I was excited to convene the plenary with Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Tess Lea and Greg Downey. Each of them have an amazing track record in bringing anthropology to bear on global issues, the public and make a contribution in society. I had engaged with this topic for a while now, coming out a free education movement, helping to set up a free university and thinking about the role anthropology plays in public discourses and the impact our work has on the people we work with as well as society more broadly. The University of Queensland offered me the opportunity to create free content and a social anthropology MOOC based on a 1st year course I teach on the Anthropology of Current World Issues. I have had my reservations about MOOCs, but wanted to create something of use to students, our department as well as the discipline and included a series of interviews with anthropologists we met along the way of filming. For those interested, here is the edX sign on page to do the MOOC World101x, but all videos are also available on youtube.
OK, enough of a plug for my MOOC. One of the people we interviewed was Rob Borofsky in Hawaii who runs the Center for a public anthropology and over a couple days with him we had a series of discussions on the role of the anthropologist, the political engagement we can/should/must have and the role of such activism in our discipline. The interview with him is available here. At the plenary I quoted a short definition of his from the early 2000s where he says public anthropology is the:
“ability of anthropology and anthropologists to effectively address problems beyond the discipline – illuminating larger social issues of our times as well as encouraging broad, public conversations about them with the explicit goal of fostering social change”
He has since written a longer explanation, especially to address the long history of and engagement with applied anthropology.
My own view is that anthropology can do much more to translate our research findings, our accumulated academic knowledge, into social effects and impact both in our fieldsites and at our home institutions/societies and contribute to public discourses we are already engaged in.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who has a long history of what she calls militant anthropology shared some stories with us of her work and called upon (some) of us to be engaged anthropologists or agents provocateurs who infiltrate the structures of power and sometimes must put our bodies or words on the line – these are not mediators and the positions we take up can hurt us, professionally, personally and physically. She also called upon anthropologists to invite criticism and have courage to take risks with our opinions (based on the evidence we collect). This will not work for everyone, nor should it, but I think she engaged a theme that seemed to run through much of the conference, one of unsettling ourselves and others.
Tess Lea focussed on the difficult task of communication and actually bringing our knowledge into the public realm AND have it read. She has just published a fascinating book on Darwin that is part memoir, part socio-cultural analysis and history for a public audience. She is also a filmmaker and said that this has been tough and profoundly under appreciated. Particularly our workplaces and the bureaucratisation of measuring our work outputs/impact has led to a tension in what sort of work gets produced and valued at the university and the discipline. Good writing, one that is sophisticated, interesting and engaging (i.e. a page turner) and that says some hard truths/things is difficult to master and we are never really taught (creative) writing as a skill, just expected to be doing it (in A* journals).
Greg Downey, who also runs a great Neuroanthropology blog, focused on teaching (I asked him to, because he ram the first anthropology MOOC, which is fantastic) and he sees public anthropology as an integral part of his teaching work. His MOOC is on ‘becoming human’ and covers evolution, biological anthropology and dispels some often held popular myths about genetics. Take it, it’s free! – and wonderful to see a teacher so enthusiastically talking about anthropology. It is also politically important when considering teh recent rise of white student groups on campuses (or at least facebook) across Australia. Greg has intervened on their facebook posts, dispelling myths about genetics and nature and WHITE MAN CIVILISATION…they should just take his MOOC already. He left us all feeling fuzzy and happy by calling on us all to love each other, help each other and create human networks of shared knowledge. Oh and we should all chill out (especially on AASnet) and take a breather. Anthropology is a public good and we also have to be good to each other.
The following discussion was fantastic too, with interventions by Erin Taylor who runs an anthroplogy blog/magazine/wonderful place to spend time online popanth, Ghassan Hage on the role of capital that can push particular views and arguments and someone’s mother who thinks anthropologists are ‘useless alchemists’. Spirited exchanges followed and I had run out of paper to scribble along, so please add comments below with your recollections.
I hope you can share this around and I’ll upload the video as soon as it becomes available. See you all in Sydney next year!
Anthropolitics 