Dori's Moblog

AAA opens up the kinds of inquiry in its Long Range Plans

I love being part of the anthropological community in that there are always very active debates and eruptions on the nature of the field. The current eruption surrounds the replacement of the term science with that of public understanding in the AAA's Long Term Plan. The debate brings up painful memories of the divorce at Stanford when I was a graduate student circa 1997-1999. The department split into the Anthropological Sciences and the department of Social and Cultural Anthropology. They are back together again, but I here it is not a good marriage. But anyway, here is my response to the flurry of emails about the change on the Anthrodesign Yahoo Group listserv.

The Psychology Today "article" reminds me that sometimes blogging is not the equivalent of journalism. The blog post is misleading and grossly unfair. The NYTimes article provides a somewhat more measured view, but it still frames the change as a negative "deepening rift." By replacing the word "science" with the term "public understanding" in its long-range plan, the AAAs is expanding its mission such that it no longer mandates a single form of knowledge production (e.g. science) but rather a uniform intention in terms of the outcomes of research. This is not the same as "ditching" science. There is nothing in the statement that says scientific inquiry cannot take place. I still assume that scientific inquiry has something to contribute to public understanding and will continue to do so. What perhaps the shift is indicating, which is causing the consternation, is that scientific inquiry is no longer the only privileged mode of knowledge production in anthropology, in which the change reflects merely the reality of the world today. 

I am currently reading the book, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples by Linda Tuhawia Smith (Zed Books: 1999). It should be required reading for anyone interested in this discussion. The relevant points from the book in relationship to the AAA's decision are how positivism, as part of scientific research, is interested in the "measurement of things" and the procedures of validity and reliability to guarantee their measurement (Smith 1999: 42). Epistomologically and ontologically, Smith argues that these processes, as embedded in research regardless of the specific discipline, inflicts violence on indigenous peoples because it set up "rules of classification, rules of framing (representation), and rules of practice (evaluation)" in which indigenous societies have been brought into the Western system of knowledge as inferior (Smith 1999: 43).

She notes that anthropology is the most hated of disciplines among indigenous peoples because of its theft of indigenous knowledge, artifacts, even bodies. This is in spite of the relationship indigenous communities may have with individual anthropologists. The AAA has made great efforts to engage indigenous peoples as active participants, not just subjects, of anthropological inquiry. The establishment of the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists section in the AAA in 2007 has been a major step.

Again, in my view, this change is not about excluding scientific inquiry, as sometimes you need to measure things depending on the kinds of questions you are asking, but rather about leaving an opening in the kinds of inquiry that takes place in the field as long as it addresses the main goal to "...advance public understanding of humankind in all its aspects." I belive this is a positive direction for the field.

Design Anthropology: Response to Yoko Akama

Yoko Akama has been in interesting critic of my work within design anthropology and Design for Democracy. I am at the point of my age where I don't mind critique because it allows me to re-articulate a position that perhaps I was not clear about or did not provide enough detail. So I thought I would elevate aspects Yoko's critique and my response. I encourage you to read Yoko's full critique in the comment's.

Yoko's critique "Design Anthropology, to me, is patronising and misguided."

On one level, I listened to you talk wondering 'what is the difference between what you do, and market research'? , especially where you discussed shampoo products and the men you studied. Is it the methodology? Agenda? Empowerment of the ones studied? ...

The other level, which to me is more concerning is the way I interpreted how you position yourself as a 'problem solver' - to solve the problem of others... My understanding of your position as a 'problem solver' seems to me to require an 'objective' stance to the problem solved. Subjects and their living contexts are studied and the problems are identified. The subjects are 'the other'. The problem is viewed at an arms distance, and steps are taken to resolve it to give 'order and clarity' to this world. In this model, the designer is perceived as the person who has the power to 'solve' other people's problems...Design Anthropology, in the way I have seen you present and write about previously, echoes the pre 80s era of anthropology, which then seemed to have been married to 'design' to reinforce this even further. Design Anthropology, to me, is patronising and misguided

>>>>>>

My response was going to be quick, but I realized the depth of miscommunication on my part perhaps or misunderstanding on Yoko's part. But in any regards, I thought it important to try to communicate more clearly about design anthropology.

I am super exhausted tonight, but let me briefly try to address your responses, which I find rather interesting. I am always curious to how people respond to things because it exposes the gaps in your communication.

What makes Design Anthropology different from marketing research?

