Anthropology

I am an Anthropologist. I have been very reluctant to call my myself (out loud) an Anthropologist because in the academic world, the overall vibe is that one cannot officially achieve such a title or status without having earned certain kinds of credentials. That’s not necessarily an official rule, but it is the general tone the more immersed you get into the discipline, as is the case in the general realm of academia as a whole. As for me, I do not have a Master’s degree, nor a Ph.D. My work has never been published, and I am not a lecturer at a college or university. So then, what makes me an Anthropologist? I guess the first thing to do in order to answer that question is to define anthropology.

What is Anthropology?

Here is the long-winded definition as defined by the American Anthropological Association:

Anthropology is the study of what makes us human. Anthropologists take a broad approach to understanding the many different aspects of the human experience, which we call holism. They consider the past, through archaeology, to see how human groups lived hundreds or thousands of years ago and what was important to them. They consider what makes up our biological bodies and genetics, as well as our bones, diet, and health. Anthropologists also compare humans with other animals (most often, other primates like monkeys and chimpanzees) to see what we have in common with them and what makes us unique. Even though nearly all humans need the same things to survive, like food, water, and companionship, the ways people meet these needs can be very different. For example, everyone needs to eat, but people eat different foods and get food in different ways. So anthropologists look at how different groups of people get food, prepare it, and share it. World hunger is not a problem of production but social barriers to distribution, and that Amartya Sen won a Nobel Prize for showing this was the case for all of the 20th century’s famines. Anthropologists also try to understand how people interact in social relationships (for example with families and friends). They look at the different ways people dress and communicate in different societies. Anthropologists sometimes use these comparisons to understand their own society. Many anthropologists work in their own societies looking at economics, health, education, law, and policy (to name just a few topics). When trying to understand these complex issues, they keep in mind what they know about biology, culture, types of communication, and how humans lived in the past. (https://www.americananthro.org/AdvanceYourCareer/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=2150)

Now here is my very simplified definition:

Anthropology is the study of any and everything having to do with humans from past to present, and how through gaining insights about our past and present we can develop the foresight to understand how we will impact our future.

For me, that means that every aspect of life, from our origins to present day, involves anthropology. From the inner workings taking place inside of our bodies, to the influence our actions have on the world around us. From subtle cues to attract a mate, and racially biased microaggressions, to physical acts of love and violence. There is meaning and purpose behind everything we do – often times, we don’t even realize what those meanings are and why we do the things we do. All of us theorize away problems we do not want to face, such as what happens when we die, or why bad things happen to good people, and although there are some pretty good and sensible answers out there to those questions, do we really know? Anthropology is the discipline that allows us to further explore what we think we know, and all the unknowns without pressure to find a solid and fool proof solution to unanswered questions. It forces us to accept the unknown as certainty and embrace the possibilities that throughout our journey to understand each other we will discover answers to questions we never even thought to ask. So really, if we stop to think about it for a moment, we are all anthropologists! Some of us simply study life in a more disciplined or more focused way than others, hence the distinction that is science and further, anthropology.

New School Anthropologist

I seem to be on this interesting middle ground when it comes to being an Anthropologist. Despite not being the shining academic that some might feel I should be in pursuit of becoming, I have had the pleasure of engaging in experiences that allow me to recall the amazing things I’ve learned as a student of anthropology over the years, and recognize the value and benefits of those experiences as they relate to the human condition on a larger scale. You will get to learn much more about many of those experiences in my blog posts to come, but just to provide a bit of context, I’ll share a brief summary of what led me to where I am now in relation to anthropology.

After high school, I decided to chase boys rather than education, so I ended up becoming a single mother at the age of 19. Still a kid, raising a kid, but knowing that I had to lay in the bed I made (some pun intended), I quickly had to figure out what it really meant to survive. Bouncing around from job to job in customer service with dreams of becoming the first Black female Indiana Jones and digging for mummies in Egypt, I could never really settle down with any one idea of what I wanted to do with my life beyond not being a shitty mom – as was expected of a Black teenage mother in a city like Los Angeles.

