Pedagogy in Action

While anthropology students may receive general instruction in the debates and critiques surrounding public and/or engaged anthropology, attention to the growing intersection between participatory action research (PAR) and anthropology is often overlooked. I contend that to think of PAR as a complementary approach to conventional anthropological fieldwork (i.e. interviews, participation observation, and focus groups) is problematic in that it runs counterintuitive to the former’s transformative logic. Drawing from my work co-leading a radio-based partnership project with urban Inuit organisations in Montreal and Ottawa, I repurpose Sol Tax’s ‘action anthropology’ to discuss an attitudinal shift that our team’s use of PAR has provoked, reconceptualising the aims and practice of our ethnographic enquiry in the process. I consider the effects of this shift for anthropological training and pedagogy in PAR projects and propose the use of ‘training-in-character’ as an organising principle for the supervision of student research.

The Personal Politics of Action and Applied Anthropology

Action anthropology came to the fore during the 1950s and 1960s, in part as a critical response to applied anthropology’s colonial and governmental entanglements, seeking to learn from communities by collaboratively pursuing solutions to practical problems. While critical assessments of theory, method, and efficacy abound, the everyday human bonds fostered through these approaches seldom receive mention. This essay focuses on the personal and intellectual relationships Robert K. Thomas and Murray L. Wax formed with Ponca activist Clyde Warrior via the Workshop on American Indian Affairs, Carnegie Corporation Cross-Cultural Education Project, and Kansas Indian Education Research Project during the 1960s. It illuminates some of the interior dimensions of these two expressions of public-facing engaged scholarship.1

Integrating Indigenous Values into Federal Agency Impact Assessments to Reduce Conflicts—A Role for Anthropologists

Conflicts surrounding the development of public lands are on the rise around the world. In the United States, where laws require federal agencies to conduct environmental and cultural impact assessments before approving or permitting development projects, conflicts still occur. This is especially true for projects that impact indigenous lands, resources, and communities, as the recent controversy surrounding Dakota Access Pipeline project so well illustrates. The purpose of this article is to highlight some of the problems I have encountered as an anthropologist conducting cultural impact assessments for federal agencies and for indigenous communities. Central among the problems encountered are the lack of awareness and appreciation for indigenous values by project proponents, agencies, and sometimes even the analysts hired to conduct the assessments. Recommendations for improving the quality of cultural impact assessments, which are based on the tenets of Action Anthropology, are explained.