3 Chapter 3: Applied Anthropology, and Anthropology and Your Job

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Define applied anthropology and the anthropological perspective
• Provide examples of applied anthropology projects from medical anthropology, international development, and environmental anthropology, and explain how the anthropological perspective was useful in those projects

Applied Anthropology

Sometimes considered a fifth subdiscipline, applied anthropology involves the application of anthropological theories, methods, and findings to solve practical problems. Applied anthropologists are employed outside of academic settings, in both the public and private sectors, including nongovernmental organizations, business or consulting firms, advertising companies, city government, law enforcement, the medical field, education, and public health. Applied anthropologists span the subfields. An applied archaeologist might work in cultural resource management to assess a potentially significant archaeological site unearthed during a construction project. An applied cultural anthropologist could work at a technology company that seeks to understand the human-technology interface in order to design better tools and programs.

Why is Anthropology Important?

As we hope you have learned thus far, anthropology is an exciting and multifaceted field of study. Because of its breadth, students who study anthropology go on to work in a wide variety of careers.  These include medicine and public health, museums, field archaeology, historical preservation, education, international business, filmmaking, management, foreign service, law, non-profit work, and many more. Beyond preparing students for a particular career, anthropology helps people develop essential skills that are transferable to many career choices and life paths. Studying anthropology fosters broad knowledge of other cultures, skills in observation and analysis, critical thinking, clear communication, and applied problem-solving. Anthropology encourages us to extend our perspectives beyond familiar social contexts to view things from the perspectives of others. As one former cultural anthropology student observed, “I believe an anthropology course has one basic goal: to eliminate ethnocentrism. A lot of issues we have today (racism, xenophobia, etc.) stem from the toxic idea that people are ‘other.’ We must put that idea aside and learn to value different cultures.” This anthropological perspective is an essential skill for nearly any career in today’s globalized world. Indeed, whatever you go on to do, we encourage you to cultivate an anthropological perspective as you do it!

Anthropology, Health, and Medicine

What does it mean to be “healthy”? It may seem odd to ask the question, but health is not a universal concept and each culture values different aspects of well-being. At the most basic level, health may be perceived as surviving each day with enough food and water, while other definitions of health may be based on being free of diseases or emotional troubles. Complicating things further is the fact that that each culture has a different causal explanation for disease. For instance, in ancient Greece health was considered to be the product of unbalanced humors or bodily fluids. The four humors included black bile, phlegm, yellow bile, and blood. The ancient Greeks believed that interactions among these humors explained differences not only in health, but in age, gender, and general disposition. Various things could influence the balance of the humors in a person’s body including substances believed to be present in the air, changes in diet, or even temperature and weather. An imbalance in the humors was believed to cause diseases, mood problems, and mental illness.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes that the health of individuals and communities is affected by many factors: “where we live, the state of our environment, genetics, our income and education level, and our relationships with friends and family.” Research conducted by the WHO suggests that these characteristics play a more significant role in affecting our health than any others, including having access to health care. For this reason, anthropologists who are interested in issues related to health and illness must use a broad holistic perspective that considers the influence of both biology and culture. Medical anthropology, a distinct sub-specialty within the discipline of anthropology, investigates human health and health care systems in comparative perspective, considering a wide range of bio-cultural dynamics that affect the well-being of human populations. Medical anthropologists study the perceived causes of illness as well as the techniques and treatments developed in a society to address health concerns. Using cultural relativism and a comparative approach, medical anthropologists seek to understand how ideas about health, illness, and the body are products of particular social and cultural contexts.

For example, in some cultures, people believe illness is caused by an imbalance within the community. Therefore, a communal response, such as a healing ceremony, is necessary to restore both the health of the person and the group. This approach differs from the one used in mainstream U.S. healthcare, whereby people go to a doctor to find the biological cause of an illness and then take medicine to restore the individual body.

Trained as both a physician and medical anthropologist, Paul Farmer demonstrates the applied potential of anthropology. During his college years in North Carolina, Farmer’s interest in the Haitian migrants working on nearby farms inspired him to visit Haiti. There, he was struck by the poor living conditions and lack of health care facilities for many Haitians. Later, as a physician, he would return to Haiti to treat individuals suffering from diseases like tuberculosis and cholera that were rarely seen in the United States. As an anthropologist, he would contextualize the experiences of his Haitian patients in relation to the historical, social, and political forces that impact Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (Farmer 2006). Today, he not only writes academic books about human suffering, he also takes action. Through the work of Partners in Health, a nonprofit organization that he co-founded, he has helped open health clinics in many resource-poor countries and trained local staff to administer care. In this way, he applies his medical and anthropological training to improve people’s lives.