First I answer by saying that marketing research in the past 20 years have adopted a lot of anthropology, specially ethnographic methods, into their practices. So there is a lot of overlap in methods and often assumptions. But the talk was about design anthropology to a design business audience so I was outlining the overlaps more than the differences. The differences have to do with the questions asked.  Design anthropology asks, “What does it mean to be human?”  Marketing research asks, “How does one allocate resources to move customers to buy goods and/or services?”  The rituals of male grooming were the focus of the study I presented and it was done in an anthropological understanding. What does grooming mean to men? What are the repeated behaviors of this male grooming? What are the deviations and what does it mean to deviate? What sense of order if any does grooming provide for the men? What do these rituals mean in terms of the individual and group identity of men? What are the roles of women in those grooming rituals?  This was the design anthropology part of the project. With that wider frame, there were very specific marketing research parts about the grooming artifacts (shampoo and conditional products) and how they are used. What moves men to buy one product versus another? Design anthropology asks broader questions of the data regarding human nature, but is is also able to encompass the marketing question (where other market research techniques might stop).

My praxis and that of the students I train are about understanding how designed stuff or design processes help define what it means to be human. Marketing research, if interested at all, defines humanness based on how people fit within a product purchasing and experience cycle. Design anthropology takes a broader and more undetermined definition of humanness.

As for the problem solver/objective position of researcher reading, here you have completely missed the point of any anthropological/design anthropology engagement.

Anthropological Origins

The original intent of anthropology, from even its most colonial enterprise, was to cultivate empathy for diverse perspectives of being human. This was when the Colonial administrations seriously doubted the humanity of various colonial subjects as a justification of their racists policies. Anthropologist, like Malinowski, Boas, or Crushing in the US, went among native groups to say directly, “Hey these people are human because they do have their own forms of kinship, religion, politics, economics, and manufacturing.” So the original purpose of anthropology was to elicit empathy for the complexity of the world. The field was devoted to understanding, documenting, and representing that diversity. If you ever had to do kinship diagrams, one would understand how complex something as “simple” as family relations are.

Positions of “objectivity” were based on developing effective modes of knowledge presentation at the time as well as being a counter to the highly biased, in other ways, reports about native lives by Missionaries, Colonial Administrators, Trades persons, who all saw the native people as inhuman barriers to their own ambitions. Anthropologists were people of their own times and harbored perhaps the same personal views about the native people, but their scholarship was about showing how natives were human from their own perspectives of humanness reinterpreted for comparative purposes for more effective communication.

Post-structuralist, feminist, and subaltern anthropology

Yes, in the post-structuralist moment of anthropology, anthropologists could no longer provide authoritative labels of this is your type of kinship structure (Crow, Kerela, etc.) in vast taxonomies because of the entrance of white women and women of color, men of color, and native anthropologists into the field to critique the “authority” of those old labels, often in order to provide their own labels in institutional power struggles. The point is that these discussions and debates were expressions of an internal struggle among diverse anthropologists about who had the right to provide labels, not with the act of labeling itself.

Where design anthropology enter?

Design anthropology comes to the fore in the post-structuralist model of anthropology with the intent to demonstrate the multiplicity and complexity of the lives of people who happen to consume products, communications, and experiences. Design anthropologists said, “Hey, they are not just consumers or users, but rather people with rich lives in which your products do or do not fit in the ways that you imagine them.” You being the companies that hired them.  Anthropology’s research modality has always been participant-observation, not observation as designers like to say. In that tradition, design anthropologists  and anthro-designers do more than observe; they also participate because that is how one develops empathy through the inter-subjective relations among people, objects, the environment, etc. By doing so, design anthropologists and anthrodesigners are able to engage multiple modalities of being within the design process at many different levels and forms:

• Indirectly through abstracted representations of multiple values and experiences to inform designing by designers where the technical means are beyond the contextual knowledge of the people who might use the designs (this can be end users as well as corporate stakeholders)
• Directly by various people’s co-participation in the design of objects, communications, and experiences at various levels of fidelity
• Directly by providing various people additional shared tools of design production appropriate to their own contexts

As for me a case study of design anthropology, Design for Democracy was explicitly about bringing citizens into the design process of the materials responsible for the maintenance of US democratic institutions. This was accomplished at first indirectly through abstracted representations of the voting experience of different types of voters, voting judges, election officials, the postal service, special interests groups, and election vendors. Then it brought people with and without disabilities, who spoke multiple languages, of different ages, genders, and races directly into the co-design process of designed objects that affected their identity as citizens. Finally, it provided election officials shared tools of design production (ballot templates) so that they could create designs appropriate to their own contexts and their own problems and solutions. It did so with the underlying anthropological questions of what does it mean to be a citizen and how does the design of this stuff impact people’s understand of democracy. That was the meaning of Design for Democracy for me.

