THE FACULTY
SUSANA RAAB FOR THE CHRONICLE
Cathleen Crain, an
anthropologist who runs
a consulting ;rm near
Washington: “There is
a growing vision of a
uni;ed anthropology,
where academics informs
practice and practice
informs academics.”
More Nonacademic Members Push Changes in Anthropology Group
annual meeting took place last week in New
Orleans. Such moves set the stage for an in-
;ux of new members and are needed for the
association to survive long term.
The movement is driven by a tight academic
job market, and in some cases by lack of inter-
est in university positions. But balancing non-
academic and academic interests has been a
struggle. Some academic anthropologists be-
lieve that practicing anthropologists are skirt-
ing ethical rules because they sometimes do
research that isn’t disseminated publicly. So
the appeals to academics, Mr. Davis says, are
sometimes “uncomfortable for our scholars.”
Still, Cathleen Crain, an anthropologist and
managing partner of a human-services con-
sulting ;rm, is hopeful.“The battles are largely
in the past,” says Ms. Crain, whose LTG Asso-
ciates has been around for more than 25 years.
“There is a growing vision of a uni;ed anthro-
pology, where academics informs practice and
practice informs academics.”
That vision of unity, say those in the disci-
pline, was nothing but a pipe dream when the
association created a panel in 2003 to come
up with ways to better serve anthropologists
employed outside of academe. When its mem-
bers interviewed about 50 practicing anthro-
Continued From Page A1
pologists, they heard some frank assessments
of the association’s shortcomings.
“The AAA and its members do need an atti-
tude change toward nonacademic work,” one in-
terviewee said. “There is still a two-class system.
AAA itself isn’t necessarily promoting that im-
age, but it exists.” Indeed, one corporate anthro-
pologist recalled that while talking with a small
group of people at one of the association’s meet-
ings, “one person turned their back on me and
walked away. I was told that I had sold out.”
Among other comments from interview-
ees: The association’s newsletter didn’t in-
clude articles about people who did the kind
of work they did, and journal articles were al-
most always written by academics. They also
said that nonacademic practicing anthropol-
ogists were largely missing from leadership
positions, and that too many sessions at the
association’s annual meeting weren’t useful
to them, such as those that focused on theory
or some aspect of the discipline’s history.
The panel’s ;nal report, in 2006, featured
recommendations on how to make the association more inclusive to all its members. One
suggestion was to make the panel permanent. A year later, the standing Committee on
Practicing, Applied, and Public Interest Anthropology, with eight members appointed by
Customer Observer
the association, was formed.
“That was really the ;rst time that practicing anthropologists had been taken seriously at the association level,” says Mary
Odell Butler, immediate past president of the
National Association for the Practice of Anthropology, which is one of many specialized
units of the larger association.
In 2007 the group got space in the association’s newsletter to run pro;les of practicing
anthropologists, which later morphed into a
column written by practicing anthropologists
about various aspects of their jobs. A bigger
coup for the committee in 2010 was a new
section in American Anthropologist, the association’s ;agship journal. In it are reviews
of Web sites, blogs, digital ethnography, and
reports geared toward practicing anthropologists. The journal also now has an associate
editor who taps anthropologists outside academe for content.
The association also wants to make annual
meetings more fruitful for practitioners. Last
year, for the ;rst time, sessions for them were
largely grouped all on one day, rather than
spread throughout the five-day meeting.
“Practitioners just aren’t going to stay at
a meeting that long,” says Kathleen Terry-Sharp, the association’s director of academic
relations. The nature of their work might limit
the time they can spend at meetings. “We tried
to make it work for them.”
B;;;;; P;;; R;;;;;
Name: Alexandra Mack
Education: Ph.D. in anthropology, Arizona State U., 2001; M.A. in ar-
chaeological practice, U. of York; B.A. in anthropology, Harvard U.
Job: Workplace anthropologist at Pitney Bowes, the documents and
mailing company
COURTESY ALEXANDRA
MACK
What she does: Talks with and observes Pitney Bowes customers do-
ing their jobs, then recommends products the company can develop for
them. Also manages user research by graduate students and contractors
Why she moved outside academe: “I started thinking there aren’t that many jobs, so do
I want to go from one-year job to one-year job until something opens up? Do I like what
I’m studying enough to study it for the next 20 years of my life? I started to realize that …
I love what I’m studying, but maybe I don’t want to be an academic.”
Even practicing and applied anthropolo-
gists within academe stand to bene;t from the
committee’s work. On tap for next year (with
the help of a consortium of practicing and ap-
plied anthropology programs) are some guide-
lines for departments on how to value work
that doesn’t always take the form of a peer-re-
viewed article or a book.
