Applied Anthropology

A New Perspective on the Achievement of Psychological Effects from Cyber-Warfare Payloads: The Analogy of Parasitic Manipulation of Host Behaviour

by Mils Hills

Journal of Law and Cyberwarfare, Volume 1, Issue 1, summer 2012 (forthcoming)

This paper represents a thinkpiece exploring early considerations of a new way of understanding and countering... more This paper represents a thinkpiece exploring early considerations of a new way of understanding and countering decision-making influence effected by Cyber-Warfare payloads (where ‘cyber’ implies the use of any technology between sender / recipient). The approach detailed uses a form of Analogical Research (AR) to extract value from a biological model, in this case the effects that parasites exercise on their hosts. There is a lot to learn from parasites and the response of infected organisms - and the analogy has (as it were) legs.

Antropología aplicada en Colombia. Perspectivas e intencionalidades a partir de una experiencia en niñez y migraciones

by María Claudia Duque-Páramo

This paper puts forward a notion of applied anthropology incorporating both a critical analysis of cultural diversity... more This paper puts forward a notion of applied anthropology incorporating both a critical analysis of cultural diversity and intervention and policy formulation, which help to solve the problems communities we work with face. In order to do this, at a first time we revise several concepts and purposes on applied anthropology in the North American and Colombian contexts. Then, an experience on migrations and childhood is reported, including research, intervention and networking. Finally, a third moment articulates the elements discussed in a final reflection on the relationship between theory and practice in the field of
applied anthropology.

Mediating Cityscapes: Cultural Analysis and the Development of Urban Places

by Samantha Hyler

Master's thesis in applied cultural analysis, Lund University. 2011 (to be published soon via Lund's website)

Helsingborg, a coastal city in southern Sweden, has initiated a long-term re-development project labeled H+, aiming to... more Helsingborg, a coastal city in southern Sweden, has initiated a long-term re-development project labeled H+, aiming to convert industrial harbor space in the city's south into a new, livable urban neighborhood and city center. The project requires innovative and collaborative strategies in building a ‘tolerant city.’ As a cultural analyst working with the City of Helsingborg (Helsingborgs stad) and the H+ project, my role has been to mediate information be-tween planners and citizens, focusing the project’s visions towards existing communities and their values and developing public planning strategically through ethnographic understandings in a process of ‘culturally mapping’ Helsingborg’s social cityscapes. Cultural mapping, a useful methodological tool in accessing ‘cultural’ knowledge, translates ethnographic data into usable maps for city planners in the process of developing the H+ area – as a physical and non-physical place. How does ethnographic methods and cultural mapping engage with and revitalize city planning to enable the development of a ‘tolerant city,’ essentially a process of place-making the H+ area? This thesis examines the way in which an applied cultural analytical approach – which uses cultural mapping and other visual techniques to present complex theories, methods, and fieldwork information – engenders planning practices to-wards openness and inclusion through deeper understandings of the dialectic identities emerging from the relationships between people and places.

Places in the Öresund: A Matrix of Connectivity

by Samantha Hyler

Vacher, Mark, O'Dell, Tom & Schollert Hvalsum, Laura (Eds). (2011). Spatial and Temporal Modalities of Everyday Integration. Lund University & Copenhagen University

Irregular Ethnographies

by Robert Willim

with Tom O'Dell. Introduction to the volume Irregular Ethnographies, special issue of Ethnologia Europaea.

Ethnography has become something of a buzzword in recent years. It is talked about and invoked in disciplines ranging... more Ethnography has become something of a buzzword in recent years. It is talked about and invoked in disciplines ranging from anthropology and ethnology to literature, history, business administration and design studies. Textbooks that teach ethnography tend to imbue students with the impression that ethnography is a mode of systematic investigation by which the researcher gets closer to the realities of people’s everyday lives. But how straightforward are these processes in reality?

As ethnography spreads into new folds of research both within and without the academy, the contributions in this volume demonstrate the manner in which field methods are adjusting, transforming or taking new forms altogether. If textbooks might lead students to believe that observations and interviews are the grounds upon which “good” ethnography can regularly be produced, the authors in this volume take as their point of departure the realization that ethnography is being used in a multitude of different contexts which forces them – and us as readers – to question the “regularities” and “irregularities” of their own work.

