WTF is Anthropology, and What Does it Have to do with Writing?

I get a range of responses when I tell people I study anthropology.

• Anthropology is really interesting
• What is that
• That’s like Indiana Jones, right?

When a friend of mine told his father that his girlfriend, another friend of mine, studied anthropology, he asked if she studies bugs.

Not quite.

Anthropology is the study of, basically, humanity. It is an umbrella term for the subdisciplines:

• Physical/Biological Anthropology: which focuses on bones, DNA, evolution, and things of that nature,
• Social and Cultural Anthropology: the study of the social and cultural interactions and systems in place in different societies
• Linguistic Anthropology: the study of the role of language
• Archaeology: the study of history through artifacts

These of course are oversimplifications, but for now, they’ll do.

A Brief Summary of the Change in Anthropology

Anthropology has a colonial legacy. With a discipline that focuses on studying humanity by observing and documenting patterns of behavior that are considered worth studying, is anyone surprised?

Probably not.

Historically, anthropology involved traveling to distant places, reporting on people with exotic behaviors, and sharing the way the “other,” or people who are not like “us,” lived.

This has been changing but still needs a bit of work. I will discuss this at length in a future post.

Today, anthropology has shifted, or at least expanded, and promotes researching phenomena that exist in our own communities. There is no longer the need to travel afar to research people who live differently from you and ask them about their culture then write about their experiences and their thoughts on something you have not lived yourself. You can do that, certainly. It just is no longer necessary.

This shift is good for two reasons that immediately come to mind:

• It addresses the concern that comes with writing about a culture other than your own—which parallels the demand for “own voices” in literature writing. Although with anthropology’s colonial legacy and the problems that come with development practices, there are clear differences.
• It makes anthropology more accessible to everyone. People without the financial means to go abroad are not required to find extensive funding to cover the costs of their fieldwork. They can do their project closer to home, address a concern or interesting phenomenon within their own community. Their perspective and familiarity with the subject could add additional nuance that another anthropologist might not be able to add.

That being said, there are still limitations to doing “anthropology at home.” I am currently doing my master’s thesis based on fieldwork in Milan. This was for several reasons, coming to Italy was much more practical than doing a fieldwork project in California. I had also lived here for ten years. Also, there was a pandemic, lockdown, and travel restrictions meaning my travel options were even more limited.

I am not here to tell you you can never do a project where you do your fieldwork abroad. I am considering it for a potential European PhD project since I have a 50-pound, furry reason named Igneous I cannot travel back and forth between the US and Europe to do fieldwork. Also, the cat hates traveling and even if she can go in the cabin of a plane with us she would complain and try to escape the entire time. Not a fun adventure for anyone involved. So for a European PhD, I would need to do a Europe-based project. Because as much as I love what I do, I love them more and will not leave them behind for a year and a half of research.

That’s great and all, but what does an Anthropologist Do?

I am glad you asked. One of the defining pieces of the work of an anthropologist is ethnographic fieldwork. Which can be understood as “deep hanging out.” This means we find people who live out the pattern of human behavior or experience the phenomenon we want to study and then spend a lot of time with them. We get to know them, ask them questions, and sometimes follow them around for a while. Yes, this may sound a bit creepy, but all of this is done with their consent. Ideally, we work with them and co-create the notes and understandings of the subject of our research.
Then after extensive periods of time with our research participants/collaborators, we write about what that experience says about how that specific thing adds an additional layer to understanding the multiple ways of being human.

Writing in Anthropology

Another important part of being an anthropologist is how we communicate the findings from our fieldwork. Because we work directly with human subjects who we get to know rather intimately—it is an intimate practice to get to know the way someone thinks about different things in their everyday life—we have an additional level of responsibility when communicating our findings.

We need to reflect Their Experiences Fairly and Accurately.

We are writing about practices, thoughts, and experiences that may not be understood by the wider public, and we are also sharing the details of people’s lived experiences. We need to make sure they do not become caricatures or stereotypes. We need to do our best to write them and write them well.

We need to Write about Harsh Realities

In the inaugural lecture I attended for my master’s program, Dr. Lila Abu-Lughod mentioned repeatedly the courage of truth. This was echoed in Dr. Scheper-Hughes’s discussion in Death without Weeping of how hunger and starvation are taboo. In the field, when dealing with people’s everyday lives, we can see the harsh realities of different living situations. It is important to write about these because these stories need to be heard. But they also need to be written with care and respect.

Narrating Events from Fieldwork

One form of anthropological writing is ethnographic writing. Ethnographic writing is a detailed account of data from fieldwork. Ethnographic writing blends narrated vignettes and theoretical discussions.

Writing a narrative for ethnographic writing is very similar to writing any other kind of narrative. It just needs to be accurate and factual, and it is usually based on someone else’s life. Learning to narrate well, by adding in details, identifying what is essential, and connecting the pieces into a broader narrative structure are essential for a well written ethnographic text.

In addition to the narration, blending narrative with theoretical discussions takes writing skill as well to make sure the pieces fit together and don’t sound forced. This is something I am currently learning, mostly because I still have a lot of the theory to learn.

Concluding Thoughts

Anthropology is a complicated discipline. One of my professors pitched it as the discipline that caught a bunch of the misfits of academia. I like to think about it that way. I have also found that caught a bunch of the academics who wanted to write but didn’t know where to start.

I have only studied anthropology for a year and a half and only at one university so far, but I would like to think it has something to offer everyone. Or at least anyone who is interested in it. I have friends who were really turned off by it, but I am not sure if that was because of the discipline or because my program was not the best fit for them. The program fit is important for any degree choice considering the time, effort, and, in some cases, money you put into it.

Anthropology has helped me improve my writing, and my confidence in it, tremendously. It has also given me a different genre to explore and allowed me to do research projects that also serve as research for different fiction projects I am working on.

I hope to find a way to have my anthropological writing, my fiction, and I guess blog writing grow together over time.