.
So increased equity then is something that anthropologists,
with their knowledge of local communities of local cultural realities,
is something that anthropology ultimately can
contribute a lot to and ultimately increased
reality will reduce poverty and will result in a more even distribution of wealth.
So again, for this to happen,
we must have support of reform minded government,
but even when this happens we must have a situation
where we understand quite well the framework,
the context that allows us to measure and define what is the most equitable solution for it.
So there’s several like aspects of projects that
are even actually well intentioned that end up causing a negative impact on equity,
so the seven samples worldwide were projects
that actually started with our good intentions
ended up widening the gap between those who have,
and those who have not access to specific resources,
and these are what’s usually seen as projects
that have not been beneficial and actually have a negative equity impact.
So, this is partly the result of intrinsic inequalities that exist in any given cultural context.
Where individuals who have access to resource
then already have better connections and are more likely to find out about programs.
So, programs have already are heard international programs,
international projects have difficulties locating
and reaching out in their communities and actually
end up building up access for specific individuals
that actually end up widening the gap to some extent.
So for example, you have seen several like renting worldwide
credit granting angels that have been working
around the planet and have been investing in
trying to establish better equitable solutions for them,
but end up actually working out but like this
supporting businesses that are already established
and support individuals who already have a good
start up and that way have been promoting solutions that are not necessarily equitable.
So anthropologists again play a good role in
this because anthropologists help to identify
overall when working with local realities they help identify what is the rich,
what is the expectation, what is the level of the inequality that already exists in a specific society.
It helps with the planning and helps with finding
equitable solutions for the problems that we have.
And inequality, as you’re all aware like it’s something that is a worldwide issue.
Even countries that are considerably equal,
with low inequality still have considerable amount
of inequality and this like as you can see in this map here,
we basically live as the title already says,
in a world of differences, in a world where inequality exists not only between nations,
but inequality exists a lot within nations.
So you’re going to see that these differences
characterized human reality and until we understand local reality,
its really hard for us to really define or find
solutions that are effective in creating better
opportunities for everyone in any given society.
So ultimately if we want to build up this type of strategy,
build up strategies of innovation that result in a smart,
strategic, equitable distribution of resources we will need
to work on situations where all of these projects
are developed to be culturally compatible but they’re not clashing with local realities.
They are responding to locally perceived needs
rather than actually responding to specific need to develop from top down,
from top to bottom. They must involve a man and woman in planning
and carrying out the changes that affect them
so they involve other portions of the local society
that they have a voice to have a say and the
interest must build up on top of traditional
organizations in terms of both like culture organizations
as well as the social structure that defines that specific cultures.
And ultimately be extremely flexible.
Allow goal to be changed depending on what’s happening and once more,
all of this is something that anthropologists
can have a very positive impact on because they
help all of these strategies all these projects
to basically identify what are all of these examples.
And we have several examples of projects that failed and several instances right.
For example, when I was living in Chile I was exposed to [program]
which is a project that was developed by the
country to basically bring up relief support
for a series of the local native communities which was a project,
it was defined to build up, to reduce inequality between the poor native communities in the country and the more,
the richer, the wealthier urban communities that define most of the Chilean population,
but this project largely failed in its initial
attempts because it did not take into account what are the ways,
what are the means by which the local communities
could be improved and try to apply the same type
of formulas to different communities from north
and south chile that existed on several different realities.
Some of which did not really work well.
For example, in the common desert where we lived,
they tried to implement a whole system of supporting the production of cache crops,
which basically failed in those communities who
are associated with the highlands were like the
pastoralist lifestyle was not associated with this kind of activity.
So you see there is a lot of space for improvement
and it’s only when they started working with
anthropologists and started working with anthropologists
as brokers between native communities and the leaders of the,
the political leaders of the regions that you
see the ability for improvements and changes in the goals that become more regionalized,
more localized. So this type of projects also face a lot of challenges.
One of them is this idea of over innovation where
sometimes projects must be careful not to create
solutions that are basically not according to the local realities,
and you see this again more on the application
of these projects on native communities on the planet,
but also you see this in other realities.
