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dissabte, 18 de juny del 2022
dimecres, 8 de juny del 2022
Review of the book WHY THE WORLD NEEDS ANTHROPOLOGISTS. Dan Podjed, Meta Gorup, Pavel Borecký, Carla Guerrón Montero (Eds.). 2021.- Routledge
Review of the book
Why the World Needs Anthropologists
(Routledge, London and New York,
2021, 182 pp.)
Edited by
Dan Podjed, Meta Gorup, Pavel
Borecký, Carla Guerrón Montero
Contributors
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Lenora
Bohren, Joana Breidenbach,
Sarah Pink, Steffen Jöhncke, Tanja
Winther, Sophie Bouly De Lesdain,
Rikke Ulk, Jitske Kramer, Anna Kirah,
Riall W. Nolan
Joan Manuel Cabezas López
Doctor in Social Anthropology
On April 4, 2006 I had an encounter
in Barcelona with Thomas Hylland Eriksen. During the meeting, I was honoured
that he signed his new book to me: Engaging Anthropology. The Case for a Public
Presence (Berg, 2006). Several years later, as the culmination of seven
symposia held by the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) with
the same name as the title of this publication between 2010 and 2019. Eriksen
leads the first of the eleven individual writings of this collective work,
writings located between the introduction and the conclusions, that were made
by the editors. Thirteen perfectly intertwined texts that make up a publication
that is not only indispensable but also has a structure that makes it
consistent with one of its mean purposes: anthropology has to leave the
academic bombast and, as Eriksen already emphasized in the work that I just
quoted, should be engaged in the public spheres and, therefore, be accessible
to all audiences.
I must acknowledge and value the
splendid work of the editors, who, as I have mentioned, blend the writings in
an agile and entertaining way, facilitating common threads and betting on a
cast of authors of great diversity, both in terms of subject matter, nationality,
and labour fields. All the texts of the contributions have a similar structure:
the author’s view about the need for anthropology based on their experiences, a
story about how they were initiated in the anthropological science, and an
original and gripping list of five tips, often combining scientific rigor with
a glossy sense of humour. The result: a polyphonic and polyhedral book, with a solid
framework, and congruous with its chief aim of restructuring anthropology and
positioning it as a profession with an overriding function in the present and
in the future. In my opinion, the Covid-19 pandemic increases even more this
role.
This publication also tries to break
the clichés that enclose the anthropological world, and succeeds in a
resounding way. Also bets on rebranding anthropology, an essential process and,
in the case of my country, Spain, an urgent need: we must “address the real
problems faced by humanity” (p. 11), demonstrate that we are truly far away
from the and untruthful image that still dominates and, among other things, set
aside prolonged fieldwork in cases where it is not relevant (p. 112);
flexibility is a key ability. In addition, I should highlight the common thread
of this book, conceived to provide reliable evidence to this statement, which I
fully share: “many crises humanity is facing will not be resolved without
anthropologists’ engagement either” (p. 9).
Editor’s introduction and conclusions,
and texts of the contributors: a brief overview
In the introduction, wrote by Dan
Podjed and Meta Gorup (p. 1-16), the authors pointed out several items that are
in the nucleus of the whole publication: the need for breaking the stereotypical
image of anthropologists, the need for the applied anthropology, and the need
for breaking the perception of anthropology as ‘exotic’, or ‘curious’, even
‘fascinating’ speciality, but without useful targets. In this regard, Podjed
and Gorup stress the need for moving beyond strictly academically centred anthropology
to an applied knowledge that informs change for the better. Podjed and Gorup mark
that their main goal is to convince the reader that anthropology has
significantly changed, and that it has become relevant and crucial for addressing
some of the most pressing global issues (p. 13).
By the other hand, Pavel Borecký and
Carla Guerrón Montero highlight in their conclusion to this publication (p.
165-177) that the editors and the contributors tried to foreseeing the future
of applied and engaged anthropology worldwide. Borecký and Guerrón Montero state
something that is present throughout the publication, and that I consider vital:
for consolidate the broadening of anthropology (grounded and applied, but also
taught for a much larger range of the population than it has been addressed to
today) it is basic to enhance visibility (p. 168).
In the first chapter, written by
Thomas Hylland Eriksen (“Ethnography in all the right places”, p. 17-31), the
author points out something fundamental: the basis of anthropology lies in
studying human societies in a comparative way, exploring their diversity and
what they have in common, and globalization “brings us closer together” (p.17).