So Yoko, you conclude with the fact that you do not find design anthropology’s approach valuable. To that I say, okay.

My students, my colleagues, and my clients find it extremely valuable because it is the only way I know how to create empathy for the diversity of human experience to inform the ethical praxis of designing. There are perhaps other approaches, with which I am not familiar and I am extremely open. For now, design anthropology works for me and more importantly it works for others, especially my design students whose projects and passion continues to inspire and humble me.

So thank you for taking the time to ask hard questions and for clarification of my views. I really do appreciate it. 

Anthropology has always been visual

Got this off of Design Observer, but John Curran has posted a list of the greatest hits of anthropological and social theory diagrams on Flickr.

This makes me happy for two reasons. First, I have always bristled at the notion that anthropologists are more textually-oriented than visual, that somehow there is no culture of the visual in the field. Having misspent my youth trying to figure out the subtleties of kinship diagrams, mastering the art of reading archaeological site maps, and illustrating the distinct morphology of early hominids (pre-humans), I knew that to be empirically untrue. So I am happy to have the vindication through visual documentation that Anthropology has always been visual.

Two, I am co-holding with the diagram-master himself, Hugh Dubberly, a workshop at the American Anthropological Association Meetings in San Francisco as part of the NAPA Design and Anthropology Special Interest Group. Proud (as opposed to shameless) plug (because I am really excited that this collaboration is happening, especially if I get to keep the posters):

TITLE OF EVENT: Workshop: Designing Anthropological "Boundary Objects": how-to compellingly and effectively visualize anthropological data for heterogeneous audiences

SPONSOR: National Association for the Practice of Anthropology
DATE SCHEDULED: 11/21/2008
TIME: 10:00:00AM - 12:00:00PM
ROOM: Union Square 18

So the next time a designer colleague of mine accuses me of being too textual, or more often, seems shocked that I know how to draw a diagram. I can point them to the Great Diagrams of Anthropology, Linguistics, and Social Theory with pride.

More than 15 minutes fame: ID@IIT student video

Gabriel Biller and Kristy Scovel, graduating students at ID @ IIT just released their video, starring me (way too much of me, I should have wore more make-up) on ethnography and interviewing called, "Getting People to Talk: An Ethnography and Interviewing Primer"

They did a really good job. It very funny. What makes me most happy is that they adopted my view of ethnography as a philosophical orientation not just a set of techniques:

The IIT Institute of Design is a graduate school of design dedicated to advancing the methods and practice of human-centered innovation. We believe that real innovation starts with users' needs and employs a set of reliable methods, theories, and tools to create solutions to their problems. Ethnography and interviewing are how we, as designers, see the world through other people's eyes and get them to tell us their stories. In the spring of 2008, we talked to professors, experts, and students about this philosophical orientation and how to actually get people to talk. To ground things a bit, we took a look at a truly universal article of clothing – denim jeans – and set out to understand: "Who's buying premium denim and why?"

So check out the video:

Getting People to Talk: An Ethnography & Interviewing Primer from Gabe & Kristy on Vimeo.

Response to DO article on Makereadies and Ink

Jessica Helfand has posted an article on Design Observer about the end of Makereadies with the age of digital printing. And what it seems to mark for her:

Ephemerality is so often the casualty of any kind of progress, as production of any kind is invariably supplanted by quicker, cheaper, more efficient means. In this case, the more the physical object is compromised by speedy transmittal, the more our definitions of design, and of the methods that produce it, must adapt to new conceptions of both method and manufacture.

 

Here is my response:
The Work of Design in the Age of Mechanical/Digital Reproduction

A few months ago, I went to an actual printing press to oversee a job. This was the first time that I understood that designers made prototypes. There is this entire heavy manufacturing process (with large German machines) that takes place for a Adobe InDesign file to become a physical brochure. That was a magical moment for me (as a quasi-non-designer) in terms of understanding design's role in an "industrial" process.

