Last week the EASA Applied Anthropology Network shared my article on ‘Why the World Needs Anthropology Now: the potential of Ethnography’. I wrote that article one year ago, in the midst of the pandemic. It argues that anthropology can help navigate the pandemic because of the potential of ethnography. Ethnography allows for identifying emerging developments in society. Also, it can reveal hidden behaviors and needs by focusing on not only what people say but also on what they do. The main take-away from the article is that ethnography, because of its longitudinal and embedded character, can reveal social complexities that other types of qualitative research cannot.
The article highlights the link between anthropology and its key research method ‘ethnography’. Doing ethnography has been a celebrated practice among anthropologists and non-anthropologists alike. In some fields, like design and innovation, anthropology is often conflated with ethnography. Anthropologist are primarily seen as human-centered researchers, able to discover the unmet needs and desires of consumers, citizens and clients. While this is true, anthropology and ethnography are indeed tightly coupled (you will not find an anthropologist who is against ethnography and the majority of the anthropologists do some sort of ethnography), the primary attention for ethnography risks developing a narrow view on what anthropologists can mean for the world today. And more importantly, risks overlooking why the world really needs anthropology today.
Anthropology includes research, but it is much more than that. In his article, ‘That’s enough about Ethnography!’, Tim Ingold promotes this message. He suggests that anthropology is much more than ethnography. It is a mindset. A way of approaching the world with a curious, creative and critical attitude. It is closer to an ethos than a research method. It demands one to embody a certain set of values, and practice these throughout whatever project one undertakes. It is about taking distance, not jumping into conclusions too quickly, offering ‘the other’-perspective, setting up large projects, cross-disciplinarity and most of all, about social interaction.
Here I will attempt to develop a broader view on Anthropology. To start with, anthropology is not only about understanding what is going on in a specific social situation, it is also about identifying potentiality. It is about showing how certain tensions and paradoxes shape a social situation and work creatively with these. For example, asking oneself: what sources are feeding these tensions, and how can these tensions be reframed or maybe even resolved? It is as much about understanding as it is about seeing, from the local perspective, what are opportunities for renewal and innovation.
Through creating knowledge we organize reality, and thus anthropology offers possibilities for reorganizing reality. That is why anthropology can offer much in the field of design and innovation. It can not only help to discover unmet user (UX)/consumer needs and shed light on larger societal trends, but it can be a gateway to bring these together. To understand how the two feed into each other, shape each other and ‘are’ each other. This, in turn, not only allows for innovation opportunities, it allows for strategy. For identifying directions and setting routes. Anthropology, thus, is as much about research as it is about strategy.
Further, anthropology is about connecting people. It is not simply about creating a story. It is about creating a story that can be shared. A collective story. Anthropology is about alignment. About bringing people together through words, stories and practices. About creating ‘something’ that can be shared despite differences in background, language and beliefs. It is no surprise that anthropologists have been studying the development of communities for centuries. Anthropologists are experts in identifying the social ties that bind people together, whether those are certain value systems, symbols or rituals. This knowledge about what makes a collection of individuals a collective, is something that sets anthropologists apart. Anthropologists, in that sense, are much like brokers, connecting people through exchanging and creating (new) materialities together.
In short, anthropology is a craft. It is a practice that needs to be nurtured, personalized and repeated. Its research method and theories make it generic, its application and translation is what makes it specific. That is why, luckily, anthropology can be done in so many ways. Anthropologists can work in a variety of contexts including governments, non-governmental organizations, start-ups, consultancies, big corporations, museums and media, just to name a few. Still, however, anthropologists are mostly associated with research and writing. And this might be explained by the celebration and focus on ethnography. Over the last years, we also have seen anthropologists broadening their work domain and moving towards HR, innovation and strategy.
If we explore the true potential of anthropology, what else can anthropologists do? Where will anthropologists be next? Orchestrators of ecosystems? Building platforms for human connection? Being a translator between contrasting social worlds (such as creativity - business/ digital - physical)?
What the world needs today is not only anthropology through ethnography, but anthropology in its most beautiful, bold and colourful way. Anthropology that unites research, strategy and community-building. Anthropology is not only about understanding people, but also about creating opportunities for renewal and connection.