CULTURDES – UMH: el desarrollo de acciones para mejorar los instrumentos de la cooperación internacional desde un grupo de investigación universitario

by Antonio Miguel Nogués-Pedregal

Co-authored with Eva Caballero-Segarra (1st author) and Cristina Soler-García (2nd author).

Paper presented at the V Congreso Universidad y Cooperación held in Cádiz - Spain, from 6-8 of April of 2011.

PRIMER PÁRRAFO

Hasta la aparición en 1990 del Índice de Desarrollo Humano (IDH) del Programa de las... more PRIMER PÁRRAFO

Hasta la aparición en 1990 del Índice de Desarrollo Humano (IDH) del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD) los principios rectores del desarrollo se fundamentaban en el aumento de la producción de bienes y servicios, asumiendo que el incremento del producto nacional bruto per capita reduciría la pobreza y elevaría el nivel general de bienestar de la población. En este contexto ideológico la cultura de los grupos sociales aparecía como un obstáculo para la puesta en práctica del modelo y, en consecuencia, como un verdadero freno para de los planes de desarrollo económico.

Esta visión reduccionista fue complementada con la introducción de nuevos elementos en el ámbito del desarrollo. En el año 1982 la UNESCO declaraba que “sólo puede asegurarse un desarrollo equilibrado mediante la integración de los factores culturales en las estrategias para alcanzarlo”: la cultura aparecía como una dimensión fundamental en los programas y proyectos de desarrollo (Unesco, 1982) y pasó a considerarse más como una oportunidad que como un obstáculo. Desde entonces la preocupación y el interés por esta alianza estratégica entre la cultura y el desarrollo han sido crecientes. Diez años más tarde la celebración de la Cumbre de Río de Janeiro (1992) recogía de nuevo esta preocupación cultural compendiando en la Agenda 21 las preocupaciones económicas y sociales para favorecer un desarrollo sostenible de los pueblos.

Bridging Troubled Waters: Principles for teaching in times of crisis

by Kevin Michael Foster

Are They Katrina's Kids or Ours?: The Experience of Displaced New Orleans Students in Their New Schools and Communities

by Kevin Michael Foster

Organization and Advocacy in Rural Chile: Peasant–Worker Consciousness in the Transition to Democracy, ANTHROPOLOGY OF WORK REVIEW 23 (3-4), pp. 3-4,25 (2002)

by William L. Alexander

Clandestine Artisans or Integrated Producers?: Standardization of Rural Livelihood in the Norte Chico, Chile, CULTURE & AGRICULTURE 26(1-2), pp. 38-51 (2004)

by William L. Alexander

Desarrollo e Identidad desde el Patrimonio Cultural: una definición de Arqueología Aplicada

by Francesco Orlandi

Trabajo final del Máster en Arqueología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, director prof. Víctor Fernández Martínez. Contactar para bibliografía.

“Just Coping: A new perspective on low-income families”

by Tamara Tatem-Hale

Co-authored with Robin Pharoah and Sophia Parker. 2008. Social Innovation
Lab Kent (SILK), Kent County Council.

"Doubting Darwin: Creationism and Evolution scepticism in Britain today"

by Tamara Tatem-Hale

Co-authored with Robin Pharoah and Becky Rowe. 2009. Theos.

“Behind the numbers: Migrant living patterns in Westminster”

by Tamara Tatem-Hale

Co-authored with Robin Pharoah. 2007. Westminster City Council.

Review: Jason Pribilsky, “Development and the ‘Indian Problem’ in the Cold War Andes: Indigenismo, Science, and Modernization in the Making of the Cornell-Peru Project at Vicos,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 33, No. 3 (June 2009), pp. 405-26

by R. Matthew Gildner

Maternal and Child Health Care in Gargon: Findings from Surveys, Focus Groups, and Clinical Data, Perception: Tibetan Video Archive Project, May, 2005.

by Tara Waters Lumpkin

Community-Based Ecotourism in the Panama Canal Watershed, USAID/Panama and the Panama National Environmental Commission, Panama City, Panama, May 1998.

by Tara Waters Lumpkin

Ecoturismo com Participacion Comunitaria en la Cuenca del Canal de Panama, agencia de los Estados Unidos para el Desarrollo Internacional en Panamá con el apoyo de la Comisión Nacional del Medio Ambiuente, Ciudad de Panamá, Panamá, mayo de 1998.

by Tara Waters Lumpkin

Perceptual Diversity and its Implications for Development—Based on Research among Traditional Healers and upon Community Use of Traditional Medicine in Namibia, March 1996.

by Tara Waters Lumpkin

Dissertation, The Union Institute, 1996.