Paul Farmer

In 1983, a young anthropology graduate from Duke University named Paul Farmer set off for Haiti. He had done research on Haitian migrant workers at Duke and become deeply interested in their home country. He wanted to become a doctor and an anthropologist and thought he might sample a bit of both by going to Haiti and volunteering in health clinics. While there, he boarded a bus with a new friend, Ophelia Dahl. Ophelia, the daughter of movie star Patricia Neal and author Roald Dahl, was just 18 at the time, and looking for a calling in life. As they navigated the rough, unkempt roads of Haiti, Paul leaned out the window and waved happily to all who greeted them, which Ophelia found nerdy but beautifully innocent and charming. Then they came upon an overturned bus on the road. Mangos destined for the market were scattered everywhere as people meandered about making sense of what had just happened. A woman lay lifeless, with a strip of cardboard covering her body. Paul went stone silent. Ophelia tried to comfort him by saying, “It’s just an accident.”

But Farmer was “seeing big” like an anthropologist. He saw that the neglected road was no accident. The worn shocks of the bus were no accident. The overloading of the bus with peasants going to market with their mangoes was no accident. These were all a result of poverty, and Farmer could see through this poverty the past 400 years of history in Haiti. He saw the 17th century French African enslavement colony, the brutal and bloody fight for independence, the French demand that Haiti pay back $21 billion for their “lost property” (the enslaved who were now the citizens of Haiti being asked to pay for themselves), and the environmental collapse that came from trying to pay those debts. So when he saw the woman who was riding in a worn-out bus over a torn-up road to sell mangos in a Third World market, lying dead on the side of the road, he turned to Ophelia and responded, “It is never ‘just an accident’.” This peculiar view of the world, that there are no pure accidents, is also an empowering one. Paul Farmer and Ophelia Dahl would soon recruit the young anthropologist Jim Kim to their cause and set out to provide the best healthcare possible to the world’s poor. Thirty years later, their efforts would be celebrated as “the friendship that changed the world.” And it all started by applying the anthropological perspective of seeing your own seeing, seeing small, seeing big, and seeing it all to realize that there are no pure accidents. The message of this trio has been, “We can do better.”

Farmer enrolled in a program at Harvard that allowed him to pursue a degree in anthropology while simultaneously earning his doctorate in medicine. He knew that if he was going to serve the world’s poor, he would need the anthropological perspective to understand the broader cultural environment and issues impacting their health outcomes. Throughout his training, he continued to spend most of his time in Haiti. His professors were not against it, as he was providing important medical care to people who needed it, and it proved to be a fruitful place to apply what he was learning in graduate school. His work had a profound influence on anthropology. In one of his first essays, “The Anthropologist Within,” he argued that the traditional manner of practicing anthropology as an impartial observer made him feel restricted in his ability to help solve the many problems surrounding him in Haiti. Since that article was written in the early 1980s, anthropologist have become much more active in their work, and are more likely to actively participate in providing solutions to local problems rather than standing idly by as impartial observers. But Farmer was struggling to make a big impact in Haiti. He needed money to complete his vision of building a free hospital providing outstanding medical care to the poor. His essay caught the eye of Tom White, the owner of a construction company in Boston who was interested in donating money to feed the poor in Haiti. In fact, he planned to give away every last dollar of his substantial fortune before he died. In Paul Farmer, he thought he had found someone who could make sure his money was well spent. With the first $1 million donated by White, Paul Farmer established Partners in Health/Zanmi Lasante. The plan was not to simply support Paul Farmer in Haiti, but instead to create “partners in health” by training community health workers throughout rural areas of Haiti.

Ethnomedicine

Ethnomedicine is the comparative study of cultural ideas about wellness, illness, and healing. For the majority of our existence, human beings have depended on the resources of the natural environment and on health and healing techniques closely associated with spiritual beliefs. Many such practices, including some herbal remedies and techniques like acupuncture, have been studied scientifically and found to be effective (Lewith 1998). Others have not necessarily been proven medically effective by external scientific evidence, but continue to be embraced by communities that perceive them to be useful. When considering cultural ideas about health, an important place to start is with ethno-etiology: cultural explanations about the underlying causes of health problems.