I am in Santa Fe for the summer, and now I realize what it means to be in a place of "Art." And by art, I mean you can see the human imprint on the works. One can see the brush strokes of a Georgia O'Keeffe painting and know that a human hand made it. You know that it is human because it is imperfect in is regularity.

What you are expressing so elegantly, Jessica, is what happens to design and designing as we move further away from the visibility of human (and mechanical, thus human) imperfection in the work. Philip Burton once told me that it took him 3 years to design his "book" at Basel. The nearly insurmountable potential for human imperfection in hand typesetting is what probably makes that book a work of design superior to art. What makes Saul Bass's work so compelling to me is that you know he had to cut forms out by hand with that level of imperfect precision.

So in addition to your questions of methodological emphemerality and manufacturing efficiency what happens to design when the possibilities of human imperfection are so minimized that there is no sense of awe in design? Is this not what digitalization has done for design? Yes, people still to bad design with digital tools, but the results are probably "better" designs than if they had to use Exacto knives and T-squares.

Is this part of the further democratization of design for "the people" (i.e. Walter Benjamin's argument in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction? Is it part of the de-skilling of design for designers and printers? I think I could live with those outcomes in some ways.

Or does it speak to a deeper loss of the imperfections and "happy accidents" that make possible the delight, surprise, discovery, and humanity in a work of design? This to me would be the more tragic loss.

Yet, I do wonder, Jessica, who actually ever sees the makereadies? Is that moment of delight just for the designer or is a broader audience exposed to them? If it is the former, than perhaps the loss is double. That people do not see them and now they have become obsolete.

Why I think this matters? I once read an entire book of Shakespeare's sonnets. And you know, he wrote some really bad poetry. But, reading them made me appreciate the good poetry all the better because I understood all the possibilities of imperfection that made the good ones perfect. 

My article on design anthropology at Abobe Think Tank

Hey, I just noticed that my article on Design Anthropology: What can it add to your design practice?  just came out on Adobe Think Tank.  It was lots of fun to write and David Womack is a great editor. I now want a personal editor.  Here is the teaser:

Designers primarily concern themselves with how to create a "successful" communication, product, or experience. But with the past 10 years of globalization, digitalization, and ever increasing design complexity, designers have come to realize that to answer the question of design "success" requires that they answer that question of how the processes and artifacts of design help define what it means to be human.

Also in my publishing forays, I was quoted by Rick Poyner in his May 2008 ID Magazine article, Down with Innovation. The quote was “There is an inherent intelligence to beauty, which is about the depth and passion we feel for the world.” Tee hee. I did not even know I was quoted in the article until an ID undergrad student told me. The quote comes from a comment I left on Design Observer about the power of beauty.

Helvetica in White

Last night I watched the film, Helvetica, by Gary Hustwit. While it is an amazing film about typography and provides an interesting history of the Swiss modern typeface, Helvetica, it was struck by the lack of ethnic  and even gender diversity among the interviewees. Of the 22 + interviewees, only 4 were women, 0 were people of color, leaving the rest to be European or Euro-American white males.  Okay,  historically I can see how the designers from the 50s and 60s would be the euro white male, but why were there no people of color among the later designers. Paula Scher and David Carson, and Stefan Sagmeister criticized Helvetica for ideological reasons, but what about someone like Saki Mafundikwa, who could criticize it for its colonial rationality.

I know that diversity in design has a long way to go. But considering the film was done in 2007 in ethnically diverse Europe and the US, you'd think that it would somehow make an appearance in the film. Another missed opportunity...

Graphic Design and Religion

Okay, maybe it's the Holiday season, but I cannot get Steve Hahn's project out of my head. Why is it that graphic designers never talk about/write about communication design and religion? According to his bibliography, he had not come across Daniel Kantor's Graphic Design and Religion: a Call for Renewal (Gia Press 2007). I will have to purchase it now that my interest is peaked.

AD418 Research Methods Final Presentations 2007

On December 7th, seventeen students from my Research Methods for Art and Design gave their final presentations. From Facebook to green design, it seems that the students and myself were struck by their transformations over the semester. Perhaps, the reason this class is "transformative" is best expressed by one of my students who took the course last year, "It is the first time as designers that we were asked to think." Perhaps an over-exaggeration, but I think the sentiment the student expresses is how in the class one is treated as a thinker as much as a maker.