The project demonstrating excellence (dissertation) has two parts: (1) an essay developing the theory of... more The project demonstrating excellence (dissertation) has two parts: (1) an essay developing the theory of "perceptual diversity" and focusing on its implications for development, and (2) a case study of Namibian traditional medicine that elucidates this theory.

"Perceptual diversity" is defined as the sum of perceptual modes that humans use to structure experiences. Perceptual-constructs (ways of perceiving reality) allow people to make sense of their experiences and to communicate with others who share these same perceptual-constructs. Recent research in cognitive neuroscience illustrates that experience affects the ordering of neural networks in the brain—known as neural network plasticity—meaning that the micromorphology of the brain is affected by experience and culture. Experiences, thus, become embedded in the mind-body.

Some cultures value transrational perceptual modes, whereas other cultures—usually those represented by strategic elites who have been educated in the West—do not. Using concrete examples and drawing on environmental and medical anthropology, I propose that when a culture restrains perceptual diversity, it—in turn—limits cultural diversity and biodiversity. This concept has a practical application for development: promoting an understanding of perceptual diversity (particularly among strategic elites such as Western-educated government officials, donor agencies, and nongovernmental organizations) will result in improved cross-cultural communication, collaboration, and cooperation that will lead to innovative holistic approaches to development.

The second part of the PDE is an in-depth report and analysis of a research project on Namibian traditional healers and on community use of traditional medicine. The project served as a case study of the need for perceptual diversity in order for collaboration between the modern health sector and traditional healers to be effective. The research consisted of a qualitative survey that gathered data on the knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and practices of Namibian traditional healers as well as on community use of traditional medicine. The data was subsequently analyzed and recommendations were made in order to (1) influence Namibian health policy, (2) promote cooperation among traditional healers and biomedical health practitioners, and (3) introduce relevant groups to the need for perceptual diversity in the development process.

Perceptual Diversity: Is Polyphasic Consciousness Necessary for Global Survival? Anthropology of Consciousness, Volume 12, Number 1, March/June 2001.

by Tara Waters Lumpkin

Perceptual diversity allows human beings to access knowledge through a variety of perceptual processes, rather than... more Perceptual diversity allows human beings to access knowledge through a variety of perceptual processes, rather than merely through everyday, waking reality. Many of these perceptual processes are transrational, altered state of consciousness (meditation, trance, dreams, imagination) and are not considered valid processes for accessing knowledge by science (which is based primarily upon quantification, reductionism, and the experimental method). According to Erika Bourguignon’s research in the 1970s, approximately 90% of cultures have institutionalized forms of altered states of consciousness, meaning that such types of consciousness are to be found in most human societies and are “normal” [, 1973 #1019:9-11]. Now, however, transrational consciousness is being devalued in many societies as it is simultaneously being replaced by the monophasic consciousness of “developed” nations. Not only are we are losing (1) biodiversity (biocomplexity) in environments and (2) cultural diversity in societies, we also are losing (3) perceptual diversity in human cognitive processes. All three losses of diversity (bio, cultural, and cognitive) are inter-related.

Cultures that value perceptual diversity are more adaptable than cultures that do not. Perceptually diverse cultures are better able to understand whole systems (because they use a variety of perceptual processes to understand systems) than are cultures that rely only on the scientific method, which dissects systems. They also are better stewards of their environments, because they grasp the value of the whole of biodiversity (biocomplexity) through transrational as well as scientific processes. Understanding through perceptual diversity leads to a higher degree of adaptability and evolutionary competence.

From the perspective of an anthropologist who has worked with development organizations, development will continue to destroy perceptual diversity because it exports the dominant cognitive process of “developed” nations, i.e. monophasic consciousness. Destroying perceptual diversity, in turn, leads to the destruction of cultural diversity and biocomplexity. Drawing from research I conducted among traditional healers in Namibia, I conclude that development organizations need to listen to those who use transrational perceptual processes and also need to find a way to incorporate and validate perceptual diversity in their theoretical and applied frameworks. Key words: perceptual diversity, systems theory, perception, cultural diversity, biodiversity, biocomplexity, Namibia, traditional medicine, ethnomedicine, development.