In the United States the dominant approach to thinking about health is biomedical. Illnesses are thought to be the result of specific, identifiable agents. This can include pathogens (viruses or bacteria), malfunction of the body’s biochemical processes (conditions such as cancer), or physiological disorders (such as organ failure). In biomedicine as it is practiced in the United States (Western biomedicine), health is defined as the absence of disease or dysfunction, a perspective that notably excludes consideration of social or spiritual well-being. In non-Western contexts biomedical explanations are often viewed as unsatisfactory.

The biomedical approach to health strikes many people, particularly residents of the United States, as the best or at least the most “fact based” approach to medicine. This is largely because Western biomedicine is based on the application of insights from science, particularly biology and chemistry, to the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions. The effectiveness of biomedical treatments is assessed through rigorous testing using the scientific method and indeed Western biomedicine has produced successful treatments for many dangerous and complex conditions: everything from antibiotics and cures for cancer to organ transplantation. However, it is important to remember that the biomedical approach is itself embedded in a distinct cultural tradition. Also, in matters of health, as in other aspects of life, ethnocentrism predisposes people to believe that their own culture’s traditions are the most effective, while anthropology would encourage them to not blindly assume as much. Further, if you are looking to make a positive biomedical intervention in a community that does not rely upon biomedical explanations for health, you will need to understand what they think and where they are coming from in order to do so.

Mental Health

Unlike other kinds of illnesses, which present relatively consistent symptoms and clear biological evidence, mental health disorders are experienced and treated differently cross-culturally. While the discipline of psychiatry within Western biomedicine applies a disease-framework to explain mental illness, there is a consensus in medical anthropology that mental health conditions are much more complicated than the biological illness model suggests. These illnesses are not simply biological or chemical disorders, but complex responses to the environment, including the web of social and cultural relationships to which individuals are connected.

Medical anthropologists do not believe there are universal categories of mental illness. Instead, individuals may express psychological distress through a variety of physical and emotional symptoms. Arthur Kleinman, a medical anthropologist, has argued that every culture frames mental health concerns differently. The pattern of symptoms associated with mental health conditions vary greatly between cultures. In China, Kleinman (1988) discovered that patients suffering from depression did not describe feelings of sadness, but instead complained of boredom, discomfort, feelings of inner pressure, and symptoms of pain, dizziness, and fatigue.

Mental health is closely connected with social and cultural expectations and mental illnesses can arise as a result of pressures and challenges individuals face in particular settings. Rates of depression are higher for refugees, immigrants, and others who have experienced dislocation and loss. A sense of powerlessness also seems to play a role in triggering anxiety and depression, a phenomenon that has been documented in groups ranging from stay-at-home mothers in England to Native Americans affected by poverty and social marginalization.

Anthropology and Development

What does it mean to see and hear what others do not see and hear and how can that unique information be practically applied? The lack of a simple answer is fitting to anthropology because the work of anthropologists often demonstrates that simplistic explanations are, at best, only part of the complex stories of human culture. In this section, we provide examples of how the ability to see and hear is applied in practice and how these skills add value in a sociocultural anthropology setting associated with international development.

Varying degrees of criticism of the nature, objectives, and embedded assumptions of international development continue. Some have called on international development practitioners to significantly reform their activities to make them more effective, while others have expressed more radical criticisms, including the view that provision of aid causes greater impoverishment and should end (Moyo 2009). It is essential when deconstructing development, as a concept and an activity, to ask why, when, how, and for whom the development is intended and who it excludes. It also requires identifying the power dynamics and motivations involved. Anthropological tools and ways of seeing are important means by which to answer these questions.

This key component of anthropological research involves long-term engagement, living with and learning from a cultural community different from one’s own. In listening, learning about, and seeing the world from the perspectives of others, anthropologists draw on the idea of cultural relativism. This is in contrast to ethnocentrism, the belief that one’s own culture, cultural values, and societal organization are true, right, and proper and that others’ are erroneous to some degree. Cultural relativism posits that cultural practices and ideas must be understood within their contexts.

The ethical challenge for anthropologists working in international development is that often the donors, organizations and projects operate without detailed sociocultural information. As a result, many anthropologists end up advocating for significant shifts in how the sector operates. For example, in designing a project, the proposed activities are often outlined before the baseline assessments of community needs are conducted. When the project is approved, and budget is set, it is difficult to adjust the focus and plan based on new knowledge of community needs. Anthropologists working on these projects often find themselves in the challenging space of advocating for new approaches, such as funding structures based on needs, rather than donor priorities, and flexibility in programming as opposed to carrying out the set activities that are outlined in program plans.

