I stumbled upon anthropology relatively late in life, and I rarely meet people who understand what I do. Sorry, I don’t know much about bones or pottery. (Those are for archaeologists and physical anthropologists. I’m in a separate sub-discipline of anthropology called cultural anthropology). And I definitely know nothing about dinosaurs.
But this isn’t about justifying my current career. What I’m interested in here is helping you live just lives, and that’s where anthropology has a lot to offer. Just as we all need to read even if reading isn’t our profession, I’m convinced we all need at least a little anthropology. Here’s why.
Anthropology means questioning what’s “normal”
This week I heard one of the most helpful explanations I’ve come across for our present geopolitical moment—this phenomenal interview by Ezra Klein of anthropologist Gillian Tett. She patiently breaks down macro-level decisions that have the potential to crash the global economy, and it’s worth a listen for that alone. But she also demonstrates how to talk about world affairs with urgency while avoiding vitriol, shame, or panic. And that comes of her anthropology training.
“As someone trained as a cultural Anthropologist,” she says, “one thing you learn is that every single person assumes that the intellectual framework they grew up with and built their careers around is natural, normal, inevitable, and should be universal. That’s just the nature of being human. And everybody is wrong. Ideas change over time. They go in fashions or cycles.”
Imagine if more of us acknowledged that our ideas of normal simply are not normal to the people we’re arguing with. Maybe our arguments wouldn’t lead to weapons so often.
Anthropology reminds us that culture matters
“Anthropologists have been howling for decades, saying that actually economics … is embedded in social relationships, and you can’t just look at economics in terms of numbers,” Tett says. Economic decisions—from designing tax laws to choosing a toothpaste brand—are influenced by culture. We are not profit-maximizing machines, and neither do we want to be. We want to live good lives, and that means building good relationships and doing what our culture teaches us is good.
I suspect that every seven seconds somewhere in the world an anthropologist interrupts a meeting to remind everybody, “But wait—culture matters!” As we saw in the COVID-19 pandemic, you can spend billions developing a vaccine, but if culture says don’t trust it, that investment won’t matter.
If you find yourself thinking somebody’s behavior is crazy, it’s worth slowing down to try to understand their culture.
Anthropology means paying attention to power
Understanding culture tells us a lot about human behavior, but we also need to understand power. Tett explains: “What defines power structures is not just controlling the economic capital—that is, money—but also political capital, social capital, and cultural capital.” All of us live within certain social constraints, but we also have some forms of agency and power.
Right now we’re seeing a. great rearranging of the ways people use power, but it’s not unprecedented. Tett reminds us that we can look at models from the past and around the world to make sense of these moves. “Donald Trump does indeed want to control not just money, but the political, cultural, and social capital as well. And he wants rituals that affirm his power in a very performative way.” Trump knows how rituals and cultural capital work. The rest of us need to also.
Anthropology means considering the wider context
A core practice of anthropology is cultural relativism - seeking to understand people within their own cultural context. As Tett says, when asked to explain Republican decisions, “When I listen to them with my anthropology hat on, I’m trying to put myself into their mind and absorb their worldview without judgement.”
Cultural relativism is different from moral relativism. In other words, cultural relativists don’t necessarily scrap all their own moral convictions. Tett spends an hour explaining Republican decisions from their context, and then she finally reveals her own convictions. “Personally, with my non-anthropologist hat on … I find it very hard to believe that [Republican economic policies are] going to work without major disruption and big bumps along the way at best. The vision of brutal power politics, hegemonic power trampling on the weak, trampling on your foes, I find very distasteful.” When we slow down to practice cultural relativism, we are better able to ascertain and apply moral principles with integrity.
Anthropology means seeing the everyday
There are anthropologists like Gillian Tett and Jason Hickel who study macro global forces and power flows, but ultimately we also care how these tectonic movements affect everyday lives. Humans are not very good at fathoming—much less empathizing with—human lives by the millions. By doing the long slow work of listening to ordinary people, we can develop empathy for people experiencing the effects of policies through opioid addiction, natural disasters, or border-crossings.
Anthropology means learning from your mistakes
Anthropology became a university discipline around the turn of the 20th century as a way for White people to study “exotic others.” Yep, anthropology cheered on the colonial bandwagon. Anthropologists wrote tomes ranking human groups on a racist scale from “savage” to “civilized.” It was ugly.
Thankfully, anthropologists—often led by people of color—started taking a hard look at those bleak beginnings. Some of the earliest anthropologists to question racist human hierarchies did so because they tried a radical new method of doing research: field work. They learned other people’s languages, lived among them, and listened to their expertise. Turns out those so-called “primitives” had brilliant ways of life worth honoring. Anthropologists also started turning the camera lens around, admitting that their own culture was just as “strange” and “other” as anybody else’s.
If you put a bunch of anthropologists in a room, before long they’ll be ranting about mistakes anthropologists make. Sometimes it can get a bit self-flagellatory. But it’s also often humble. It’s a “take the log out of your own eye before taking the fleck out of your neighbor’s eye” approach, and I think the world needs more of that.
Anthropology means seeing from another angle
Too few anthropologists write for public audiences. While there are exceptions (like this website), that leaves a hole in public discourse about human behavior. Too many great anthropology books are buried on library shelves. In her interview, Gillian Tett offers a few book recommendations “outside the mainstream.” Check out her recommendations or my own recommendations linked in this newsletter. Or message me if you want some more.
And you don’t have to read another book to work some anthropology into your life. I hope you’ll go practice paying intentional, humble attention to culture, power, and everyday people this week.
This article is part of series on proven, effective ways to pursue justice for the long haul. We’re going to need perseverance, strategy, accomplices, humility, tears, and a lot of other things. That’s why I decided to call this series “What we still need.” Read more posts in this series here.