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- Convenors:
-
Siew-Peng Lee
(Brunel University London)
Margaret Bullen (University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU))
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- SO-D289
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 15 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Stockholm
Short Abstract:
This panel seeks to explore spaces where anthropological training is applied outside the university: amongst people on the move over space and time, in design and technology, and personal accounts of moving in and out of such 'applied' jobs while juggling with the resulting precariousness.
Long Abstract:
This Applied Anthropology Network panel seeks to explore the widest range of professional spaces where anthropology graduates are found outside academia and their accounts of moving in and out of jobs and juggling with the resulting precariousness.
We invite presentations that describe and demonstrate how anthropology is being applied, on the one hand across a broad spectrum of social issues which are themselves a product of instability and movement over space and time: refugee and asylum services, new language and host culture learning, language policies and planning, general and social education, medical/occupational health services, nursing/care homes, senior workers into retirement, teenagers into adulthood; and on the other, how anthropology is practised in the fast-moving sectors of design and technology: software design, product design, user experience, town planning, architecture.
We acknowledge the overlapping and "ragged edges" of applied anthropology with anthropologists moving in and out of defined spaces and between "grey areas" where job descriptions are rather blurred, thus requiring a willingness and ability to share skills with colleagues in interdisciplinary teams. Therefore we are also interested in reflective and reflexive accounts of the applied anthropologists' adaptability and malleability, and the costs and challenges of moving out of, and back into, academia. Significantly, how has training in anthropology prepared presenters for these diverse roles? How differently would they structure an anthropology curriculum to prepare its graduates for work outside academia?
Innovative/experimental formats of presentation are welcome.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 15 August, 2018, -Paper short abstract:
This paper outlines career path of an anthropology graduate who found employment outside of academia. Firstly it will discuss the challenges of looking for a job, and secondly, provide insight into corporate life and how it is experienced by an anthropologist.
Paper long abstract:
The ethnography spans across ten years starting in September 2008 and the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers. The events which followed had an immense effect on the job market, in particular on candidates with little work experience. The aim for many was to find any job possible, and very few had the luxury of choosing between offers. However, in this depressing climate it was possible to embark on a career path that involved working in three different sectors (travel, legal and banking) in countries as different as Switzerland and Kazakhstan. It must be stressed that it came at a huge cost which involved many hours spent looking for suitable openings, sending applications and accepting rejections. It was far from an easy journey which is, moreover, not finished yet. As a result, however, an invaluable first-hand insight was gained into the job market. Ten years later this process can surely be called an ethnography, as it involved many interviews, participant observation while learning new jobs, and endless analysis of the results, which determined the next steps to be taken. This paper thus would like to share the main observations from the 10-year journey, and offer advice and support to those who need it, while they are continuing their journey. It will also provide information about personal experiences of an anthropology graduate working in a corporate environment.
Paper short abstract:
As an applied researcher in the Norwegian defence, I have experienced challenges, advantages and ethical considerations. Being somewhat of an anomaly in the organisation, maintaining an anthropological identity has been challenging. Not compromising your ideals is a continuing process.
Paper long abstract:
After ten years as an applied researcher in the Norwegian defence, I disclose some considerations here, having a heartfelt wish of "going back to my roots" professionally.
During the last decade, I have conducted several multilocal fieldworks and in-depth interviews in the Norwegian Armed Forces, using the method of participant observation among conscript soldiers in different units and branches. The research project was an assignment from the Ministry of Defence; and the focus of gender and diversity was set accordingly. The research questions and the following results, however, was not, and I have always had the freedom to communicate my findings publicly. The challenge is nonetheless conveying applied written products to the employer, not finding sufficient resources to prioritise communicating results in an academic context.
Military Sociology is a broad discipline, and several military anthropologists join this milieu. However, being assessed in accordance with sociologists using differing methods and theories can also feel anomalous. Working outside the academia, experiencing alienation from recent debates and discourses within the discipline is common. Joining the general anthropological environment for discussions and sharing of knowledge can be productive and fruitful.
In line with the American Anthropological Association's proverb "Do No Harm", I consider ethical considerations to be crucial. Constant awareness concerning possible repercussions of one's own research and how it affects your informants, as well as the community, is of utmost importance. Being loyal towards your informants, valuing and honouring the achieved confidence, must always trump political, financial and policy considerations.
Paper short abstract:
Reviewing my long and mobile career as an applied anthropologist, I examine some of the problems of competency and knowledge production as one learns by doing while moving between a variety of research and policy areas.
Paper long abstract:
To paraphrase Wellin and Fine (2001: 323): 'Whatever else it might be anthropology is work'. In this paper I review my experience as a working anthropologist, which has been largely marginal to academia and focused primarily on applied work. My career, spanning more than 40 years, has taken me through a variety of research and policy areas, including Aboriginal housing and homelessness, juvenile justice, foster care, day care, team design and skill formation in heavy industry, worker participation, community relations, welfare service delivery and community development, Aboriginal heritage and Native Title. At times working solo, at other times working as part of an anthropological or multidisciplinary team. Applied work has involved the production of knowledge upon which is based reports that focus on practical outcomes or the provision of expert or policy advice to array of Government, Indigenous and non-Indigenous NGO's and private sector mining and commercial organisations. At various times throughout my career I've felt rather like a stone skipping over deep pools of knowledge, as I have sought to gain competency and skill-up for work in a variety of substantive areas. I explore some of the tricks of the trade that I have endeavoured to use, sometimes successfully and at times not so successfully to skill-up and on the problems of learning by doing, while particularly in the latter part of my career also running commercial consultancy enterprises.
