STUDENTS AWAKE! PUBLIC (ANTHROPOLOGY) OR PERISH
AAA 99th Annual Meeting
Saturday November 18, 2000
8am-11:45amChair/Organizer: SIREN, Tyrone W. (Wisconsin-Madison)
Discussant: BOROFSKY, Robert (Hawaii Pacific)
Discussant: NADER, Laura (California-Berkeley)
Student anthropologists stand in a unique position to envision and change the course of anthropology, and the role it will play in the public sphere. This session will explore the possibility of a "Student Public Anthropology." Starting with the premise that a purely academic anthropology is neither possible nor desirable today, we seek to articulate and document how student anthropologists are engaging the public, be it through activism, education or mediation. This session will bring together students from the different sub-disciplines of anthropology and individuals outside of anthropology who have engaged the public in their research. From educating elementary and secondary students in Canada to helping found a labor center in Malawi, from working with law enforcement agents on the US-Mexican border to balancing the roles of activist and consultant in a national park in Russia, from mediating debates over archeological materials in Arizona to creating positive changes on university campuses in the Midwest, from constructing an elementary pedagogy that takes into account the ritual process of socialization to rethinking the application of conflict resolution models in Washington DC, these papers all share the belief that anthropology and its methods can be used to create positive social change. While each presenter's work is firmly grounded in anthropological research and has been thought out with sensitivity, their perspectives on "Public Anthropology" are partial and incomplete. Therefore, this session seeks to create an environment that facilitates audience participation so that different perspectives on public anthropology can be voiced. This forum will help students imagine what their role can be as they become professional anthropologists and public intellectuals. Ultimately, this session hopes to contribute to an anthropology that is more critically engaged and morally responsible both at "home" and in the "field."Click on the links below to view abstracts of the presentations:
OWEN, Penny Lynn (Michigan State)
A COMMUNITY OF HEROES: RITUAL AND MYTH IN A SUBURBAN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLThe purpose of this research is to examine whether ritual, play and storytelling can be adapted into a cohesive program within a child's school day in such a way that it builds the individual students' self-esteem, creates a sense of community among the participants, and helps students explore their curricula meaningfully. Using John Dewey's assumption that students should be educated to participate in the democratic process as its goal, A Community of Heroes employs Gardner's research on multiple intelligences, Turner's and Rappaport's theories on ritual structure and function, and Lambek's and Bruner's work on the construction of meaning as elements for its research design. The research will: 1] critique and examine the applicability of ritual theory on the socialization of elementary-aged students; 2] construct and apply a pedagogy using ritual and myth to create a learning process using language arts and social studies curricula in a suburban school that represents a cross-section of working, middle, and upper classes and a cross-section of ethnic groups that mirrors ethnic percentages in the United States; and 3] explore the dialectic between ritual and myth in the development of meaning of the curricula for these students. Using ethnographic and quantitative methodologies, the research will also explore: 1] the world of these 3rd and 4th grade students, 2] how they perceive that world, 3] how the students construct meaning from experience; and 4] the impact the ritual process has on their learning and on their relationships with their peers, parents, teachers, and school administrators.
THOMPSON, Kerry (Northern Arizona)
NATIVE AMERICANS, ARCHAEOLOGY, ETHICS AND EDUCATIONArchaeologists around the world have the unique opportunity to include, in academic discourse, indigenous perspectives. Indigenous people and archaeologists have the option of educating the public about culture history, archaeology, and their significance to our understanding of culture. Historically, the dynamic between archaeologists and Native Americans has been a tense, and, at times, explosive one-making education of the public almost impossible. Today the face of archaeology is changing to include more Native American voices than ever before. Many archaeologists find themselves employed with tribal cultural resource programs or working alongside such programs in the southwestern United States where I am from and most of my experience in archaeology is. As tribal programs develop and take their place in archaeology the question of ethics needs to be addressed. Whose ethics run the programs? Can the archaeological discipline reconcile with Native American beliefs and ethics? And how do we facilitate the education of the public? Programs like the Navajo Nation Archaeology Department (NNAD) train Native American archaeologists and support their endeavors to earn academic credentials as well as participate in educational activities with the public. As a graduate of and former coordinator for the NNAD-NAU student training program I have experienced both sides of the issue. It is my belief that while Native American archaeologists are taking charge of our own tribal cultural resources we will also find a balance between tradition and archaeological law. Education of the public about our cultures and archaeology will follow.
JOHNSON, J.A. (Toronto-Scarborough)
REACHING OUT: BRINGING ANTHROPOLOGY TO THE PUBLICAnthropology presents a unique perspective on human populations, their history and their behaviour. Bringing anthropology to the public is important as it teaches valuable skills for living in a multicultural society like Canada. There are numerous ways to reach out and bring anthropology to our youth including incorporating anthropology into classrooms and after school programs. As students, we are in a unique position to assist in reaching out and bringing our knowledge and skills to students and teachers at various levels in the education system. This presentation will begin with a brief overview of the role that anthropology plays in Ontario elementary and secondary school education. This will be followed by a discussion of personal experiences and practical ideas about how to present anthropology to our youth. These ideas include assisting schools and local organizations in developing anthropological projects for students or having students come to the university for field trips. Finally, some of the resources that are available for those interested in teaching anthropology to our youth will be presented.
