Public Anthropology roundtable at Tufts

Nov. 11, 2004. Presentations by Mark Auslander (Brandeis), David Guss (Tufts), Deborah Pacini (Tufts), Nina Kammerer (Brandeis), Ann Bookman (Sloan School, MIT), and Sally Merry (Wellesley). More a show-and-tell session, mostly for the Tufts program, than theoretical or political issues.
Contact Ann Bookman for advice on an ethnography of affirmative action in corporations.
Sally stressed the various ways public anthropology can be imagined: choise of topic (like Trouillot’s nice argument in “Adieu, Culture”?), direct advocacy, program development, the public intellectual. Brought up issues of critique versus support. Debbie mentioned digital storytelling. Ann Bookman talked about research itself, interviewing, for example, as itself a consciousness raising activity. Nina Kammerer referred to the introduction to the most recent edition of James Peacock’s book The Anthropological Lens for the vague distinction he makes between public and applied anthropology.