June 10, 2013
Item: The Gates Foundation, famous for its “Millenium Scholars Program,” support many minority scholars for graduate study in various areas, including “education,” but, as of two or three years ago, not anthropology of education.
Item: The W. T. Grant Foundation states it is centrally concerned with settings for the education of youth but funds but very few if any anthropologists or ethnographies.
Item: The Harvard School of Education does not appear to have an anthropologist on its regular faculty.
These symptoms are only some of those which have made me wonder what, actually, is the place of anthropology and its traditions of research, debates, and contributions in professional schools dedicated, ambiguously, to “education.” The University of Chicago is famous for having decided that such schools do not belong in universities. But it was not followed. Actually, in spite of an ongoing critique of the work of Schools of Education by a very wide range of people from all parts of the political spectrum, they remain central to the actual production of reforms, whether moved by government, or very rich individuals, or by their combination. Eventually what Arnie Duncan (as the top political actor) or Bill Gates (as one of the most newsworthy of the representatives of what might be called “the national community”) may imagine, advocate and regulate what ought to be taught and how in all schools, including professional ones (often mediated by ostensibly non-state organizations such as NCATE). But at many stages in this process academic researchers from Schools of Education get intimately involved.
In this world, anthropology is object of scrutiny as we, anthropologists, keep being asked what exactly do we contribute, what are we teaching, how do we assess what we are teaching, how do we decide what is good anthropological research, and what is the use of such research in the various debates about achievement gaps, teacher evaluation, the relationship of schools to families and communities, and others such matters of public concern. This scrutiny by the Government, powerful NGOs, colleagues in our institutions, is not a new thing. Anthropology, as an aspect of academia, has always been in complex conversations with all the powers-that-be, both the entrenched ones and the emerging ones. At times what anthropology had to say found an echo among these powers. At other times, and we seem to be in one of those, argumentations that used to be effective cease to be listened to and anthropological work is pushed to the periphery.
Most of us, anthropologists in professional schools, are well aware of much of this and push back. We remain convinced that we have something distinctive to say that will reveal much about humanity that other approaches, methodological as well as theoretical, will not reveal. Some of our colleagues in other niches of academia may want to retreat in hopefully well defended ivory towers. We do not have this luxury. We are asked to contribute something tangible to our many audiences. But first, in order to do just this, we must engage in the fundamentally educational one of explaining, justifying, and demonstrating that our approaches are indeed more powerful than other approaches, for certain purposes at least. Then we will remain able to advise student, propose research, suggest policy, advise politicians.
How are we conduct our educational task? Repeating old arguments, mostly to each other, seems unlikely to achieve much. I hope to discuss two related strategies. First, we need a better understanding of our practical situation in the here and now of our institutional contexts. Second, we need exemplary and compelling research. The two tasks are interrelated in so far as understanding our practical situation should proceed through research on the complex conversations between (non-)governmental agencies (in all the senses of the word “agency”), including anthropology as what Latour might call a “black box” as seen from the point of view of, say, Rick Scott, the Governor of Florida infamous in our worlds for saying bluntly what others may only say in closed committees: “We don’t need a lot more anthropologists in the state” (October 2011). This is not new. Some of us remember Sherry Ortner, in 1979, receiving a “Golden Fleece Award” from Senator Proxmire for research on Buddhism in Nepal. Such attention may be symptomatic but the actual processes which, for example, have made “rigorous” “data-based” research using “large data sets” the gold standard is altogether obscure.
I continue to suspect that these processes have used much of anthropological research against itself. Much of the anthropological critique of positivism, extended to the critique of ethnography by anthropologists, however useful it has been for certain highly theoretical purposes, can also be read as writing anthropology out of the world of policy. The continuing debates as to whether anthropology is science or humanity are interesting but not helpful. Even the altogether defensive responses to charges that anthropology is more political advocacy than analysis in the pursuit of knowledge may backfire. Our colleagues in economics, sociology, developmental or cognitive psychology, etc., read our critiques of ourselves, they follow the debates about science and advocacy, and, after two or three decades are left to claim both science and “data-driven” advocacy for this or that policy. Look, for example, at the success of the sociologists who developed “value-added” assessments of teacher in the name of “improving our schools” by applying their science.
And so I look for ways to explain and justify distinctively anthropological work, and particularly systematic work on the uniquely emergent, to strengthen its claims to producing the kind of knowledge that people who directly face the worlds of practice, as teachers or social workers as well as governors in any aspects of government, can use not because it mimics the other social sciences but because it presents something that no other approaches present. Franz Boas and Margaret Mead were able to do it. We can do it too!
CODA: When will students be told that, in the “limitations” section of “qualitative” dissertations, stating “this research is not generalizable because of limitations in the sampling” constructs large data set research the standard against which all research is measured, and by implication, makes the student’s research irrelevant to much of the student’s professional world?
For more check:
Further preliminary notes on re-presenting anthropology (Friday, March 8th, 2013)
Potential student to TC anthropologists: what is anthropology good for? (Wednesday, January 16th, 2013)