Читать книгу Anthropology For Dummies - Cameron M. Smith - Страница 67

Applied anthropology is a kind of cultural anthropology that applies what’s known about human culture to various pressing, real-world issues such as discrimination against women, the implementation of Developing World (once known as Third-World) aid programs, or child-labor issues. For at least the last two decades, about half of cultural anthropology PhDs haven’t gone into academics but rather into agencies such as the UN to assist in improving culturally sensitive communications worldwide.

The Society for Applied Anthropology (www.sfaa.net) lists its mission as promoting “… interdisciplinary scientific investigation of the principles controlling the relations of human beings to one another, and the encouragement of the wide application of these principles to practical problems.” Essentially, this means applying what anthropologists have learned about human culture at large — and the culture in question specifically — to policy statements and implementation. In effect, applied anthropology remedies the solution of distant bureaucrats making momentous decisions about a culture’s way of life from on high. Rather, this bottom-up approach recognizes that simply imposing change is less effective and respectful than working with people to stimulate change that works for them.

Anthropologists have played important roles in all kinds of applications of their knowledge, but serious ethical considerations inevitably come into play when researching human beings and applying the information gathered. In the 1960s, the U.S. Army commissioned anthropologists to study and explain how warfare was carried out in Central America. Many anthropologists objected that this information would be little more than intelligence used to better plot warfare in the interest of the United States, and the ensuing Camelot Affair drove the American Anthropological Association to draft its first Statement on Ethics in 1967.

On the other hand, many anthropologists have been pivotal in using anthropology to better human life. You can find out more about these issues throughout Part 4 of this book.