In one particular cautionary tale described by the anthropologist Logan Cochrane, his work for a group looking to improve female nutrition began with spending time with the people in their communities and asking them about their food taboos—what they actually were and why they existed—and the community members provided detailed and insightful information. When he talked to the field staff, who were hoping to eradicate the taboos to increase protein in the diet, they reported that they had never asked the people in the communities those questions. That might sound like a case of neglect, but it is the logical outcome of one way of seeing. When a problematic practice (taboos against certain eggs and chickens) has been identified and the organization has experience with activities that have changed such behavior, why do the details matter? From that perspective, the tedious task of collecting such data would waste valuable resources, time, and effort. The systemic nature of seeing from technical perspectives of this sort, which are common in the organizational cultures of international development programs and their staff members, is not limited to international development workers—national and local organizations often present the same narratives about “bad” cultural taboos that can be eliminated by providing education about nutrition and empowering women. The food taboos were, in fact, a small part of a detailed belief system that influenced many components of everyday life.

A brief analogy demonstrates the gravity of this point. Imagine that the people in the project communities were followers of Judaism or Islam, religions that prohibit consumption of a number of foods, including pork. An international development organization and its external staff members might identify a protein deficiency that could be resolved by people consuming pork and view the taboo against it as a harmful traditional practice that should be eliminated through education about its nutritional value. Additionally, disadvantaged members of society could be encouraged to raise and sell pigs to generate income. Because Islam and Judaism are major recognized religions with millions of followers, it might seem absurd to try to convince them to eat pork based on nutritional and economic grounds. But this instance of food taboos described by Cochrane was also part of a belief system and was as important to the communities in the project as Islam and Judaism are to their adherents. The project had failed to recognize that the food taboos were part of a comprehensive belief system and that the organization had made demands that directly contradicted culturally important beliefs and values. As a result, the project activities were viewed as an affront to their religious traditions and to the righteous, respected man from whom the laws had come and his living spirit.

The anthropological way of seeing allows broader issues to come into view—cultural, social, and political—which can then be incorporated into the project goals and activities. These are areas that relatively technical approaches and evaluations tend to miss. From the anthropologist’s point of view, understanding why a practice occurs is not merely an act of inquiry; it is also a means of demonstrating respect for people and their knowledge and taking time to listen, learn, and see. Anthropologists’ ability and willingness to see reality from perspectives other than their own are essential skills—the ability to see what some people do not see and hear what some people do not hear. Anthropology can connect the activities of international development efforts to cultural values so they work together instead of against each other. The identification of the comprehensive belief system in which the food taboos were embedded, for example, opened up new avenues for practical, culturally respectful solutions to the problem of poor nutrition for women and children.

Life on $2

Life on $2 per day is difficult to imagine. Some people immediately counter that life on $2 per day in a poor country is different than $2 per day in the United States, because you can buy so much more with $2 in a poor country. But this is to misunderstand the statistic. When the World Bank reports that over 700 million people are living on less than $2 per day, they are using an approach called “purchasing power parity” to adjust the numbers so that $2 per day in a poor country is exactly what you would imagine it to be like to live on $2 per day in the United States.

 

 

Imagine what this would be like. You would not be able to afford rent, so you would be homeless. You would probably do your best to make yourself a little shack out of whatever scrap materials you could find. You would not have electricity, running water, or a toilet. You may find yourself walking several miles to find clean water and carrying it back to your small shack every day. You would spend some of your money on coal or wood to burn for heat and cooking. The bulk of your money would go toward food – mostly cheap staple foods like rice and potatoes. This is what life is like for about 1 billion people on the planet who live in the world’s slums.

Over 700 million people do not have access to clean drinking water. Nearly a third of all humans do not have access to a toilet. As a result, nearly 80% of all illnesses in developing countries come from unclean water. As Dean Kamen has noted, we could clear half of the hospital beds in the world just by providing clean water to everybody on the planet.

The structure of power that binds us together in a world system makes us all complicit in these problems at some level. Each one of us might only be one person, but collectively we make the world what it is. The idea of structural power can make it feel like there is nothing to be done. We might just say, “if not me, then somebody else” and let the structure roll on. But there is also a hopeful message within the idea of structural power. It can be a constant reminder of four very important ideas:

1. We are the structure.
2. It is what we make of it.
3. Participation is not a choice. Even the choice to not participate is a form of participation.
4. How we participate is our most important choice.