Paper short abstract:
Anthropological theories and methods are being increasingly used in corporate settings. In this paper, I will draw on my reflections working as a Marketer cum Anthropologist to detail both the tensions and possibilities that arise from moving from the University to the Corporation and back again.
Paper long abstract:
In recent years anthropology has become a buzz word in the business world. Top global companies such as Google and Intel have hired anthropologists for customer research and product design while marketing consultancies such as Red Associates and Flamingo have built their brands around anthropological theories and methods. As a marketer turned Anthropologist, I have been working with research firms in Australia to address this rising desire for anthropological insight and ethnographic methods, whilst also working on my PhD, lecturing and tutoring at the University of Melbourne. In this paper, I will detail the awkward but earnest ways in which ethnographic methods are appropriated for commercial use and the not always successful attempts to translate anthropological theories for use in consumer insight. In addition, I will share how I have incorporated my corporate experience into my teaching and the ways in which this has both endeared and alienated me amongst university staff and students. In so doing, I will reflexively address recurring criticisms of "corporate anthropology" that have come from within academia and that posit a vision for anthropology outside of and in opposition to the capitalist system. Moving between the university and corporation, I will propose, does indeed deserve critique, but also an open mind. While I may be accused of "selling out", I have found the process of "selling in" anthropology to both businesses and students, to be unexpectedly rewarding and hopeful. This movement of knowledge, I will detail, creates moments of tension and misunderstanding but also optimism.
Paper short abstract:
The paper presents an overview and analysis of contemporary practices (not)training of applied anthropologists at Russian universities and spheres where knowledge and skills of applied anthropologists are (not)used. The analysis is based primarily on the author's own practice of the last 35 years.
Paper long abstract:
The possibilities and spheres of work of anthropologists (ethnologists / ethnographers) in the applied field have changed significantly in Russia over the last 30-35 years. Practically the entire period after World War II and until the mid-1980s could be described as the time of memoranda after expeditions sent by many researchers to the departments of social development of the communist party and state structures in the hope of alleviating the complex conditions of existence of indigenous communities. Special training of applied anthropologists in universities was absent. For the modern period, special programs of university training, as well as a significant expansion of the scope of applied anthropologists, become characteristic. In some universities, specialized master programs ("ethnological expertise", "migration studies", "management in the sphere of interethnic and state-confessional relations", etc.) have appeared. A special phenomenon of Russian practice (however, of politics as well) is the so-called ethnological expertise, a distant similarity to the practices of SIA, the analysis of the methodological tools of which the paper pays special attention. Based on the analysis of university programs, the paper assesses the existing practices of training applied anthropologists and, on the basis of the materials of "ethnological expertise", shows the role of anthropologists in applied research/practice. The presented materials testify to the direct dependence of university programs and employment spheres of applied anthropologists on changes in state policy, which does not always positively affect both the quality of these programs and the expansion of the capabilities of applied anthropologists.
Paper short abstract:
The paper discusses the results of a study of anthropological practice inside and outside of academia. The purpose of the study was to identify tacit competences that characterize work practices of anthropologists and the paper suggest new ways of talking about anthropological competences.
Paper long abstract:
Anthropological competences are often said to be ethnographic fieldwork, in particular qualitative methods, and the ability to translate cultures. Yet, it seems there is rather more to anthropological practice than that. But what do anthropologists actually do? This paper is based on a research project on practices and competences of anthropologists working within diverse fields inside and outside of academia. Four researchers from the University of Copenhagen set out to study anthropologists working in health care, business, management, and interdisciplinary research, arenas within which a majority of the graduates from the Department of Anthropology in Copenhagen find employment. We studied their practices in order to identify the tacit competences that characterise work practices of anthropologists, and what anthropology turns into when anthropologists become part of various kinds of collaborations with people from other fields.
The presenter's own research focused on anthropologists working in the health care system as well as health workers with anthropological training. The paper will primarily draw on material from this study of people carrying out non-research task within the health care system - people who happen to also be anthropologists. The paper also draws on insights from the comparative analysis of the four studies and suggest new ways of understanding and explicating anthropological competences.
Paper short abstract:
Many patrimonialization processes specifically regard the Unesco List of the Immaterial Heritage: the presentation describes the role of applied anthropology in Italy into a the fast-moving sector, which the State let to the ONGs, and to the holders, or better to the "heritage communities", according to the Conventions around the Cultural Rights.
Paper long abstract:
The presentation describes how anthropology is being applied today in Italy in the patrimonialization processes specifically regarding the Unesco List of the Immaterial Heritage. That means to explore a the fast-moving sector in Italy, which the State let to the ONGs, and to the holders, or better to the "heritage communities", according to the Conventions around the Cultural Rights.
The presentation also demonstrates how the applied anthropologists are more or less adaptable, in this domain, and how their mission on the ground could be dependent to their theorical and ethical approach. The presentation will elso explore a case study around the challenges of moving out of, and back into, the academia, studing and appliyng the patrimonialization processes specifically regarding the Unesco List of the Immaterial Heritage.
The presentation concludes how the academian training in anthropology in Italy did not prepare, expecially in the past, the professionals for these specific role, and how differently we should structure an anthropology curriculum to prepare the graduates for work about the patrimonialization processes outside academia.