[From the Archives] The Role of the Anthropologist in the 21st Century

Aspiring Polymath, Actually Just Neurotic

Illustration from the 17^th-century German Jesuit scholar and polymath Athanasius Kirchur in his book Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (The Great Art of Light and Shadow) published in Rome in 1646. Credit: SSPL/Getty Images

Greetings fellow wanderers,

Today I am republishing another post from the archives. As Those Who Wander has now breached 400 subscribers and is gaining momentum, I realize the bulk of new subscribers may not have access to some of my initial writings and with 76 posts in the archive now, I want to give some exposure to these paywalled posts.

That said, if you are enjoying these ramblings on travel, adventure, and anthropology, please consider supporting my writing which grants you full access to everything I’ve written on Substack. In addition, the proceeds will go toward publishing and promoting my forthcoming book ‘An Anthropology of Wandering: How Adventure Can Alleviate a Fearful Culture’. The book is a first-person account of backpacking the Appalachian Trail that dives into anthropology, travel, fear, and the meaning of adventure in culture and society.

Thank you to everyone who has subscribed and supported my work thus far. Cheers! -JSB

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The anthropologist might have the most neurotic job of all. Next to philosophers, our skill set seems dubiously marketable at best. If we only had a nickel for every parent’s roll of the eyes and downward shake of the head when their child told them they wanted to study anthropology. After all, how many employers out there need the endocranial volumes of a set of chimpanzee skulls measured? Or can I assist you in sketching out a map of a profile wall of a thousand-year-old Mississippian lodge post? Does anyone out there need your collection of ten thousand flakes of chert, trade beads, and animal bones counted by chance? Oh, the places you’ll go with anthropology. 

But hey, the name brings a brief moment of awe and prestige when you tell someone you’re an anthropologist or archaeologist, even if the inevitable follow-up question is always, “But what do you actually do?” And the overarching question really is: what is the role an anthropologist provides society? What service do anthropologists owe the rest of us? That’s an ironic question given that our role is basically to understand and explain what everyone else’s role in society is.

The paradoxical expectations of the anthropologist only add to the neurosis. Most broadly we’re asked to impartially study and explain human behavior and culture, all the while being human; an absolutely ludicrous endeavor from the start. We’re supposed to try to suppress or at least temper that which is biased in ourselves, step away from our own cultural, social, and political influences, and then go out into the world judgment-free.

We’re supposed to try to see all human beings through an objective lens, carefully recording and synthesizing past and present behaviors, values, customs, rituals, and social interactions as scientifically as possible. This is tricky business, being emergent biological machines bundled in our own cultural wombs. We ask and attempt to answer fundamental questions like what it means to be human and how we make sense of human behavior and culture. Anthropology uniquely offers ways to view ourselves. Thus, what we ultimately have to offer is a perspective on our humanity.

Where do you begin to unpack what a human is, how they think, and why they behave the way they do? Should you start with their heads and work your way down? It only takes a discussion or two with a psychologist to learn that we are intuitive creatures first and reasoning creatures second. For both good and ill we are endowed with the remarkable ability to make snap judgments about the world and the people in it. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt summarizes this well in his work The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion and brands this social intuitionism.

If we further ask the neuroscientists about the specific components of our brains, they’ll enlighten us as to which parts of the brain regulate certain behaviors. One more step gets us to the endocrinologist who can tell us how hormones like testosterone, estrogen, vasopressin, and oxytocin influence behaviors related to aggression, euphoria, motivation, and concentration. The neuroendocrinologist and anthropologist Robert Sapolsky’s book Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst is an incredibly informative and accessible text about neuroscience, endocrinology, and the philosophical discussion on free will.

Even more fine-grained, the geneticist will inform us of the set of genes that conspire together to lay the groundwork for the form and function of our minds. Two fantastic books that explore genes, evolution, and their history are developmental biologist Sean B. Carroll’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and physician and oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Gene: An Intimate History. (My recent post, What Ancient DNA Reveals About the Deep Past of Human Wandering reviews another fantastic book by geneticist David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past.

And that’s just the biological side of us. So many more symbols and ideas are floating around in our cultural environments that also poke and prod, push and pull, on our development and subsequent behaviors. Then there are the social factors of families, peer groups, and communities to consider. A seemingly endless set of factors conspire to shape our bodies, brains, and belief systems. A bona fide anthropologist is therefore someone who does their best to read both widely and deeply into many subjects. In short, the anthropologist is doomed to forever being a jack of all trades, a master of none.

But this is what I love about the tradition of anthropology, and what I conceive as the more important role of anthropology today: By design, this field is a melting pot of academic disciplines, values, and ideas. At least, that’s what I believe it’s supposed to be. Like a Swiss army knife, the discipline is meant to function in various ways. To be honest, I have no idea how many types of anthropologists there are anymore. We’re about as chaotically segmented and fused as heavy metal genres. (Click here to see what I’m talking about).

The four branches of anthropology with some of the sub-subfields in the margins as taught in the United States. Applied Anthropology has emerged in recent years as a fifth subfield of the discipline.

