Paper short abstract:

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Paper long abstract:

The natural ‘home’ of many anthropologists is the (generally Western) academy. They venture out of it to immerse themselves in other societies, other languages. Their work is characterised by ‘difference’ - between the culture of their temporary hosts and the domestic perspectives of scholarship. It is a relationship that at best explores creative tension but at worst promotes the casual complacencies of ‘colonial’ superiority. This prevailing dynamic however is challenged when the originating ‘home’ of the anthropologist is the very society they are studying – the nomad returning to his tribe, the peasant to his village - or in my case the Arab woman seeking ethnographic data in relation to societies of the Middle East.

Such individuals often return ‘home’ to engage with social issues outside the academy – making another kind of ‘difference’ as they seek to improve the social and economic prospects of communities they have identified with all their lives. For some the most direct way to do this is to bring the discipline of anthropology to bear on the development and implementation of policy – within governments and NGOs. This paper reflects on my experience as senior advisor to a Minister of Tourism within the Arab world and explores the aspirations, challenges, and at times frustrations faced by an anthropologist seeking to inform the formulation of government policy with insights derived from anthropology.