A lot of people are actually anthropologists at heart.
We're all curious about the ways other people live their lives
something deep down inside of us knows that the way that we see things can't really be
the only way to see the world.
Anthropology is the study of human beings so it covers just about anything you can think of.
In North America anthropology typically is divided into
four sub-fields: archaeology, linguistics physical anthropology and social cultural.
We focus here on social cultural anthropology
because of the size of our department.
Anthropology is always going to be relevant.
Anthropology is always going to be interested in the now because the now has history
and that if anything else is kind of the main tenant of anthropology
How do we understand how we got to now?
How do we make sense of what things mean now? They don't come from a vacuum.
They don't exist in a vacuum. They come from somewhere, they have a history.
I think that anthropology offers the development of three very important things.
The first I would say is compassion.
Compassion is essential in becoming a productive member of society and a happy person in general.
Learning to care for other people, respect the way they live their lives.
The second thing I would say is the ability to sort through massive amounts of data
when you are going out into the field doing research in anthropology there's
a lot of information that you're constantly collecting that you're aware of.
You really have to pay attention to a lot of details and then you have to come
home and and sort through all that information and and make connections and
find a way to show that that information you collected is meaningful.
That's tremendously valuable in our society today.
Thirdly the development of communication skills. Working in the field involves
dealing with all kinds of different people and learning to communicate with
them in ways that allow you to collect meaningful data so that you can apply
that second skill and analyze it and find meaning and connections and what not.
Anthropological skills are skills of observation, are skills of inquiry are
often used again and private organizations and government and NGOs to
try to facilitate the operation of the organization itself. IBM and other types of large
enterprises have called an anthropologist when they've had trouble in
the workplace when they've had discontent and they're not sure how to
smooth things out. They'll call in an anthropologist to use powers and skills
of observation and interviewing techniques to try to understand what's
going on from the perspective of the people under study.
One of the biggest skills, largest and most valuable for any setting that we learn as anthropologist
is just interpersonal interaction. How to talk to people. How to be
comfortable asking questions. How to be comfortable hearing answers and just
listening and may be listening for something that we didn't expect to hear
and I think that's always transferable in a professional environment.
An anthropologist tend to try to understand
the world from the ground up. So, what do people on the ground see the world?
How do they see it? What are they doing? How do they understand the world?
How does that fit into their community, into their city, into their nation into
the world at large? So we try to put a face on people of the world.
If you're thinking about anthropology my advice would be to try it out.
The methods are different from a lot of other things that you could study. They're very real,
they're very involved and it's so diverse that the field will
find room for you if you want to find room for yourself in the field.
If you're a student in high school and your not sure what you're interested in,
but you think you might be interested in anthropology,
I highly recommend coming to the University, one of the openhouse days
or just drop by, hang out. Try to talk with some of the faculties. We have
a very diverse faculty, we have people who are studying everything from the
relationships of humans and animals in society to human rights, indigenous
people, fair trade, cooperatives. So, you can get a sense of what anthropologists do in the real world.
Take a course even if anthropology is not your major. Take a course in anthropology.
That way you'll get exposed, you'll see what it is that anthropology is all about and whether you
think it's something you might enjoy.