Ultimately, over innovation is this idea of investing with
things and offering resources that the community is not basically ready to handle,
and this causes an increased inequality even when intentions are good.
And this again, I saw this happen in Chile,
but the best example that I have of this at this
point is something that is very close to you guys,
which associated with the flagship initiative from OSU.
So OSU had the very nice idea of bringing everyone
onto more technologically engaged online type of education,
by offering every single student who comes into
the university an iPad and being part of this flagship initiative,
and while this was meant to decrease inequality and offer every student,
that doesn’t matter their backgrounds,
the resources they needed to do well in college basically after the first semester,
they started noticing-- OSU started noticing this was actually increasing the gap between
the ability of students to actually study because
those students who come from a poorer socio-economic
background were never exposed to this technology
were now facing a double hurdle in all of their classes,
the first hurdle being, learn the content as of everyone else,
but the second hurdle is learning how to handle
dictating the technology and take full advantage of technology for the innovation,
so it happened that after the first year of the flagship initiative,
you actually see a much wider gap in terms of grades,
in terms of success in classes because automatically
they were there was this technology acting as
an over innovation for some of the students because
they were not exposed to this before and it becomes a challenge more than a resource for them.
So, you see that this type of problem that easily
affects OSU can easily be extrapolated to other realities,
to other cultural backgrounds and actually cause
more problems than solutions in the long term.
So, in that sense, how does applied anthropology help in this?
The applied anthropology helped in identifying
models of innovation that are based on indigenous models,
are based on native and local cultural realities
that allow the development of specific projects
and specific goals that do not clash with the
local realities so realistic development ultimately
promotes the change by preserving local systems and making them work together.
And this is the key here, the idea of preservation of local systems and
the only way for you to understand a local system
is for you to be exposed to it and to build up
the understanding of the context of the cultural context that means that.
And again, this is where anthropology plays a role because
it helps us to build that context it helps us to show that our own perspectives,
what we consider the normal or the right things
to do are not always easily translated to other cultural backgrounds.
For this you need to be a little more flexible and open minded about it,
and again, anthropology has been doing a good job at this
so examples of the work of anthropologists on
this are quite clear in Madagascar where anthropologists
help the development of programs that have like
government officials that have been part of the
government officials being selected among the local people which promotes,
which makes all of the all of these projects
all of the democratic economic development more
feasible and more actual in general and this
is something that we have observed across of the planet as well.
So ultimately the idea that like your descent
group your cultural background has a very important
role to play in any economic development even
though even if there are the good intentions
of foreign and international or intercultural
agencies playing a role in this they need to
always be able to adjust where adequate the realities to local culturalities.
Other arena, other sphere within which anthropology has contributed a lot is in the area of education.
So, anthropology and education has been in a strong
dialogue in the last in the last few decade because
ultimately anthropology extends from classrooms into homes,
neighborhoods, and communities.
Like allows the connection in the classroom and your own experience.
so to some extent we've been trying to do this
the semester we try to provoke you guys to think
that you do the epiphanies and you connect what
we've been talking about with every single other
aspect of your life to show that there are multiple
connections that exist here so in a way we're
trying to build up not this idea that we necessarily
need more anthropologists as professionals in a planet,
but I personally think that we need that everyone
has a good background on anthropology to understand
the role that our own context has in defining
our own identity and anthropology therefore like speaks directly with education in that sense.
so it helps us view children pastoral a culture
code culture creatures whose incorporation and
attitude towards education is part of the larger
context that includes families and peers right
in other words it helps us to understand the
role that education and the context within which
we grow has in defining our own identity in our own set of values.
so in a way helps us create like systems and exercises
and challenges for us to create a more open-minded and totally conscious society in general.
Even though anthropology has dedicated a lot
of its history a lot of the history as discipline
in trying to understand other cultures as well
recently we have been having a lot of a lot of emphasis on developing a urban anthropology.