After years of dead-end gigs, moving from apartment to apartment, moving to Georgia and back, having a second child, getting out of an abusive relationship, immersing myself in Rastafarian culture, losing my dad to a drunk driver, and trying to prove to my mother that I was not a total fuck up, I decided I needed to try something different. Something I hadn’t really put much thought into before – school. So, one day I picked up a catalogue from West Los Angeles Community College and began looking through the major areas of study. Seeing as how the majors were in alphabetical order it did not take long before I spotted Anthropology. Literally, as I read the description I yelled out “oh shit!” because I did not realize that “anthropology” was the name of everything I always wanted to do – travel the world studying cultures wildly different from my own, learn new universal truths, discover ancient artifacts, uncover mysteries, study human remains, work with museums, write articles and books about my experiences, and simply live a life of adventure in nearly any way I choose! I mean, the fact that I could get a degree and find some job that incorporates these sorts of adventures was like discovering I was the heir to some long-lost relative’s family fortune! It was clear that the universe was telling me to take my unfulfilled Black ass back to school, and so I did. I then got a job at a science museum so that I could be sure to gain hands-on experience in science while working on getting my degree (after all, although anthropology is a social science, it is science nonetheless!).

Now I need to make a few things clear before anyone who is reading this and is not too familiar with anthropology get’s the wrong idea. While I do believe that the study does incorporate all of the afore mentioned adventure-type experiences, I learned the hard way that it’s not so easy to live a life of exciting anthropological excursions like I always dreamed of. For example, being an archaeologist in real life is NOT like the Indiana Jones films – at all! But that doesn’t mean it can’t be. Let me explain:

I think it is pretty clear in general that it’s probably best practice to NOT put much stock into the things we see in movies and television anyway, but what the movies don’t show is all the political red tape and financial challenges that go along with wanting to conduct field work in nearly any region, let alone the most remote corners of the world. The amount of permissions and ethical parameters one must attain and work through in order to embark on just one project will likely far outweigh the amount of significant discoveries one makes in their lifetime. Now for argument’s sake, let’s say one does get through all the boring technicalities, comes up with the ridiculous amount of money it costs to fund the project, and finds themselves in the field. It is much more common than not to spend majority of the time in a lab or office documenting information, or out at the site surveying (scoping out the area, taking measurements, and mapping), than digging for treasure and fighting off black market artifact dealers, who just so happen to be looking for supernatural relics that will provide them with the ultimate power they need to take over the world. (I realize this slight exaggeration is likely a reflection of my imagination coupled with my fascination for timeless tales of adventure, but you get the gist). The point here is that one should never believe the hype. Rather, take the time to become educated and well informed about the things you have interest in before jumping in headfirst.

The misconceptions about archaeology are not exclusive to that one sub-field of anthropology. There are still many obstacles when it comes to conducting field work in cultural, biological, and linguistic anthropology as well. Also, keep in mind, you have to at least get through your undergraduate studies. Then typically, without a Master’s degree at minimum, you will not be able to officially lead your own project, but there are plenty of opportunities to tag along on one or two – that is if you get lucky enough to connect with someone who is not only seeking assistance, but also has enough funding to be able to have a team to accommodate.

But before I scare away potential future anthropologists, here’s where I like to talk about being a “New School Anthropologist”, which would entail finding ways to make anthropology your own. One day I started thinking about all my favorite television shows, some fictional, and some not so much. Two shows stood out to me, the first being Bones, a fictional drama about a forensic anthropologist and an FBI agent who are partners that solve murders where the victim’s bodies are too decomposed to easily identify. The second show is No Reservations with the late great Rockstar chef Anthony Bourdain, who traveled the world not only to experience alternative cuisine (alternative meaning nothing at all like the food we eat in the United States where we bastardize other cultural culinary practices), but to in addition fully immerse himself in other, especially non-westernized, cultures. I don’t care what anyone says, Mr. Bourdain was a cultural anthropologist through and through!