Therefore, the very nature of anthropology makes it more needful than ever.
Lenora Bohren (“Living in and
researching a diverse world”, p. 32-41) emphasizes the role of anthropology as
a science specialized in intercultural relations, being able to face problems
such as the crisis of refugees. Bohren also observes the importance of applying
the anthropological prism in matters related to diversity in areas such as
health and the environment.
Joana Breidenbach (“What is it like
to be an anthropologist?”, P. 42-55) spotlights the characteristics of anthropology
that make it a key science for capturing, in the very concrete, the fluidity of
social life and its internal and invisible processes. The multi-perspectivity
prism of anthropology shows internal and external structures of life as
constructed and contested.
Sarah Pink (“Anthropology in an
uncertain world”, p. 57-70) delves into the role of anthropology in relation to
emerging technologies, highlighting the importance of working side by side with
populations to contribute to their self-organization. Pink also emphasizes that
this work is carried out by interdisciplinary teams, one of the threads that traverse,
as we will see, the whole of this collective work.
Steffen Jöhncke (“Making anthropology
relevant to others people’s problems”, p. 71-84) considers that anthropology is
a professional, analytical tool that we need to keep sharp. For doing this, we
must keep away from ‘the Church of Anthropology’. Jöhncke remarks that we
should humbly listen and explore the problems that humanity faces, and to
account for good reasons people have for doing what they do.
Tanja Winther (“Searching for
variation and complexity”, p. 85-98) foregrounds that a key mission for
anthropology today is to disclose power relations. In comparison with many
other disciplines, anthropologists are trained to ask qualitative questions
including how, who, and why; and this type of data can help understand power
relations which come into play in any process involving technological change.
Sophie Bouly de Lesdain (“An
anthropologist’s journey from the rainforest to solar fields”, p. 99-109) underlines
that anthropology allow us to go beyond deterministic discourses, such as those
which put forward biological arguments to justify societal facts, or
tautological culturalist discourses, and brings practical applications in
industrial and commercial fields.
Rikke Ulk (“Anthropologist make
sense, provide insight and co-create change”, p. 110-122) asserts that
anthropology offer fresh perspectives, engage people, and explain how they act
and why they do what they do. Ulk points out that outside academia informants
are usually more explicitly treated as project participants and co-authors. And
make it clear that citizens are not ‘users’, but real complex human being
engaged in everyday endeavours.
Jitske Kramer (“Open up the treasure
of anthropology to the world”, p. 123-135) speaks about the anthropology that
is carried out on a type of tribe that the dominant culture does not usually
consider as such: organizations, including companies. Kramer emphasizes
something that I consider to be basic: as people organize themselves into
tribes all over the world, we can talk with business leaders in terms of
tribes, totems, clans and rituals.
Anna Kirah (“The practitioner’s role
of facilitating change”, p. 136-149) sends literally anthropology hight up in
the sky talking about her research on Boeing airplanes. Kirah points out that
anthropology views the obvious with new filters, and uncovers what is being
taken for granted. Besides, anthropologists identify the mechanism of culture
creation as a part of the everyday life dynamics.
Riall W. Nolan (“Do we really need
more anthropologists?”, p. 150-164) raises different qualities that makes
anthropology valuable: complements other ways of thinking without replacing
them, and enhance our ability to understand the world around us. Nolan also appeals
for the presence of anthropological teaching in primary and secondary schools,
and underscore the importance of anthropology out of the university field.
Some common threads found throughout the
publication
Cultural relativism and the paramount
importance of the relational context
By one side, cultural relativism is at
the utmost importance in anthropological attempts to understand societies in
neutral terms (p. 19), and because of concepts such as holism and cultural relativism,
anthropologists can be important players in decision-making and the formation
of effective policies (p.37). By being as aware as one can be about our own
biases and filters, and entering ‘the field’ with as open agenda as possible,
anthropologist often manage to come up with surprising and counter-intuitive
insights. This requires the researcher to apply a culturally relativistic lens
and suspend judgement (p.43). To tell
the truth, we must decenter and deconstruct ourselves from such (still
hegemonic) concepts as ‘common sense’, ‘cultural identity’, ‘uniqueness’, and
so on. Anthropology can tell us that almost unimaginably different lives from
our own are meaningful and valuable: that everything could have been otherwise;
that an alternative world is possible; that even people who seem to be very
strange to you and me are, ultimately, like ourselves (p.24); that culture is
a fluid space continuously (re)created by people through social interactions
(p. 139). From this standpoint, one reason because the world need
anthropologists is that the only way everybody can learn about themselves and
their cultural assumptions, is through meeting people who are different (p.