An anthropology that is looking not at the outside
not at the foreign but foreign but it's also
looking at what's happening inside of our own
cities and trying to describe the inequalities
and the differences in culture perspectives and
ideas that exist within our large urban centers
this has been particularly important recently
we read because we now live in a generation where
more than half of the human population lives
in cities right we finally cross this I think
it was in 2010 or 2011 the point at which over
half over 50% of humanity lives in cities rather
than outside of cities and this means that the
urban context becomes the center of the production
of cultural diversity of cultural innovation
of all of them building up the definition of identities altogether.
So anthropologists who work in urban planning
have been helping to identify key social groups
and specific urban contexts have been trying to identify what are the views,
opinions, realities, and expectations of these groups right have been
promoting the spaces to elicit their wishes for
change one has been creating spaces for changes
within our context coming from different agents from different points of view.
I've acted translating needs for specific when
the agents is the same way that that interpretive
act as brokers in between different cultures
they have been acting between as brokers between
different levels different layers of a modern
urban society right and they also have worked
directly with trying we've seen that these changes
are implemented according to individuals to the
people's wishes and not being superimposed again.
so the same reality that defines the association
between two different cultures between two different
countries for that matter are also things that actually affect different individuals,
different layers of any given society in any given City and again,
you guys experience this as well if you really
walk around Columbus if you drive around Columbus
see the different neighborhoods and see the different
realities you're going to be able to experience several different like views,
needs, opinions, and several different identities associated with this.
one of the most important I think developments
in applied anthropology is tied to medical anthropology.
we talked about this very briefly in the first
in our first week of classes here as one of the examples of medical anthropology,
but medical anthropology is a subfield a branch
of anthropology that is dedicated to the studies
of variation in health care systems including disease,
illness, health standards, and disease theories which basically allow us
to better understand what is the local perception
of health and health and what's the local perception of disease.
So, we need to understand that even systems even
aspects as core a central to our well-being as
health is something that is also highly culturally influenced.
All the healthcare systems are a combination of beliefs,
customs, specialists, and techniques that are aimed and ensuring health
and preventing and preventing diagnosing and treating illnesses in a broad scale,
but again the emphasis is that there even though there is a lot of scientific knowledge,
a lot of scientific realities behind mention
in general there's also a lot of systems of belief
and culture and cultural predispositions that
actually affect what we even believe what we
will consider to be an illness or not and this
is something that medical anthropologists have
actually contributed a lot in recent years so
medical anthropology started from this assumption
from this perception that like even the perception
of good and bad health are actually culturally
constructed even things that we believe to be
poor or lack health can change and vary to several
different to several different cultures and we're
going to define here a distinction between
is a disease which is a scientifically identified
health threat right I think we live in in a period
of coronavirus but we like the definition of
the disease is quite obvious for us but we're
going to differentiate this from an illness which
is a condition of poor health perceived or felt
by an individual or by a society elaborate and large.
So over time we've been seeing how like we perceive
illnesses in several different ways so for example
one of the most recent changes that we have in
perceptions of illness is the perceptions of mental health where like a few decades ago,
a generation ago, mental health was something that was perceived as a kind of a weakness,
as kind of a problem of individuals and nowadays
it's been constantly and repetitively being associated
as part of our health in general right like our
mental health but applied directly to our general
health to improve health and therefore it has
been received a lot more attention and little
more care and treatment in the last decades compared to what happened a generation ago.
So ultimately the incidence and severity of diseases
varies a lot between groups and the perception
of them as illnesses will vary a lot of between groups as well.
so medical anthropology has been helping both
in defining how we see illnesses but also defining
what are their health risks among us several
surviving engineer indigenous populations right
how do local cultures local populations minorities
in general are handling the spread of modern diseases written large.
So medical anthropology then is a part of this
synergistic relationship between what is the
illness right what is the disease and what is
the sickness and how basically they're all inter
playing itself and medical anthropology helped
us define a little bit the synergistic relationships
which ultimately help us to qualify this so this again just to bring a few examples,
apart from up is from this idea that there are
several different disease theory system where
there's several different ways through which
different societies actually understand diseases in general,
from being a very personalistic disease theory
where like this idea that there specific agent
that will cause illnesses and that therefore
like the illnesses have a personality have like a persona have an agency in that sense.
