Leaving the Church of Anthropology:

Jöhncke, Steffen

doi:10.2307/j.ctv2tsxj91.9

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Anthropological research has often been described as a lone anthropologist's total immersion in the life-ways and -worlds of a target group and/or field site that is sustained over a year or longer (e.g., Bundgaard and Rubow 2016;Jöhncke Forthcoming). This classic model is no longer dominant in the discipline.…”

Section: Revising the Classic Research Model: Collaboration And Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many anthropologists have argued that anthropology is useful (e.g., Copeland and Dengah 2017;Stefanelli 2017). Unfortunately, academic anthropology has a tendency to deliver a message of potential contribution, rather than describing what anthropologists actually have contributed (see Roberts 2006: 72;Jöhncke Forthcoming). This is, in part, an artefact of the fact that academic anthropologists, often motivated by theoretical and intellectual concerns, tend to represent the discipline (at least to itself, at for example annual anthropology conferences or in anthropology publications), rather than anthropologists who are employed in other settings.…”

Section: Operationalising Anthropologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…; see also Jöhncke Forthcoming; MacClancy 2017: 2). Indeed, some suggest that the anthropology curriculum may hamper our students' ability to operationalise their education outside the academy (Graffman and Börjesson 2011;Jöhncke Forthcoming;Rylko-Bauer et al 2006). Rather than encouraging our former students to hide their primary subject area (see Graffman 2013), academic anthropologists should be helping them put anthropology to work.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Putting Swedish Anthropology to Work

Åkesson,

Gillette

2020

Kritisk Etnografi: Swedish Journal of Anthropology

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This special issue of kritisk etnografi conjoins trends at three scales. First and most importantly, in Sweden and elsewhere around the world we see a widespread and accelerating sense of public crisis. Reports and commentaries in traditional and social media, mass actions on the streets and online, volatile voting patterns and deepening threats to democratic rights and institutions all testify to collective alarm around a range of issues affecting how we live and what the future will bring. The corona pandemic, climate change, and divisive debates on migration and integration are the most obvious manifestations of this distress in Sweden and Europe, but many other subjects, including the withdrawal of the welfare state and growing economic disparities, are also significant loci of public anxiety.Second, academic anthropologists have been troubled about the public contribution of anthropology as a distinct endeavour in relation to other social science fields. Over the past fifteen years, many have argued that anthropologists should "engage" and establish a more meaningful "public presence"; in some cases, such calls have been accompanied by efforts to identify and discuss existing anthropological "outreach" (e.g., Andersson 2018;Erikson 2006;Fassin 2018;Low and Merry 2010). Academic anthropologists have sharply criticised the discipline for not doing more to deliver anthropological knowledge and perspectives beyond the academic journals and publications that are the typical outlets for scholarly work (e.g., Burman 2018;Podjed et al. 2016;Sillitoe 2006). In Sweden, concerns that the discipline should become more "relevant" and useful to our interlocutors and the broader public have been driven in part by increasing expectations from funding agencies that anthropologists collaborate with actors outside the university (O'Dell 2018: 59-60, 65).Third, anthropologists inside and outside the university are questioning whether the anthropology curriculum adequately serves our students (e.g., Copeland and Dengah 2017;Lassiter and Campbell 2010;Roberts 2006;Stefanelli 2017). Several anthropologists have pointed out that the undergraduate anthropology curriculum has not kept pace with the discipline's evolution or the opportunities available to our students after they conclude their degrees (ibid.; see also Jöhncke Forthcoming; MacClancy 2017: 2). Indeed, some suggest that the anthropology curriculum may hamper our students' ability to operationalise their education outside the academy (Graffman and Börjesson 2011;Jöhncke Forthcoming;Rylko-Bauer et al. 2006). Rather than encouraging our former students to hide their primary subject area (see Graffman 2013), academic anthropologists should be helping them put anthropology to work. Revising the anthropology curriculum deserves a more prominent place in our discussions about the discipline: how and what we teach affects our ability to address the widespread public sense of crisis, academic worries about anthropology's relevance and contribution to the societies in which we liv...

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Section: Revising the Classic Research Model: Collaboration And Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Operationalising Anthropologymentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Putting Swedish Anthropology to Work

Åkesson,

Gillette

2020

Kritisk Etnografi: Swedish Journal of Anthropology

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“…However, invariably they will need to reflect on their professional role, which is often stretched out between two opposing sets of demands: on one hand, they often find the expectation to be useful along predefined political and organisational lines, putting their people skills to good use towards goals set by dominant professional world views other than the anthropologist's own. On the other, they are trained in a disciplinary culture according to which anthropology is morally good in itself and where any application of anthropological skills beyond academia is regarded with sceptical concerns about compromise and potential ethical sell-out (Jöhncke 2021). In this dilemma, anthropologists in policy and practice often find, as Sue did, that it is exactly the critical questioning of dominant constructions of problems and solutions that is at the core of their professional contribution -including the self-critical reflection on how one is placed in the structure.…”

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confidence: 99%

Part 2: Anthropology, Cultural Studies and Organisations

Newfield,

Wemyss,

Jöhncke

et al. 2023

Learning and Teaching

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Theory Instruments as Tangible Ways of Knowing

Sorenson

Kjærsgaard

Buur

et al. 2022

Ethnographic Praxis

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While ethnographers and the data they produce already play a role in affecting industry practices, there is potential to integrate anthropological ways of seeing and knowing into a shared transdisciplinary design praxis. In a series of design research experiments, we have taken a pragmatic and playful approach to physicalizing theory. The result is a set of ‘Theory Instruments’ that transform theory into tangible interaction. Theory Instruments scaffold knowledge production by encouraging new ways of seeing organizations, products, users, and the relations between them. We present two of these instruments, Actor‐Network Rings and Reciprocity Balance, through a case study with a design team at a health product company that wished to generate new design concepts from field material. Theory Instruments helped bridge the gap between the epistemic modes of knowing employed by ethnography practitioners and the technical and tacit modes of knowing familiar to design practitioners. This new mode of collaboration helped them to cross worlds, cultivating a more resilient, transdisciplinary praxis.

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Leaving the Church of Anthropology:

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Putting Swedish Anthropology to Work

Putting Swedish Anthropology to Work

Part 2: Anthropology, Cultural Studies and Organisations

Theory Instruments as Tangible Ways of Knowing

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