In the Research Methods class, I introduce them to processes, possibilities, and framing concepts, but they own the process and the content knowledge themselves. In the end, they are the only experts in their topic in the class. Thus, the confidence that students show at the end of the course is not just due to the fact that we practice their presentation skills three times during the course, but that they can speak the language of "academic" content and knowledge as well as their well-developed formal design vocabularies.

Interestingly, when I attended the Graphic Design MFA thesis presentations, two of the students had used the structure of the Visual Annotated-Bibliography to organize some of their thesis research. It is a coming back full circle, because I got the idea for the VA-Bib from a graphic design exercise on shape and texture.

Trendwise, the social responsibility of designers is now beyond the tipping point. Of course with the lectures on ethics, the students are primed to address their own social responsibility of creative people, but it proves a genuine topic of concern for students.

So I include the visual presentations of this year's class. The presentation ideas are not expressed to the same depth as the paper proposals, but it is important to showcase the visual communication of their knowledge. Please do not cite or circulate the student's work without giving them credit, a shout out, or even better, getting in touch with them. They agreed to provide their materials as a way to share their ideas in a copyleft kind of way.  We ask you not to abuse our generosity.

Professor Dori Tunstall, Intro to Presentations 
Download AD418research07_finals_intro.pdf (PDF 352 kb)
This gives the intentions, objectives, structure, and outcomes of the course. Each presentation must answer these five basic questions:

1. What are your project’s questions and/or intentions?
2. How does it fit within existing art and design knowledge?
3. What evidence do you need to collect and your methods?
4. What are your qualifications to do the project?
5. What is its contribution to fields of art and design?

Shilan Afshani, MFA Student Industrial Design, The Kitchen Project 
Download AD418research07_finals_afshani.pdf (PDF 324 kb)
The project explores family interaction through emotional meaning of the kitchen and kitchen objects in order to enhance the quality of those interactions. 

Banan Al-Ansari, MFA Student Graphic Design, Public Art
Download AD418research07_finals_alansari.pdf (PDF 1 Mb)
The project studies the impact of public arts on people's behavior, their effectiveness on people's everyday life, and how people understand and react to them.

Joyce Epolito, MFA Student Graphic Design, US Designers in Uganda
Download AD418researchmethods_final_epolito.pdf (PDF 1.8 Mb)
The project addresses how US graphic designers are alturistically involevd in design and design education in Uganda.

Steve Hahn, BFA Student Graphic Design, Church Design/Media/Marketing
Download AD418research07_finals_hahn.pdf (PDF 5.3 Mb)
The project seeks to determine the importance and effectiveness of professional quality graphic design and media in churches.  Dori Note: This is the most original project that I've ever come upon in graphic design. I have not seen this topic addressed anywhere.

Christine Hightower, BFA Student Graphic Design, Facebook
Download AD418research07_finals_hightower.pdf (PDF 296 kb)
The project investigates how the interaction design of Facebook has made it one of the most popular Internet sites as well as one of the most popular social networks today.

Leslie Johnson, MFA Student Industrial Design, the Communication of Furniture Production Methods
Download AD418research07_finals_johnson.pdf (PDF 616 kb )
The project explores the production methods behind the transformation of raw materials into finished furniture pieces. It is also interested in the reasons why it is difficult to get information about production methods from designers and manufacturers.

Brett Jones, BFA Student Graphic Design, Expensive Sneakers in the Hip Hop Community
Download AD418research07_finals_jones.pdf (PDF 9.8 Mb)
This project studies the role of the marketing of African-American hip-hop rappers and athletes in making expensive sneakers a necessity and obsession in the African-American hip-hop community. Dori Note: I want Brett to do a Ph.D. in Design Anthropology, so that he can explore this as his doctoral thesis. That is how important this topic is.

Hannah Kim, BFA Student Graphic Design, Design and Fear
Download AD418research07_finals_hkim.pdf  (PDF 15.5 Mb)
This project aims to study the psychological impact design has and how the government induces the culture of fear to the public. Dori Note: Hannah is fierce. As part of her project, she contacted Steve Heller for an interview to talk about his writings just like that.

JungJin Kim, MFA Student Graphic Design, The Visual Language of Color
Download AD418research07_finals_jjkim.pdf (PDF 2.3 MB)
The project studies the facts and theories of the colors as it relates to people’s physical and/or
psychological reaction to the colors. It seeks to use this analysis in commercial design to get immediate attraction and give clearer messages to the audience without adding too much unnecessary elements in design.

