Applied Anthropology Essay

When trying to figure out what the field of applied anthropology is Sillitoe says that there is still some debate as to what the meaning of applied anthropology is and since anthropology is such a huge field and is considered to be the ‘study of humankind’, there is a threat that it could possibly too big and possibly collapsing on itself or how Sillitoe says, “such a broad church that there is a danger the walls are now too far apart and the roof falling in” (Sillitoe 2007). With such a big topic, there’s discussions as to how to define applied anthropology without able to agree on a single definition because it is “a very odd subject”, “hard to say what it is the study of”, and “it is not at all clear what you have to do to study it” as well

Van Willigen though, says that applied anthropologists’ research is not determined by the field of study, but rather by the difficulties (Sillitoe 2007). Darnell is uneasy with the word applied anthropology as a whole because she considers that “all anthropology is applied” making it even harder to define applied anthropology (Darnell 2015). Although anthropologists can’t agree with a single definition, they do comprehend that culture is essential when trying to figure out how to find out the solutions to complications as well as essential to a lot of the patterns we perceive (Sillitoe 2007). A word that comes up when trying to define anthropology is ethnography (Sillitoe

Apart from helping improve the lives of other people, anthropologists try to use knowledge shape anthropology’s main content. John van Willigen says that, “much authentic anthropological knowledge is scattered throughout journal from a broad array of disciplines, and in the fugitive literature of technical and contract reports,” and because of that anthropological knowledge has little effect on shaping anthropology’s main content which is the opposite of what should be done (Rylko-Bauer, Singer and Willigen 2006). Knowledge should be incorporated into the main contents which should be an utmost importance for “academically based applied anthropologists” (Rylko-Bauer, Singer and Willigen 2006). Applied anthropologists also speak of a “theory of practice” whereby meaning a group of standards that forebode or clarify how information produced by applied studies is rendered into action which “can refer to factors” that directed effectual application of such knowledge either in policy growth, interference, or decision making(Rylko-Bauer, Singer and Willigen