Public Anthropology in a Borderless World

Anthropologists have acted as experts and educators on the nature and life ways of people worldwide, working to understand the human condition in broad comparative perspectives. As a discipline, anthropology has been advocate - and even defender - of cultural integrity, authenticity, and autonomy of societies across the globe. Public anthropology today carries out the discipline''s original purpose, grounding theories in lived experience and placing empirical knowledge in deeper historical and comparative frameworks. This, then, is a vitally important kind of anthropology with the goal of improving the modern human condition by actively engaging with people to make changes through research, education, and political action.

Anthropologists have acted as experts and educators on the nature and ways of life of people worldwide, working to understand the human condition in broad comparative perspective. As a discipline, anthropology has often advocated — and even defended — the cultural integrity, authenticity, and autonomy of societies across the globe. Public anthropology today carries out the discipline’s original purpose, grounding theories in lived experience and placing empirical knowledge in deeper historical and comparative frameworks. This is a vitally important kind of anthropology that has the goal of improving the modern human condition by actively engaging with people to make changes through research, education, and political action.

List of Illustrations

Introduction
Carl A. Maida and Sam Beck

Chapter 1. Community-Based Research Organizations: Co-constructing Public Knowledge and Bridging Knowledge/Action Communities through Participatory Action Research
Jean J. Schensul

Chapter 2. Crossing the Line: Participatory Action Research in a Museum Setting
Alaka Wali and Madeleine Tudor

Chapter 3. Monitoring the Commons: Giving “Voice” to Environmental Justice in Pacoima
Carl A. Maida

Chapter 4. Political-Ethical Dilemmas Participant Observed
Josiah McC. Heyman

Chapter 5. Public Anthropology and Structural Engagement: Making Ameliorating Social Inequality Our Primary Agenda
Merrill Singer

Chapter 6. Public Anthropology and the Transformation of Anthropological Research
Louise Lamphere

Chapter 7. Public Anthropology and Its Reception
Judith Goode

Chapter 8. Anthropology for Whom? Challenges and Prospects of Activist Scholarship
Angela Stuesse

Chapter 9. “We Are Plumbers of Democracy”: A Study of Aspirations to Inclusive Public Dialogues in Mexico and Its Repercussions
Raúl Acosta

Chapter 10. What Everybody Should Know about Nature-Culture: Anthropology in the Public Sphere and “The Two Cultures”
Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Chapter 11. Reimagining the Fragmented City/Citizen: Young People and Public Action in Rio de Janeiro
Udi Mandel Butler

Chapter 12. Urban Transitions: Graffiti Transformations
Sam Beck

Chapter 13. Recreating Community: New Housing for Amui Djor Residents
Tony Asare, Erika Mamley Osae, and Deborah Pellow

Notes on Contributors