As we face up to this very important challenge to decide how we will participate in the structure, and what sort of structure we will help to create, it can be useful to examine the damage – the structural violence – that our current structure is doing to the world and the disadvantaged.

Anthropology and the Environment

Environmental anthropologists have argued that anthropology provides a good place to start to understand and begin to address some of the most important questions facing our species. For example, how can we provide for basic human needs while not sacrificing the welfare of other species? Why do many people say that they care about protecting the environment but then do nothing about it? What political, economic, and cultural factors are prohibiting world leaders from agreeing on solutions to global environmental challenges? To answer such questions, we must understand how humans think and act as groups, our socially and culturally mediated ways of interacting with each other, other species, and the world around us.

In many ways, anthropology as a discipline is only now starting to address these questions. In December 2014, Bruno Latour, a French anthropologist, spoke to a standing-room-only audience at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting in Washington, D.C., to discuss the relationship between the Anthropocene and anthropology. Anthropocene is a term used to describe the period (or epoch) in geological time in which the effects of human activities have altered the fundamental geochemical cycles of the earth as a result of converting forests into fields and pastures and burning oil, gas, and coal on a large scale. Because human activities have changed the earth’s atmosphere, anthropologists can make important contributions to studies of geology, chemistry, and meteorology by considering the effects of humans and their cultural systems. As Latour noted, the discipline of anthropology is uniquely qualified to provide insight into key components of current environmental crises by determining the reasons behind choices various groups of humans make, bridging the social and natural sciences, and studying contradictions between cultural universals (traits all humans have in common) and particularities (interesting cultural differences).

Anthropologists have become involved in environmental causes around the world. In Brazil, for example, they have worked with Indigenous groups to maintain land claims, prevent deforestation, and organize against construction of large hydropower projects that threaten the river ecosystems (Athayde 2014). Others have challenged development of parks throughout the world as a major conservation strategy for biodiversity and explored the impacts of those parks on local communities (West et al. 2006). Studies of these diverse topics benefit from incorporation of an anthropological perspective that emphasizes the importance of identity politics, connection to place, and cultural beliefs for understanding how groups of people interact with their environment. This work also reminds us that environmentalism and conservation are grounded in sets of beliefs, assumptions, and world views developed in Western Europe and North America and must be translated as environmentalists work in other cultures.

Environmental anthropology naturally lends itself to use of anthropological perspectives to inform and engage in public policy decisions, land-use management, and advocacy for Indigenous communities, urban minorities, and other groups that are often under-represented in places of power and in traditional environmental movements. In that sense, environmental anthropology is a way to inform and connect with a variety of other disciplines that address similar questions of sustainability. Regardless of whether you decide to study anthropology, understanding the value of anthropological insights for environmental questions will allow you to better appreciate and understand the complexity of environmental questions in modern society and potential solutions.

Analyses of the environment may seem overly theoretical and abstract, far removed from actual practices and the work of learning to live with and within our environment. Anthropologists may be seen as hidden in ivory towers of academia, disconnected from real world issues and problems. However, applied and activist anthropology offer avenues for anthropologists to tackle problems on the ground and make a direct difference. Applied anthropologists often work with conservation and development organizations to implement projects that depend on an accurate understanding of local cultures and practices to succeed

.Anthropologist Gerald Murray’s doctoral dissertation examined land tenure among small-holders in Haiti. After finishing his dissertation work, Murray delivered a presentation to USAID on a Haitian reforestation project. He joked that if they gave him “a jeep and carte blanche access to a $50,000 checking account” he could prove his “anthropological assertions about peasant economic behavior and produce more trees on the ground than their multi-million-dollar Ministry of Agriculture charade.” USAID program officers accepted his challenge, inviting him to head a $4 million project to reforest Haiti. Using his understanding of Haitian small-holders, he drastically changed the USAID’s approach. Instead of trying to convince small-holders that trees were valuable for their environmental services, he emphasized fast-growing species that could be sold for firewood, charcoal, and lumber. By giving the trees to the small-holders and allowing them to harvest and sell them whenever they wanted, he motivated them to plant and care for the seedlings like any other valuable cash crop. In prior projects, tree-cutting was prohibited and the trees belonged to the government. Consequently, no one took care of the trees and they were eventually destroyed by livestock or neglect and rarely reached maturity. Treating the trees as a cash crop motivated farmers to plant trees on their own land, thus meeting USAID’s goals of stabilizing the soil and reducing illegal tree cutting (since farmers had access to stands of their own) and providing a direct economic benefit from selling wood. The project was a stunning success—20 million trees were planted in the first four years. By understanding local farmers’ perspectives, Murray was able to work with Haitian small-holders instead of seeing them as an impediment to reforestation efforts.

