Erik: How has your cultural anthropology education
informed your career?
Michael: Wow, you know, it’s a great question
and that’s been something that keeps unfolding
kind of layers and layers.
Number one I love cultural anthropology in
college and studying it.
My one frustration at the time back in the
late 90s was I could already get a sense that
the world around us was changing and evolving
really fast.
We were just at the tip of what we’ve seen
over the last fifty years.
This was 1998 when I graduated so 94 to 98
I was in college.
What frustrated me at the time was that Cultural
Anthropology was looking at indigenous cultures
or sort of this ancient past and I was like
wait a second, look at this world that we
are living on now?
Let’s talk about his culture and how that’s
transforming.
So I always had that orientation and for a
while I even had a blog called popping anthropology,
which was about the business of culture creation.
Cause you see this like all the iconic epic
brands out there, they actually shape and
change culture.
They affect how we act and behave.
Whether it’s how the ipod changed how we
consumed music how Whole Foods has brought
an idea to consciousness that’s changed
our eating habits out here in the US.
So, that’s one part of the equation.
The other part of the equation with cultural
anthropology and this is happening more and
more in my work, is getting to the essence
of identity.
You know, in this notion – because it use
to be - we used to get our stories form our
family, from religion, from education, form
the media.
There are all of these sources, these institutions,
that basically, we inherited these stories
from and they told us like this is how the
world works, this is your place in the world,
this is what is expected of you, right?
It was like cosmology.
This is what anthropology talks about and
what’s happening right now is all of those
traditional mechanisms have been blown to
pieces.
So,we live in this world is like infinite
freedom, like you can be anybody you want
to be, Erik.
And for most of us like we are completely
paralyzed by that choice.
Because, is like, “Wait a second.”
This whole process of identity formation,
identity reformation, re-identity as I talk
about a lot.
We are basically left to our own devices to
figure that out.
So it’s a really exciting time but it’s
also one that is filled with a lot of struggle
and challenges for each of us who we really
want to be and how to do that in a way so
that it sort of, connects with who we truly
are.