To a more naturalistic disease theory where like
illnesses are explained in in personal terms following
more biomedical descriptions all the way
to emotionally based disease spirit right what
is idea that emotions are like fluctuations in
our own inner states can basically affect and cause our illnesses itself.
all of these are different aspects of health that require,
rely to some extent on the realities of specific individuals,
that specific cultural backgrounds.
so the Society's illness causation theory right
is therefore an important aspect of treatment
if we don't understand the relationship between illness,
disease, and how society perceives sickness in general we're basically-
-we're having a much harder time treating and finding solutions for this type of disease.
And again, if you guys see a lot of what's coming out with the corona virus,
into several different reactions that come out
from the from different countries different cultural
backgrounds or different economical status how
different people perceive this as different type,
of different levels of risk different types of illnesses etc.
causing a lot of problems for us to actually treat and keep this pandemic in check.
this also creates a space for the merchants of
several type of culturally defined cures right
they're not necessarily medical professionals that play the role of commands,
two individuals who have been actually have a
specific role in a specific cultural background
that to deal with sicknesses in several different ways.
so we need therefore to qualify that even what
we call Madison red even our definition of what
Western medicine is something that is distinct
from our scientific medicine per se and that
has a cultural background that has a cultural
reality that they find itself the create that
makes our us that belief in the normalcy of several
of death of it even though they are ultimately contextual.
so scientific medicine automatically as define
relies on the advancements of Technology genomics molecular biology etc.
in the curing of diseases right in the treating
diagnosing and curing of diseases in general
but western medicine which is supposed to be
based on scientific medicine actually is applying
this concept and putting this into the cultural
realities and context of our own experiences
it brings with it a series of advantages because
it's using scientific medicine and its many benefits to basically improve health in general,
but it's not written of cons of negatives and
the most important one at this point in Western
societies is the over-prescription on the unnecessary
surgeries the dependency on profit driven healthcare
systems the inequality of physical patient relationships
than equality of access to treatment etc.
which automatic even leads to widespread problems
like for example what we see as the overall opioid
crisis and the over abuse of legal drugs like
that leads to the consumption of some illegal later
on so Ohio for example is going for a very strong
drug their crisis where you have very large numbers
of overdose recently all of this tied to this
overexposure to a medical system that even though it is based on a scientific medicine,
it has been reappropriated by our culture standards
and being reinterpreted in within our own context.
so again there is distinction that we need to
be made and then need to be actually understood
about how we appropriate a knowledge for appropriate
technology and how we create systems of what
we consider to be the normal realities that are not necessarily so.
so medical anthropology has also been working
a lot with understanding the evolution or the
development of health over time looking particularly
at the impact of industrialization and globalization on health.
Industrialization immobilization have actually
had a very important impact on health and it
spawned several health problems again I think
we're leaving a very good example of this where the
spread of a disease like the Covid-19 is actually
something that is only possible due to the industrialization globalization of the planet.
so in that way medical anthropology has been
studying ways by which health interventions
can fit into local cultures and be accepted by
local people creating the content the way again
the dialogue between our local realities and
the larger innovation the larger advantages
of matter of scientific medicine so in that sense
medical anthropology will often studies the impact
of new scientific internal and medical techniques
on ideas about life and death and personhood as well.
not all of these techniques have the same ideas
and have the same acceptance as well there's several for example,
cultural backgrounds or aspects of identity
like for example your religion background that can
also affect your acceptance or not of specific
scientific medical treatments like for example
some more extreme Christian based religions refuse
the transplant the transfusion of blood because
they believe that a lot of their identity a lot
of their soul with resides inside of the blood
and that therefore causes a series of potential health problems for those individuals as well.
so again all of this is to highlight the aspect
that there is contextual realities that are defining
how we accept or not the advances that we see
in in medicine in general and therefore medical
anthropology can act as a very important broker
is a very important element to not only study
these relationships but also to find solutions
and ways by which this can be this can be appropriated.
so, if you guys are interested at all in medical
anthropology we just have like in the department a new degree,
a new major that's BA and BS degree in medical anthropology.