Traditionally in the United States, anthropology is broken down into four sub-fields: physical or biological anthropology, social and cultural anthropology, archaeology, and linguistic anthropology. Then there are sub-sub fields for each of those from forensics and primatology in the biological anthropology sub-category to zooarchaeology and paleoethnobotany under the archaeology field. Then there is cognitive sociocultural anthropology and my personal favorite-sounding one cyborg anthropology (not to be confused with digital, media, or visual anthropology; sub-subs in their own right.) Wanna hear about the sub-sub-subs? Me neither.

Despite the endless splintering and demand to specialize in studying the effects of say, how the human digestive system affects the micro-mammalian skeleton—yes that was a real academic paper where someone skinned a small critter, ate it, and examined their own fecal matter to see how it all came out—the anthropologist is still required to stick to the roots of the discipline in some capacity. We are required to be a synthesizer, a mediator, a juggler of many hats. We’re granted access to peer into all the other windows of scientific circles. Its eclectic nature is meant to bridge a gap between the sciences, arts, and humanities. Like the flawless work of paleo-artist John Gurche, this discipline is a mosaic of rigid inquiry and creative expression illuminating that which is both beautiful and true about humanity.

To my mind, one of the primary roles of an anthropologist is to synthesize academic jargon, mind-numbing controversies, and inconsistent data and then craft vital pieces of information about the human story in a form palatable to all of us. After all, this is essentially what the taxpayer is paying for when they help fund our educational institutions. They deserve something out of us.

The public has a right to know what the discipline is up to and shouldn’t be browbeaten by all the clunky jargon academics invent. We also have to strive to be more conscious of the tone we use because it can often sound condescending and combative to a layperson. From my experience, too many anthropologists and many other academics are disengaged and alienating to most people because they rarely venture outside their own political and academic tribes. But I’ll kick that rant further down the road for now…

I believe our end goal then should have the public in mind: To design museum exhibits that mesmerize as much as they inform; to take time away from writing another grant proposal or academic article to write a popular book or blog instead, or give a public lecture; or if we’re working on an archaeological site, to set up a way for the public to participate and learn about the dig.

In my experience, few academics see their role as emissaries of public knowledge. I can’t help but feel that to be a shame. I once had a well-known archaeologist tell me that writing for a popular audience and communicating with the public “wasn’t our job.” I refuse to accept that and I worry that the longer a person gestates in academia, the more their egos tend to inflate and social skills atrophy. They come to feel justified in feeling like high priests in charge of hoarding and coveting their domain of knowledge.

Given the dubious nature of what direct value we provide to the world at large, I believe the one thing we have to offer is our honest perspective on the human condition, the good and the bad. The only way to demonstrate that value then, is for us to learn better means of communicating, engaging, and interacting with the public. For those anthropologists interested in this project, we are tackling a monumental question, what does all of this accrued knowledge and data of humanity mean for all of us and how do we best preserve, curate, and share it with all those who care to listen?

Now, there are certainly anthropologists and archaeologists out there doing wonderful public outreach and solving real-world problems: There are indeed archaeological sites that invite the public to shake screens beside the archaeologists and take part in the discoveries (I've been a part of one such project in Florida); there are curators of archaeology staffed in museums across the country working tirelessly to design engaging exhibits utilizing the latest technologies; there are forensic anthropologists training students and law enforcement to help solve current and cold case crimes (the oldest research facility dedicated to studying human decomposition for the purpose of helping to solve crimes, known as the “body farm”, is located in Knoxville, TN); there are anthropologists helping federal and state institutions properly handle and return the physical and cultural remains of Native Americans to their respective tribes and descendants; anthropologists also assist the government in repatriating the remains of POW/MIA soldiers; and we are helping to mitigate damages to all the archaeological sites affected by any conceivable modern development project be it a solar or wind farm, access road, interstate highway, pipeline, natural gas field, or even a boat dock. Thus, there are plenty of important roles anthropologists are playing in the 21st century.

Nevertheless, the fight to better inform our fellow citizens of the utility of anthropology is far from over. In the year 2024, a large percentage of the public still thinks archaeologists dig up dinosaurs, track Bigfoot, or hunt down clues left by ancient aliens. Much of the public is still confused about what anthropologists and archaeologists actually do for society. There are probably many causes to explain why this is the case but I think part of the onus falls on anthropologists themselves for various direct and indirect reasons. Many anthropologists aspire to be many things, but one of the more active roles they ought to play is to become better communicators of the science and history of our species.

At the end of the day, the anthropologist of the 21st century is tracking humanity’s ever-changing biology and culture. What could be more important for society than knowing something about the history of our species? What we have to offer society that is perhaps most significant is a perspective: To enable us to view humanity from many vantage points. Perhaps that sounds cheap and meaningless to some. For me, I think it’s quite profound and consequential–anthropology is supposed to encourage us to be adventurous in how we think and how we explore our world.

Charting a career in anthropology is an incredibly ambiguous and anxiety-ridden path to embark on and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. It comes with a great deal of self-doubt, anxiety, depression, and self-loathing—in short, neurosis. But I will say that every time I’ve described to strangers, friends, and family where a degree in anthropology has taken me so far, I realize just how adventurous and thrilling this path has been. I’m reminded of what a privilege it is to be a part of the process of discovering something about the ancestry of our species, even if I still have no clue how many sub-sub-sub disciplines there are in this bewildering field.

Thanks for being a fellow traveler with me through this read. Much more to follow.

Cheers! 

-JSB