Work with a large number of applied anthropology projects has led me to argue that the discipline suffers from a self-inflicted moral superiority complex that impedes its ability to learn from practice in order to become a more mature and responsible profession.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I draw together some of my experiences with applied work from diverse settings, from social policy concerns with sex workers and drug users to the development and assessment of technologies for trade and commercial shipping. Based on George Foster's suggestion (1969) that applied anthropology should be defined in terms of its association with practice, I argue how anthropologists need to pay careful and pragmatic attention to the social relationships of their professional work - a perspective more explicitly developed among practicing anthropologists than within academia. Rather than relying on complacent disciplinary assumptions about the inherent 'goodness' of anthropology, we need to develop more critical and self-critical abilities to handle ethnographic work as a powerful tool that require a strong sense of circumstantial professional responsibility in interdisciplinary work. And rather than attempting to carve out preordained 'go' and 'no-go' zones of collaboration, with the related division of society into 'good' and 'bad' sectors, interdisciplinary skills may make us better at avoiding harm and promote the useful effects of anthropological work. Finally, I would argue, this perspective has implications for the teaching of anthropology.