FREEMAN, Richard (Illinois-Urbana/Champaign)
RECIPROCITY IN ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCHWho is better positioned then anthropologists to help out the communities we study? Washington bureaucrats? Professional politicians? We owe it to these people to do all we can on their behalf, whether through direct political advocacy or research that can be of value to the community. After all, these communities have given us our livelihoods. Since early in my graduate studies, I have been designing and carrying out research projects that do leave something of value with the communities that have graciously opened themselves up to me, a stranger there to study them. Often this has activist connotations. I have tentatively, and timidly, labeled this "liberation anthropology." Taking advantage of my B.A. in cinema and photography, I have concentrated on producing videos that function both as visual ethnographies and as useful tools for use within the community. To date, I have two finished projects, with two more in production. One project looks at a boxing gym in the Puerto Rican neighborhood of North Philadelphia run by ex-professional boxer Willie Torres. He opened the small gym to work with local youths, keeping them in school, off drugs, and out of trouble. The second project was produced with members of the Latina/o student community at the University of Illinois. Together we produced a single video that addressed our own respective interests and concerns. The resulting video did something to further both of our agendas. These projects, as well as my field research among young socialist activists in Buenos Aires, will be discussed in my presentation.
WINDMUELLER, John (George Mason)
CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY: LESSONS AND EXPERIENCES FROM WORKING IN MOUNT PLEASANT, WASHINGTON, DCWhat is the relationship between conflict resolution and public anthropology, and how can we bridge the theory-practice gap while both studying and working with culture in social conflicts? This paper will explore these questions in relation to fieldwork and intervention projects in Mount Pleasant, a neighborhood community of Washington, DC that experienced a riot in May of 1991 and continues to grapple with community conflict in the context of a troubled mixture of diverse ethnicities, economic classes, and community subcultures. Since the 1991 riot, George Mason University's Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) has been involved in doing fieldwork in the community. Recent projects illustrate that public anthropology not only informs efforts at conflict resolution, but is a key component of conflict resolution. Traditional "Western" models of conflict resolution need to be rethought, and public anthropology provides a tool for reshaping conflict resolution models to better fit the specific community cultures and subcultures in which they are used. Further, the process of participant observation fieldwork can play a significant role in building a collaborative relationship between conflict resolvers and the communities in which they work.
METZO, Katherine R. (Indiana)
UNDERSTANDING WHEN TO ASK, WHEN TO LISTEN AND WHEN TO ACTStudents concerned with anthropology's public face are placed in a precarious position during their first fieldwork. During the first months at my field site in Tunkinsky National Park, Russia, administrative changes in the park raised serious concerns over the ecological integrity of this corner of the Lake Baikal World Heritage Site. In this paper I discuss how I balanced the academic demands of fieldwork with my new informal roles as consultant and activist. Of primary concern was preserving confidentiality of survey respondents while providing specific information to park officials regarding household economics and forest resource use. Presented as an ethnography of fieldwork, this paper highlights the experiential side of learning when and in what capacity to participate in discussions about the future of the research population.
THOMAS, Tresa (New Mexico)
DRUG POLICY, ADVOCACY AND THE `SOCIAL PROBLEM': IEDEOLOGIES AND PRACTICES IN THE WAR ON DRUGS IN COCHISE COUNTY, ARIZONAThis paper looks at the implementation of drug policy in Cochise County, Arizona, centered on the social impacts of enforcement and prevention efforts in small Mexico-US Border communities. In an effort to `study up' the ladder of social power, I first focus on agents and practices of drug enforcement, especially the use of Low Intensity Conflict doctrine as exemplified by the paramilitarization of national, state and local enforcement agencies. Using ethnographic research with a variety of enforcement agencies, I discuss the economic and social aspects of such enforcement by detailing agencies' institutional cultures and agents' individual perspectives. Second, in an effort to document and assist community mobilization, I discuss local drug use prevention and treatment efforts by presenting data gathered through collaborative ethnographic research with social and community groups in Cochise County. This discussion centers on the ideologies and practices of those groups dealing with the social impacts of the linked industries of drug trade and enforcement. Third, I argue that drug policy may in fact exacerbate those `social problems' it is designed to `solve' by, for example, increasing everyday local violence and contributing to escalating drug use rates and associated public health dangers. In turn, I consider the role of advocacy, policy analysis and collaborative research in `public' anthropology. Here, I explore the ways in which such research can itself create `social problems' by, as one Cochise County activist puts it, "…coming in, making us think of ourselves as sick and then just disappearing." Lastly, I argue that rather than being strictly an object of inquiry, local community mobilization can also inform the tactics and topics of both social theory and anthropological research.
HAANSTAD, Eric (Wisconsin-Madison)
NEW POSSIBILITIES FOR STUDENT ACTIVISM IN PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGYPublicly engaged anthropology is not the exclusive domain of professional and/or tenured anthropologists. Growing numbers of students are finding innovative ways of merging academic work with community and public-involvement. This trend points to changes in the basic tenets of what is considered valuable and necessary in our discipline. The recent public anthropology online newsletter (forthcoming) is a forum for the expression of this change. It links students from diverse topical, geographical and intellectual interests who share the common interest of sharing anthropological explorations with the communities we work with. Students have used the newsletter to interact with and learn from leading anthropologists and anthropological works that have demonstrated public interest. More importantly, we have used our own work to exemplify how to begin changing the way anthropology is practiced and disseminated. I will discuss how student-initiated projects offer innovative approaches to creating a more vital discipline. Student involvement promises to subvert academic esotericism in anthropology and become part of the learning process itself. Through publicizing issues raised by our own work and the people we work with, students can play a critical role in the development and revitalization of anthropology.
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