While the protagonist of Bones lives a highly exaggerated life – being an expert in every aspect of anthropological study you could think of, and able to determine a victim’s sex and age within seconds of laying her eyes on the remains – I thought to myself, why can’t I engage in work that encompasses a little of all the sub-fields of anthropology? Why do I have to pick one narrow path in the field in order to be deemed an expert? In my work of developing and interpreting science-based exhibitions and hands-on museum experiences, I often use my knowledge of varying cultural groups and their practices, as well as my knowledge of biological anthropology, and archaeology to inform my work and research. I may not be an expert in any one sub-field, but I get to choose how I can use what I do know regarding anthropology in my work every day!

For Mr. Bourdain, seeing as how he was already an established, successful, and famous culinary genius, he likely had the means to be able to travel with such frequency and to have a professional production and film crew backed by a big name television network. But every time I watched an episode of No Reservations I thought, how cool would it be to simply travel and just hook up with locals and become immersed in other cultural experiences on my own, and record my experiences (whether on paper or film) to share with the world! I mean, I don’t need a million dollar film crew to do that, and although I can’t afford to travel around the world in one fell swoop, I can still engage in these sorts of experiences at home or abroad on a smaller scale to start. With the evolution of technology there are so many ways to engage in and share this work with the world, thanks to the internet and social media. There may be a question of whether or not one can make a living doing this, but if you’re like me, and simply want to acquire experience to learn from, and pass it along without the desire to become a Rockefeller, then it might be easier than one thinks to find a way to make a living doing this work in a less sensationalized way.

Academia is not evil, but…

I would be remiss to say that going to school to pursue a higher education and a degree is a complete waste of time, because that is simply not the case. I gained some extremely valuable experiences, insights, and a wealth of knowledge about things that I would likely not have thought to look into if it weren’t for the connections I made and the courses I took. I think part of what made my college experiences so valuable was the fact that I went back to school in my late 20’s after having a great deal of lived experience already. That allowed me to combine common sense, real world know-how with academics which gave me a well-rounded understanding of the information I was learning. Not to mention, at 28 years old and having been a mother for the previous 9 years, I was much more focused because I knew exactly what I wanted to do and what path I needed to take to do it.

However, here is my issue with academia, specifically in relation to anthropology. There seems to be this divide within the discipline between theoretical and applied anthropology, and it is the theoretical side that tends to dominate not only what is published in esteemed journals and publications, but also the structure of how the discipline is taught, which at times seems to reflect a kind of elitist mentality. I won’t go into too much detail about this now because truthfully, I still need to wrap my head around the specifics regarding these two sides of the anthropology coin. However, from my observations it feels as though there is more emphasis on research and theory – as structured based on the practices of the founders of European and American anthropology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (some would argue, many of whom with questionable views on classism), as opposed to taking action. Anthropology claims to be a “holistic” discipline – meaning a multi-disciplinary and interconnected study (an academic way of saying a “we are the world” “kumbaya” kind of study). So then why is there this divide? To put it plainly, how is it that a study which emphasizes using a non-judgmental (non-ethnocentric) approach to understanding ourselves and the world could still maintain old elitist attitudes about what is worthy of attention and praise?

One of the biggest questions I have when it comes to the discipline of anthropology is, why is it that we (Black people) are always the studied, but very rarely to never the ones doing the studying? Think about it, all those fun documentaries of cultural anthropologists and archaeologists who go off on these incredible adventures studying ancient civilizations and “exotic” cultural groups always showcase a white man or woman leading the way. The fact that I am compelled to ask that question and make such a clear-cut observation, now in the year 2020, tells me that there is a problem in the structure. A problem that speaks to a larger issue – systemic racism. While I am grateful for my experience in academia up to this point, it is difficult to feel motivated to want to continue to involve myself in it knowing of the barriers that still exist within its confines both as a Black woman, and as a “new school” applied anthropologist. Nothing would make me happier than to be able to break down those barriers, and maybe I will contribute to the effort in doing so as I grow as an anthropologist (Because I know I’m not the only one who feels this way), but as of now I feel pretty damn good about the adventures I am discovering on my own.