A number of anthropologists are working with conservation and development organizations to assist them in understanding local cultures and implementing conservation and develop projects. This work is often done in teams in which anthropologists join with foresters, conservation biologists, agronomists, and others to implement projects. Because they often speak the local language, understand the peoples’ perspectives, and are interested in close, on-the-ground observations, anthropologists make valuable contributions in support of conservation and economic development.

Anthropology in Your Life

Most of us will not lead a movement like Martin Luther King. We will not lead a revolution like Gandhi, or end apartheid like Nelson Mandela. But we will all have to face millions of decisions, some mundane and others momentous, and each time we will do so out of fear or love.

To find out how these decisions play out in everyday life, and how the lessons from his version of Intro to Anthropology might help in those decisions, the anthropologist Mike Wesch from Kansas State University reached out to alumni of his class and asked them to share their own heroic journeys through life. He received letters back from all over the world. Former students from his Intro class were now engaged in every kind of career you could imagine, applying the mindset, methods, and goals of anthropology to a wide range of problems. One had been paid by Virgin Records to travel across the United States in an RV studying how young people listen to music. Another was working with Facebook on what to do with social media profiles after people die. Many were living abroad in places like Dubai, Cambodia, South Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. Some were working on global health care while others held military leadership positions in combat zones. Others had settled into jobs in the United States in a wide range of careers including game design, clinical psychology, advertising, and business. All of them had stories to tell about how the “art of seeing” or how communication, empathy, and thoughtfulness had been essential to their careers. But Wesch was especially struck by how many of them had found these anthropological ideas so essential in helping them in their everyday lives. Indeed, it was their letters that inspired him to write his own textbook, sections of which are adapted here.

We hope that you approach this class with an open mind to the various ways that an anthropological perspective might be useful in your own lives as you move forward from this class, and that it proves as helpful to you.

Key Terms

Applied Anthropology

Cultural Relativism

Ethnocentrism

Anthropological Perspective

Medical Anthropology

Ethnomedicine

Biomedical

International Development

Anthropocene

Environmental Anthropology

Study Questions

1. What defines applied anthropology and what are some examples of applied anthropology projects?
2. What is the anthropological perspective? How does it come into use in medical anthropology, international development, and environmental anthropology?

References

Athayde, Simone. 2014. Introduction: Indigenous People, Dams, and Resistance. Tipiti: Journal of the Society for Anthropology of Lowland South America 12(2): 80–92.

Farmer, Paul, et al. 2006. Structural violence and clinical medicine. PLoS Med.

Kleinman, Arthur. 1988. Rethinking Psychiatry: From Cultural Category to Personal Experience. New York: The Free Press.

Latour, Bruno. 2014. Anthropology at the Time of the Anthropocene: A Personal View of What Is to be Studied. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.C.

Lewith, George T. 1998. Acupuncture: Its Place in Western Medical Science. United Kingdom: Merlin Press.

Moyo, Dambisa. 2009. Dead Aid: Why Aid is not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

West, Paige, Igoe, James, and Brockington, Dan. 2006. Parks and People: The Social Impact of Protected Areas. Annual Review of Anthropology 35: 251–277.

A Derivative Work From

Cochrane, Logan. 2020. Seeing Like an Anthropologist: Anthropology in Practice. In Brown, Nina et al. (eds.), Perspectives, an Open Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, 2nd Edition.

Henninger-Rener, Sashur. 2020. Health and Medicine. In Brown, Nina et al. (eds.), Perspectives, an Open Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, 2nd Edition.

Nelson, Katie and Braff, Lara. 2020. Introduction to Anthropology. In Brown, Nina et al. (eds.), Perspectives, an Open Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, 2nd Edition.

Palmer, Christian. 2020. Culture and Sustainability: Environmental Anthropology in the Anthropocene. In Brown, Nina et al. (eds.), Perspectives, an Open Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, 2nd Edition.

Wesch, Michael. 2018. The Art of Being Human. Manhattan, KS: New Prairie Press.