131).
This cultural relativism, for sure,
cannot constitute a postmodern nihilistic approach about the ‘incommensurability
of cultures’: a relativism should be relativist for being coherent with itself.
That is because anthropology should move beyond cultural relativism and help
policy makers, institutions and people find ways to negotiate the vast
differences we find ourselves confronted with (p. 142-143).
Deeply linked with cultural
relativism is the paramount importance of the relational context, i.e.: the
social spaces that generates and shapes what I entitle ‘social ecosystems’ or
‘ethnosystems’. Only focusing in the grounded nature of the social life with
the decentered lens that facilitate us cultural relativism, can we be able to
understand its characteristics and to explain the inner properties that remain
below their expressions.
Anthropologists know a variety of
ways to reveal the cultural meanings under the surface: we not just suspend judgement,
moreover, we look for wider connections, and build understanding from the
ground up (p. 151), listening to the small details to get the bigger picture,
making the strange familiar (and vice versa…) (p. 125). The smallest unit that anthropology
studies is not the isolated individual but the relationship between two people
and their environment: whereas society is a web of relationships, culture, as
activated between sentient bodies, not inside them, is what makes communication
possible. We are constituted by our relationships with others, and this is why
we have to engage with human beings in their full social context (p. 21).
Flexibility, complexity, creativity: a
vindication for qualitative research
Anthropology deals with complexity
and one of its key capacities rely in its ability to grasp multiple
perspectives simultaneously. We need to be comfortable with ambiguity and
ambivalence (p. 43), even more in an era characterized by the increase of
global interconnectedness. Perhaps the only certitude, nowadays, are the
ambivalence, ambiguity and unpredictability (p. 170), and that all observed
phenomena are connected in complex and often entirely invisible webs (p.151).
Anthropology always takes complexity into account, surpassing the behavioural
approaches (p. 101).
Where numbers explain what
might be important to the individuals, qualitative data provide the explanations
and understanding of why things are important and how is possible
to improve on existing conditions (p. 137). Anthropologists accept that complex
realities tend to have complex causes: to understand human worlds, qualitative
research and interpretation are necessary (p. 22).
Interdisciplinarity
The world needs an interdisciplinary
and interventional anthropology, with anthropologists engaged in
interdisciplinary teams (p.57, p.60, p.89), namely: teams of researchers with
complementary skills (p. 19). Regarding, for instances, the field of the
study of the energy, only interdisciplinary teams and projects can deal with
formulating the research questions and conducting data collection jointly in
the field (p. 87). And because energy choices are embedded within social,
cultural and political configurations (the study of which falls into the domain
of social anthropology), this opens up interdisciplinary fields of research (p.
107). As practitioners, is our duty to smooth the way for change, understanding
all the possible ways in which we are affected by it: there is a need for trans-disciplinarity
(p. 145), as we are bound to work in transdisciplinary environments, and we should
accept the limits of the discipline and reach out to other people and professions
(p.121), transcending our own methods, models and processes, and find ourselves
in new realms (p. 141).
In point of fact,
interdisciplinarity, and the need to co-think and co-create with others, have
brought practitioners into contact with new ideas and perspectives (p. 154). As
anthropologists engage head-on with societal, organizational, environmental and
other problems in need of solutions, interdisciplinarity becomes unavoidable
(p. 6).
Reach wider audiences
We strive to make our reports
available and accessible for non-academic audiences (p. 75), we must bring
results of our researches in an understable way to the people involved (p.
139). We need to make people understand the value of anthropology by
translating and interpreting their concerns in such a way that the discipline
becomes understandable to them (p. 107).
In addition, it is necessary to
translate complex findings and representations into clear recommendations (p.
97), and we may practice explaining in plain words our theoretically informed
approach to understanding why people do as they do (p. 82). And it is crucial
to teach anthropology in all the learning levels, besides university (p. 155).