I highly recommend you guys take a look at it
even if you're not interested in medical anthropology
there are several classes that relate to the
medical anthropology field that talk about several aspects of global inequalities,
women's health, the expand of specific diseases and issues or
worldwide and the different perceptions that different cultures have of these diseases.
so if you guys want to know more about this come
talk to me send me an email and I can like suggest
you to at least some classes or you should also write Dr.
Barbara Piperata to get more information about
this it's a very interesting degree that helps
actually connect a lot of this interest anthropology
with a medical career so I think that if any of you are interested,
are pre-med students and are interested in knowing
more about this they're definitely classes that will be of interest for you.
on the other side of this as well is the contribution
that anthropology has had to business in general.
So, anthropologists have worked with businesses in several different aspects,
but using ethnography to basically understand business settings.
so applied anthropologists in that sense can
again work as cultural brokers can act as cultural
brokers but now in a business context by translating
what are the managers goals or the workers concerns to each other,
so creating this idea that they are different
realities that there are different cultural realities
different identity realities that are different
within companies that allow companies basically to succeed or not.
so ethnographies have been working with several
businesses and even helping to rethink some fault in perceptions,
so there's several examples of products that
basically failed and were now revived after anthropologists acted as-
- were included as a way to perceive as a way to help understand the culture diversity.
again the idea is that we need to understand that doesn't matter where you are in a company,
you have your own identity your own culturally
defined reality that shapes your own perception of what is right or wrong what to say,
do, or not and for businesses to survive and to strive
sometimes they need to have a better understanding
of this if you want to be able to reach out and
create products and create services that can benefit the intended target audience.
so examples of this is that like there's several
like market research that helps businesses to
know what their potential customers and what do they do,
think, or want right so focus groups which are very
strong ethnographic tools are actually something
that's commonly used and help understand that
the realities of individuals but they also have
a series of limitations that could easily be for example this groupthink,
the idea that we behave the biases that we talked
at some point before in the semester right the
perception biases that define ourselves it's
something that also can be easily identified
by anthropologists due to their training in working with this.
so again, you're going to have ways by which there's more
in-depth analysis of how ethnography has been
of help and if you want to read the nice article
about this right I actually basically suggest
this were displayed this article written on the
Atlantic that is talking about the incorporation
of anthropology in general and very interesting
example very interesting case study about the
changes of anthropology and appropriation of anthropology to a more market-oriented reality.
there is also a component of anthropology that
ends up acting on a public sphere like so what
we call this power nowadays public anthropology
which is a wave which is a branch of employment
anthropology that works to extend anthropology’s
visibility way beyond academia and to demonstrate
its public policy relevance so it's a way for
us to bring up several different aspects that
are the study object of anthropology and bring up this to a broader audience.
on that level I also invite you all guys to take
a look at our outreach program that we created
a couple years ago at the department and you can find it at u.osu.edu/apop.
The anthropology public outreach program.
So, check out what we've been doing there.
there's a whole lot of opportunities also for
volunteer work as we talked at some point in
the semester but it's a way for us to bring
a lot of the discussion we've been having in
this class in the larger context of anthropology
to a broader audience to a broader public and
help us then disseminate this idea that there
is importance of relevance in understanding the cultural realities,
the individual realities of specific groups or specific societies.
so the common goals among public anthropology
are to oppose policies that promote injustice
and as we've been seeing them about increasingly
number and impact in the last eight years also
helping us to reframe discussions of key social
issues both in the media and in public officials.
