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Communicating Anthropology to a Greater Public
Communicating Anthropology to a Greater Public is the title of a newly added roundtable discussion to the upcoming annual conference of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) in Tampa, Florida. The panel was included after the preliminary program was published on the SfAA's website. We plan to meet Wednesday, March 28, 2007 from 8:00am-9:50am in the Buccaneer A Room, Hyatt Regency Tampa. Graduate students and all others interested in sharing their views on this subject are welcome to attend.
PANEL ABSTRACT
Anthropologists agree we need to better communicate who we are, what we do and how our theory and methods can contribute to policy and practice. We are at a unique period in history where information technologies enable anthropologists to share our work and ideas with greater publics while transforming the way we work. This open forum will discuss approaches to advancing the understanding of anthropology to the public, government, international organizations, clients, and employers. We will document opinions for a user-generated website, following the discussion, welcoming everyone to continue working towards a collaborative long-term effort.
Janelle Christensen
Anthropology may be more readily introduced to the public through clear and accessible writing. Achieving this goal may include the following: 1) identifying anthropological works and literature that have been widely read and accepted by the general public, 2) focusing on works that impact public perceptions leading to policy change, 3)isolating the qualities of these books that made it attractive and digestible to the public and policy makers, and 4) developing suggestions as to how more anthropologists might use these skills to promote anthropology as a catalyst for positive social change.
Jason Simms
One of the greatest barriers to more public engagement with academic anthropologists is the general structure of most faculty tenure and promotion (FTP) schedules. Largely based on scientific models, these schedules often discourage work intended for a more public audience. I suggest that effective public engagement with anthropologists requires a rethinking of FTP processes at both the departmental and institutional level, including giving more credit for popular monographs and projects in the public realm, as well as a possible differentiation of FTP requirements for applied cultural and medical anthropologists as opposed to biological anthropologists and archaeologists.
Jaime Nodarse and Marc Hebert
We will explore the following questions through the panel and audience discussions: Would crafting press releases and learning marketing tips be helpful or harmful in popularizing the accomplishments and research findings of anthropologists to broader audiences? Should we brand our work in terms that the general public can better understand? What role do university human resource officers and career development counselors have in shaping employment opportunities for trained anthropologists? Should they be better informed of anthropological skill sets in an effort to communicate this training to prospective employers? How should anthropologists institutionalize the effort of communicating anthropology to greater publics? What is the role of Anthropology 2.0 in this effort?
A.J. Faas
Building upon the work of Boyer (1990), which proposes to reconsider scholarship where application is central, and Bringle, Games and Malloy’s (1999) concept of the university as good citizen, this discussion will introduce campus-community partnerships as academic institutional change strategies. The central focus will be on the ways anthropologists can engage wider publics in a variety of initiatives through campus-community partnerships. In so doing, we will look at service-learning and community-based research as methods for public participation and participation in public, while driving change within the university that can facilitate greater relationships between anthropologists and the public.
PANEL ABSTRACT
Anthropologists agree we need to better communicate who we are, what we do and how our theory and methods can contribute to policy and practice. We are at a unique period in history where information technologies enable anthropologists to share our work and ideas with greater publics while transforming the way we work. This open forum will discuss approaches to advancing the understanding of anthropology to the public, government, international organizations, clients, and employers. We will document opinions for a user-generated website, following the discussion, welcoming everyone to continue working towards a collaborative long-term effort.
Janelle Christensen
Anthropology may be more readily introduced to the public through clear and accessible writing. Achieving this goal may include the following: 1) identifying anthropological works and literature that have been widely read and accepted by the general public, 2) focusing on works that impact public perceptions leading to policy change, 3)isolating the qualities of these books that made it attractive and digestible to the public and policy makers, and 4) developing suggestions as to how more anthropologists might use these skills to promote anthropology as a catalyst for positive social change.
Jason Simms
One of the greatest barriers to more public engagement with academic anthropologists is the general structure of most faculty tenure and promotion (FTP) schedules. Largely based on scientific models, these schedules often discourage work intended for a more public audience. I suggest that effective public engagement with anthropologists requires a rethinking of FTP processes at both the departmental and institutional level, including giving more credit for popular monographs and projects in the public realm, as well as a possible differentiation of FTP requirements for applied cultural and medical anthropologists as opposed to biological anthropologists and archaeologists.
Jaime Nodarse and Marc Hebert
We will explore the following questions through the panel and audience discussions: Would crafting press releases and learning marketing tips be helpful or harmful in popularizing the accomplishments and research findings of anthropologists to broader audiences? Should we brand our work in terms that the general public can better understand? What role do university human resource officers and career development counselors have in shaping employment opportunities for trained anthropologists? Should they be better informed of anthropological skill sets in an effort to communicate this training to prospective employers? How should anthropologists institutionalize the effort of communicating anthropology to greater publics? What is the role of Anthropology 2.0 in this effort?
A.J. Faas
Building upon the work of Boyer (1990), which proposes to reconsider scholarship where application is central, and Bringle, Games and Malloy’s (1999) concept of the university as good citizen, this discussion will introduce campus-community partnerships as academic institutional change strategies. The central focus will be on the ways anthropologists can engage wider publics in a variety of initiatives through campus-community partnerships. In so doing, we will look at service-learning and community-based research as methods for public participation and participation in public, while driving change within the university that can facilitate greater relationships between anthropologists and the public.
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