Applied anthropology
One premise present for start to
finish in this work is that we need to take non-academic anthropological
practice seriously (p. 154). To my thinking, this is a pivotal feature, firmly
linked with the contribution of our profession to the renovation (as least, in
my country, Spain) of the so-called ‘community actions’, that clearly lack the fundamental
contribution of anthropology. In this direction, is really important to pick
out that one of the reasons the world need anthropologists is that we act as
catalysts that help people to see the same old things with new eyes and new
understandings (p. 141). Furthermore, as
I will remark at the end of this text, this publication points out the
prominent role of the applied anthropology in much more fields, like, for
example, public policy and industry (p. 100).
Anthropologists account with the
expertise to conceptually recast problems based on empirical observation and
can apply their endowments to make recommendations for possible solutions after
reframe problems. The ability to collaborate across disciplinary and
professional boundaries amounts to a new paradigm in anthropology, a shift of
emphasis that is but one expression of a more general development in the status
of anthropology from being a discipline to becoming a profession (p.
77).
It is compelling to close down, to
suppress, the gap between ‘theoretical’/’academic’ anthropology, and ‘applied’/
‘practical’ anthropology: they are continuously interlinking (p. 4-5). As a matter of
fact, the underline in the outstanding relevance of the applied anthropology
is, indeed, one of the main goals of this book, and the underscoring in this outlook
flow throughout its leaves.
Conclusions
As I have suggest at the beginning of
this review, this publication has the virtue of being extraordinarily coherent
with itself: thus, emphasizes utility in the social function of anthropology,
and works as a handy tool for being able to clear paths and plausibly visualize
the future: anthropology has a lot of things to say and to do, not only in the
social and community domain, but also in the fight against climate change, the
crisis of refugees, the growth of national-populism, and aspects as diverse as
the economy social, associationism, engineering, energy, community
organization, advice and consultancy in multiple areas such as business
corporations (including airline companies), design, technologies, the
environment, and so forth.
And it is fair to recognize the added
value provided by bibliographic references attached at the end of each section
(in the introduction, along the eleven chapters, and in the conclusions),
because these references allow us to broaden such areas and subjects, and invite
us to explore new routes in the anthropological practice and theory.
What are the contributions that
afford anthropology for postulate itself as a fundamental profession in such
different realms? The common threads that run through the publication give us
the answers: proximity work, attentive to complexity, to the plurality of ways
of saying, doing and thinking, to the dynamics of change that characterize
social life, as well as the role of “anthropological estrangement” (p.
125, 139) and the importance of (I have to repeat this as many times as needed)
the qualitative approach: “it is impossible to address and resolve the
pressing global issues merely by looking at numbers, statistics, figures and
diagrams” (p. 13).
In a general way, this collective
work constitutes an essential publication to know a huge number of concrete
samples of applied social anthropology and, through them, to value the
fundamental role that anthropologists should have in multiple areas of our
society. This publication is basic in order to highlight the primordial task of
anthropologist in professional fields where, until today, our presence has been
practically nil (I know directly the case of Spain and, within it, in a more
lacerating way, Catalonia).
More specifically, and as I have
already stressed previously, this book certifies the importance of the
anthropological prism in a professional area like the socio-community action. Both
the socio-educational dynamization and the community mediation (in the strict
sense), and the whole sphere of the so-called 'community' or 'social' field,
has to bear in mind the contribution of anthropology, equally in the theory and
methods, as in techniques and praxis: “It is our role to enable people who
are the experts on their own culture to engage their local knowledge in ways
that are empowering for them” (p. 59).
To conclude this review, I will like
to express that, from a strictly personal point of view, this book has given to
me fresh air and an injection of hope concerning the professional future of so
many people who are still trapped in a kind of limbo: among an academic world
that too often rejects the importance of applied social anthropology, and a
world of work (including the so-called labour ‘market’) that does not take into
account the essential contributions that this social science is able to do, and
how much worthy and useful it is for improving our societies. It is for this reason
that my gratitude to the authors of this collective work goes much more beyond
the quality of their writings, and also beyond the opportune of its publication:
they have shown us ways and, moreover, have provided us light to be able to
walk through them.
My final conclusion is diaphanous: for
sure, the world needs anthropologists, and I dare to add that the world needs
anthropologists more than ever before. Thomas Hylland Eriksen already stated it
in the publication to which I referred at the beginning of this review,
specifically on its page 96: “One may ask rhetorically: Is anyone better
equipped to make sense of these complexities- religion, identification,
modernities, migration, mixing- than anthropologists?”.
This book proves it. Amply. And
brilliantly.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sitges (Barcelona, Spain) - May 7th
2021
dilluns, 6 de juny del 2022
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