Anthropological Niche

The following is a snippit from an academic publishing workshop at Macquarie’s Anthropology Department by L.L. Wynn:

There are all kinds of reasons that grad students, and even undergraduates, should be thinking about publishing their original research.

1. Publishing before you start your PhD almost guarantees you a scholarship (in the Macquarie ranking system, a publication automatically bumps you up one level in the 5-point scale).

2. If you are a PhD student and hope to get an academic teaching job, start publishing before you finish your PhD. A few bright stars might get jobs on the basis of their dissertation and strong letters of recommendation, but for the rest of us, publications are what count.  This is especially true in the Australian system, where there isn’t the same tenure system as in North America.  There’s not much a department can do to get rid of a new staff member if they don’t publish, so a department wants to see solid evidence of ability and ambition to publish before they offer you a job. Even in the U.S. system, few departments want to hire a junior candidate who won’t get tenured.  That just makes for awkward moments in the hallway five years later.

As blogged by the AAA, the AAA Race Project (Race: Are We So Different?) has now hit Youtube:

Adding onto the previous ten ways anthropologists make a difference in anthropology (I first blogged about the previous list here), the folks over at Neuroanthropology have added another ten items:

(1) Critique.
(2) Develop basic knowledge of problems.
(4) Advocacy.
(5) Involve the community in your research.
(6) Develop concrete community or applied outcomes.
(7) Focus on developing or changing policy.
(8) Get the word out.
(9) Help develop organizations.
(10) Create interventions or programs.

In a blog at antropologi.info, the relationship between public anthropology and journalism is reviewed through a discussion of Nancy Scheper-Hughes' guest editorial in Anthropology Today. According to the blog:

Public anthropology implies usually ‘writing’ for the public – making our work more accessible and also more accountable. A less conventional way of public anthropology is collaboration with journalists and the media, Nancy Scheper-Hughes writes. She did fieldwork on the global traffic in organs alongside journalists from USA, Canada, Brazil, Moldova, Albania, Turkey and the Philippines:

In a recent article in the Examiner, Stephen Jackson explains how ethnography is needed in today's business environment.  According to Jackson:

Latent needs of customers are product or service requirements that customers don’t even know they want, or in some cases are solutions that customers have difficulty envisioning due to lack of exposure to new technologies or being locked in habits and thought processes developed over time. How can businesses gain a fuller picture of the customer's world and how a product or service best fits? A heightened level of understanding and insight can generate the breakthroughs companies need and seek to create a competitive advantage.

One promising possibility is ethnographic research, a technique developed by anthropologists. It's the systematic study of how people go about their daily living. In the business world it means actually observing how customers use products and services and make buying decisions. Ethnography has its origins in anthropology. The word itself holds a clue: 'ethno' means people and 'graphy' means describe. Ethnography takes research to the people, allowing them to describe their world in their own terms and observing them in the home, the office, the car, the supermarket or wherever.

First-hand observation of customers in their own or public environment, interacting with a product or service, delivers a level of insight traditional research methods such as focus groups can't deliver. Ethnography can be invaluable in the early stages of product or service development or rethinking a business process.