Anthropologists have acted as experts and educators on the nature and ways of life of people worldwide, working to understand the human condition in broad comparative perspective. As a discipline, anthropology has often advocated — and even defended — the cultural integrity, authenticity, and autonomy of societies across the globe. Public anthropology today carries out the discipline’s original purpose, grounding theories in lived experience and placing empirical knowledge in deeper historical and comparative frameworks. This is a vitally important kind of anthropology that has the goal of improving the modern human condition by actively engaging with people to make changes through research, education, and political action.
Arvustused
[ This] collection fruitfully examines how the turn to public engagement is transforming the discipline, leading anthropologists to reconsider the researcher's subject position and to use new techniques for conducting, communicating, and applying research to communities and publics. Contributors offer candid perspectives on their personal and professional transformations as they turn to a more engaged scholarly practice. · Krista Harper, University of Massachusetts Amherst
A truly fascinating read. It should provide countless inspiration for anthropologists of today and tomorrow. The case for public anthropology has now been well made. · Angie Hart, University of Brighton
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Carl A. Maida and Sam Beck
Chapter
1. Community-Based Research Organizations: Co-constructing Public
Knowledge and Bridging Knowledge/Action Communities through Participatory
Action Research
Jean J. Schensul
Chapter
2. Crossing the Line: Participatory Action Research in a Museum
Setting
Alaka Wali and Madeleine Tudor
Chapter
3. Monitoring the Commons: Giving Voice to Environmental Justice
in Pacoima
Carl A. Maida
Chapter
4. Political-Ethical Dilemmas Participant Observed
Josiah McC. Heyman
Chapter
5. Public Anthropology and Structural Engagement: Making
Ameliorating Social Inequality Our Primary Agenda
Merrill Singer
Chapter
6. Public Anthropology and the Transformation of Anthropological
Research
Louise Lamphere
Chapter
7. Public Anthropology and Its Reception
Judith Goode
Chapter
8. Anthropology for Whom? Challenges and Prospects of Activist
Scholarship
Angela Stuesse
Chapter
9. We Are Plumbers of Democracy: A Study of Aspirations to
Inclusive Public Dialogues in Mexico and Its Repercussions
Raúl Acosta
Chapter
10. What Everybody Should Know about Nature-Culture: Anthropology in
the Public Sphere and The Two Cultures
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Chapter
11. Reimagining the Fragmented City/Citizen: Young People and Public
Action in Rio de Janeiro
Udi Mandel Butler
Chapter
12. Urban Transitions: Graffiti Transformations
Sam Beck
Chapter
13. Recreating Community: New Housing for Amui Djor Residents
Tony Asare, Erika Mamley Osae, and Deborah Pellow
Notes on Contributors
Sam Beck is Senior Lecturer in the College of Human Ecology and Director of the Urban Semester Program at Cornell University. His publications include Manny Almeidas Ringside Lounge: The Cape Verdean Struggle for Their Neighborhood (1992) and Toward Engaged Anthropology (2013, ed. with Carl A. Maida).