Anna Leithauser, MFA Student Graphic Design, the Art of Bookspines
Download AD418research07_finals_leithauser.pdf (PDF 19.8 Mb)
The project investigates the use of bookspines as designed objects, as consumer items, and as decorative art. The goal is to study both how bookspines have impacted the design, sales, and evolution of books and how changes in the book industry have affected bookspine design.

Maciek Niedorezo, MFA Student Industrial Design, Aesthetic Value in Mobile Devices
Download AD418research07_finals_niedorezo.pdf (PDF 9.3 Mb)
The project seeks to understand the role product aesthetics plays which young people select a mobile communication device.

Russ Powers, BFA Student Graphic Design, Guerrilla Marketing and Social Responsibility
Download AD418research07_finals_powers.pdf (PDF 1.3 Mb)
The project explores the social ethics and business effectiveness of guerrilla marketing techniques.

Michael Ruberto, MFA Student Graphic Design,  Improving Tactile Way-Finding Systems
Download AD418research07_finals_ruberto.pdf (PDF 6.4 Mb)
The project addresses the need to improve tactile wayfinding systems for the blind and visually-impaired by understanding the effectiveness of braille, moon type, tactile graphics, visual symbol systems for wayfinding,
and ADA Signage Standards as communication methods related to graphic design. Dori note: You have to check out the moon type. Super cool.

Eden Sabala, BFA Student Industrial Design, Medical Design and People with Disabilities
Download AD418research07_finals_sabala.pdf (PDF 592 kb)
The project seeks to understand how a designers role in the medical field is just as important as an engineers, and to have a better understanding of how the human factor should be used while designing for the disabled.

Josh Webb, MFA Student Graphic Design, Photography Versus Illustration
Download AD418research07_finals_webb.pdf (PDF 3.9 Mb)
The project explores the relationship between illustration and photography as it relates to design and the audience it targets.

Jennifer Webster, BFA Student Graphic Design, Graphic Design Going Green
Download AD418research07_finals_webster.pdf (PDF 15.4 Mb)
The project addresses the question “what is green design” by showing examples of ways graphic design has turned green and been used to promote sustainability solutions in product promotions.

Aysha Zayyad, BFA Student Graphic Design, Art and Design Branding and the Marketing of Fashion
Download AD418research07_finals_zayyad.pdf (PDF 1.8 Mb)
The project investigates the methods that are used and the ideas that are established to consumers and their decision making processes in applying branding to their individual styles.

 

Will the NSF be the death of anthropology?

A NSF workshop proposal by Allen Batteau, Kritzman, and myself was rejected. It was rejected for interesting reasons. The reviewers loved the proposal and thought it was timely and important, the panel had placed it in a mid-level fund category, but it was ultimately rejected because it was "applied" based as oppose to "basic science" based.

This decision made by the most prestigious funding body for anthropology raises serious questions about the future of anthropology as a field. At the AAA meetings, a non-binding resolution was passed to censure anthropologists whose research is not publicly available including those in industry, whose work often happens under NDAs. Although non-binding, it points to a denial by both the major funding and institutional bodies of anthropology about where the field is not just heading but where is is now. Anthropology is "applied" based or what I like to say anthropology exists "in practice."

According to the 1995 Survey of Anthropology PhD (which by now is completely dated), the statistics show that 50% of PhD graduates in anthropology find positions outside of academia. Once you include MA students that number increases. Somehow it seems the NSF is missing the boat when it says that "applied" proposals are a lower priority when applied represents the half of the current and more of the future of the entire field. There will be less and less PhDs in academia and mechanisms need to be put in place to  bring back  their applied knowledge into the academy to prepare the next generation of PhDs and MAs.

But if those projects do not get funded, then that work will cease to happen or will only happen with corporate sponsorship. As students want to do more and more anthropology in practice, than traditional notions of scientific anthropology are no longer sustainable. With exotica in the age of Discovery Channel is no longer  the driver that it used to be, the numbers of anthropologists will drop as young people find the field less compelling because it is out of alignment with their values of progressive worldly engagement.

So I am really disappointed in the NSF because it has deprioritized anthropology's present and future for a scientific  idea that is no longer sustainable from both post-modern critiques of scientific objectivity and social responsibility  for engaged research perspectives. Yes, it is the National Science Foundation, but there are no other funding bodies to support this kind of interdisciplinary knowledge creation. So you'd hope that the NSF would support the emerging sub-fields of the discipline.