In Pursuit of Relevance

I am studying Cultural Anthropology, a field under particular attack in the state of Florida where Governor Rick Scott recently disparaged the discipline as being irrelevant and useless to the job market. And indeed, if you do a simple news search for the term 'anthropology' you will find articles that back up the dismal job placement of anthropologists both in the private sector and in the academy. There is no denying the fact that anthropologists have a hard time securing jobs after any extended period of time in the field, but what is implicitly being stated here is two-fold.

First, relevance is assumed to be tied to the job market and the ability to be a field in which people can get jobs. This is a particular kind of relevance. Rick Scott's comments seem to fall under the category of thinking where colleges and universities should be diploma factories. His vision, and those who share it, is one in which the degree is ultimately irrelevant and the only thing that matters is that it can be hammered out and made to fit into a pre-prescribed slot in the work force. This is what happens when the defending logic runs "anthropologists can be consultants for a number of international firms." This is most certainly true, but not really a great explication of the field of anthropology or what it can uniquely contribute. Economics majors can, and do, go into consulting with the same expectations placed on them by the job. As can English majors. Responses to Scott's statements have been to show that anthropologists can and do find places on the job market, but this doesn't really address the question of why anthropologists may contribute in a unique fashion to their chosen job site.

Second, the notion of relevance itself is bound up in a very limited way. Very few people would deny that economists or political scientists are relevant. After all, these are the people who show up on talk shows and analysis programs most frequently. The social scientists I have heard most frequently on NPR (I know, a great example of relevance, right?) have been political scientists and sociologists (not to mention the fetishism of economists). To be relevant is to be consulted by people who view you as an expert. When something happens abroad, the anthropologists who has spent years in the field there isn't consulted- its the economists or the political scientists who have studied the area who get the call. This is a pretty standard gripe among people in anthropology, but it comes with another angle. When anthropologists are brought into a role of expertise, like in the Human Terrain System, members of the anthropology community immediately become upset. I personally have problems with HTS, but it seems curious to me that the pulls within the field happen in two directions. We want to be heard because we can contribute to thinking through a wide variety of problems, but if we are listened to in certain registers there is an immense backlash.

I think Rick Scott is a bit of a myopic fool for making the comments he did, but he isn't a unique case. Throughout my undergrad years I had many people I knew disparage the social sciences as being "unrigorous" or pale imitations of the "hard sciences" where objectivity is claimed to flourish. And it is the hard sciences that Rick Scott and others believe should dominate the realm of higher education. But I can't help but think that this begs so many problems that people aren't looking into. Anthropology isn't, or at least shouldn't be, modeled after the hard sciences. Their methods and perspectives work well with certain sets of conditions, but they too are fraught with limitations. What I personally think anthropology can do is defend us against our own arrogance and remind us of ourselves when we become too involved in something. While I do think there are a myriad of cases where anthropologists should be consulted (in realms of policy making especially) I think that, more fundamentally, anthropologists can take a moment like the one in which Rick Scott decided to attack the social sciences and see how these are indicative of much larger trends and patterns within a community.

The STEM fields should receive a lot of support, I don't doubt this. But to believe that the STEM fields are superior to the social sciences is a fallacy that begs problems. I very much doubt that an engineer will have the tools at his disposal to answer questions of inter-communal conflicts or the integration and interrelations of ethnic groups in metropolitan centers. And to think that these problems are unimportant is to invite a world of consequences.

Currently: Occupied

Apparently the Occupy Wall Street movement is something that has been going on for a while, and is large enough to merit its own Wikipedia article. I say apparently because, as someone who just started school and didn't have internet at my home for nearly a month, I've had a hard time being connected to the world.

But the Occupy Wall Street movement is interesting to me. On the basic principle, I am fully sympathetic with the protestors. Trying to deny that the financial sectors of our economy represent undue influence on the political sector and have lead to some highly egregious breaches of public moral norms is rather difficult. I suppose the people who would disagree are those who are either uninformed at the most basic level, or who actually believe in the Utilitarian model and its application to corporations. Unfortunately, I think that position is untenable and rooted on some seriously flawed axioms. But that is neither here nor there.

What I find problematic, however, is the following. There seems to really be more of an amorphous shape to these protests rather than the kinds of directed and well focused protests this country has seen in the past. This is perhaps evidenced by the Occupy movements lack of central demands that appear actionable. I am not saying that what they want is not just- I believe that it largely is- but that what they are after is really unclear pragmatically. I will borrow a quote from The New York Times contributor Gina Bellefante as quoted on Wikipedia, "The group’s lack of cohesion and its apparent wish to pantomime progressivism rather than practice it knowledgably is unsettling in the face of the challenges so many of its generation face — finding work, repaying student loans, figuring out ways to finish college when money has run out." I agree with Bellefante's point here. The movement may capture the general ideals of a great many of us who have grown up in an America market by run-away corporations, but that does not mean our ideals are well articulated; yet. When writers look "behind the scorn" they most certainly do see precisely what it is that is bothering the protestors, but they cannot translate this into an articulated grievance- only a laundry list of complaints.


There is something to be said, however, for the fact that the amorphous demands that these protestors hold have actually converted in to action. While I agree with Bellefante at this point and time I also hold out hope that action itself may lead to an articulation of demands. And I also hold out hope that the protests themselves will become the trigger by which more people come to identify their grievances with the ways in which finance and governance intersect in this country in a very baffling way. 


The article from Salon.com that I linked above has a fairly interesting point that I would like to put out right now. The author of the article, Glenn Greenwald, writes:

Given the costs and risks one incurs from participating in protests like this — to say nothing of the widespread mockery one receives –  it’s natural that most of the participants will be young and not yet desperate to cling to institutional stability.  It’s also natural that this cohort won’t be well-versed (or even interested) in the high arts of media messaging and leadership structures.  Democratic Party precinct captains, MBA students in management theory and corporate communications, and campaign media strategists aren’t the ones who will fuel protests like this; it takes a mindset of passionate dissent and a willingness to remove oneself from the safe confines of institutional respectability. 

This passage troubles me because it does presume that the demographics of the protest are acephalous because of some deficiency with young protesters and the absence of those skilled enough to bring direction. Firstly, I would have to say that these are moments when leadership is forged and structural thinking outside of the "safe confines of institutional respectability" leads to remarkably change. The protests against the Vietnam war were made of a similar demographic, but they have now become venerated for their powerful effect on American political-culture at the time. I tend to agree with Greenwald's overall point- the protestors do deserve support from those who share in their ideals. But they also deserve that those of us who cannot protest begin to articulate the frustration in words and thoughts at the same time action takes form. Those of us who share in their general sentiments have a responsibility to begin a much bigger discourse on the nature of what troubles us. We have an obligation not to march in the streets, though many would like to, but to lend support to those who do by creating a voice.

At this juncture I do not know if this movement will actually begin a substantive shift in the way the financial, political, and civic spheres interact, though I do hope there will be some lasting effects beyond the protests. These protests have the potential to represent a serious moment for this generation growing up in the world after 9-11 and on the downward slope engendered by decades of reckless faith in a system of markets geared towards wealth disparity. While I support the protestors and feel that they are embodying something very important, I do not think it has taken a meaningful shape yet. I hope that a voice will be found soon, and that a peaceful but powerful change will come.