Again, if any of you guys are interested in knowing
more about this come talk to me or check out
what we've been doing as part of our outreach
program and there are ways for you to see the
connection between anthropology and the public sphere.
so to finish this lecture, to finish this talk I just want also to talk
a little bit about one of the questions that
I receive a lot every time I give a talk about
anthropology to prospective students and particularly
to parents one of the main questions that I receive
is okay but what do you do with anthropology
degree what do really anthropologists do and
the reality is that again anthropology prospecting
provides this unique perspective on human reality
on human diversity and I think that is something that we can all basically benefit from it.
so anthropology only like provides an excellent foundation for many careers so again,
why I don't think that we discern need more anthropologist in the planet,
I do feel that everyone should take anthropology
classes and have a better sense for diversity
and again I'm preaching to the choir because
you guys are enrolled in this class and somehow
stayed with me this whole semester listening
about it right and you can easily see as you've
been doing this for the Epiphanes how this connects
to your own life right every single aspect or
talk to some extent makes you think about other
spheres of your own existence that help us we'll
help you reframe or reformulate or your own existence.
so many of our majors and many of anthropology
majors end up going to work on very unrelated
professions because again anthropology provides
this basic knowledge and outlook on the world
that is useful for many kinds of work so even
though there's no money there's no they're commonly
no job ads for anthropologists required several
anthropologists actually acquired jobs that are
tied to other fields because of the combined
interest and because ability to speak to broader
audiences to audience as well of a wide diversity.
So automatically I do believe that anthropologist
focus on culture is available for work in North America period.
and again, just to repeat the same concept again I do think
that everyone should be exposed to some anthropology
during their careers because if nothing else,
it makes you think a little bit outside of your
own box right or sort of your own bubble of your own context.
Now it's interesting to talk about perspective
right even the perception of anthropology is
something that changes a lot depending on who you ask.
so if we go anthropology goes from being one
of the top 10 professions that should be that
should be pursued for according to for example
this Irish Journal here all the way to be among
one of the worst possible one of the worst possible
majors offered by this recent survey that was
done in the US so it seems here that like the
idea that anthropology can benefit to it a benefit
or not depends a lot and what also on your background
but ultimately the whole context the whole framework
within which you exist as a profession can help
to make a benefit from anthropologists and I
do hope they're like after the semester you guys
will agree with me at least partially on that point.
so I just brought some statistics for you to
see that there is there is jobs around outside but anthropology,
once foreign can work in several different types
of jobs as anthropologists as well and this is
just to show the location of all of these jobs
across of the nation so all of the states are
looking for and hiring anthropologist in several
different contexts from teachers all the way
to professions working in all of the resource
management and all of the works associated with NGOs etc.
etc. in government which finds a lot of space for them,
so you see that there is a spread for anthropology's
percent if you decide if any of you actually
decide they're interested in anthropology as a career.
we also have a lot of, as I said,
like our anthropologists, OSU anthropologist basically work in a several
different in several different contexts as well
and work in several different capacities as you
can see here in this list from anything working
from drug and alcohol counselors all the way to working in Foreign Service agents,
laboratory assistants, or even like for forensic anthropologists in
general so you see that you have a wide breadth
of opportunities in anthropology because again
this is a very broad field in general right and
depends a lot on what are interested in this field.
we also, anthropologists also get to travel a lot get
to experience the world a lot and you see it
that like even in our department alone this is
are all the places that our graduate students
are actually working on nowadays and you see
that we're basically spread across of the planet
and it helps us to some extent to build up perspective
so if you guys are ever interested in taking
another class in the anthropology department
it is always nice for you to actually ask about
who your teacher is and what do where do they
work and you're going to see that the answer
from this will be very diverse from anywhere
from like East Asia and Japan all the way to South America or even South Africa.
so, you see a lot of diversity even within one single department in the US.
so folks this is what I had for today the provocation here is again,
to think about how this whole discussion we had
and over the entire semester is something that
we can use and we can apply in several different
professional contexts in several different contexts
that will help us build a more equitable world.
so, take this into account, let me know what you think let me know if you have questions,
comments, or suggestions and if not I'll see you guys next lecture take care and stay safe.
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