There came a telling time in a failing relationship that laid out my career as an anthropologist.
It seemed to have been the great romantic love of my life. But the candle was guttering out fast. Frankly, there was more than a bit of drama involved; not that it did a bit of good. She was already established in our trade. She was concerned that I would not be. Later, I figured out that long before this moment, she had already cast the die to abandon the relationship. But there was one more bit of set-piece drama involved.
Where are You Bound?
Over dinner came the question, ” But Lou, what is it that you want out of it? What drives you?” This question surprised me. It was not something I had consciously framed as a sort of mission statement. So I paused and thought it out. My reply was ” I want to do something that improves people’s lives, not just increases our knowledge of what and why they do it.”
I could see the disappointment in her eyes. She was a totally committed researcher and academic. I had just revealed myself to be interested in the “practice” of anthropology. I had chosen, but for us, I had not chosen wisely. She was not appreciative of my choice. It did not align well with how she saw a life together shaping up,
The relationship sputtered on for a few months, but it was already over. I just couldn’t acknowledge it. It was a very painful time. But over those months, I also came to believe that out of the pressure she put on me for an answer came a very well distilled essence of who I really was as an anthropologist.
I spent about seventeen years fulfilled working in the applied field.
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What exactly did she expect of you?
She wanted to pair with another successful academic anthropologist who was a researcher. She was also getting tired of me being, shall we say, a bit too much of a problem maker at grad school. Years on, I can see where I caused friction I didn’t have to, and screwed things up…but the academic model just didn’t work out for her or some of my other friends – not enough jobs in the same areas to have two anthropologists in one family. Just not enough jobs ever available except in rare cases.
I never understood pure academia. I guess that’s what turned me away from a PhD program that would have meant studying what other people said about what they’d studied, sort of a literary circle jerk. I couldn’t do it. I walked out of the GRE 2/3 through (post MA) and still got into a graduate program at UCSD. I’m glad I did. Otherwise Alex would never have known that teachers shop and like sandwiches. I never would have discussed Lao Tzu on a mountain trail with Kris. No thanks.
when I first went to grad school I thought that it was what I wanted. But eventually I was just turned off by what I called “navel gazing” I just was not cut out for it. when teaching as an adjunct I had a wonderful time because I was teaching a intor class in anthropology to womwn in a bachelors in nursing. the sort of community work I had been doing, the interest in ethane-medicine and my surgical background made for some interesting class discussions. I loved it!
Navel gazing — exactly. Those nurses sound like a wonderful class for your experience and knowledge. Wow.
They were fun and challenging. The idea was to give them anthropological concepts and examples that they could actually use.
IMO that’s the point of education. Even the high-falutin stuff like Plato.
A man has to do what he wants to do, and it sounds like you made a good choice, Lou.
I did, but like many good choices, there was some pain involved.
It was not meant to be 🙂
Now I sigh in great relief!
This is so interesting, Lou. Once again, you have made me stop and think. When asked why I loved anthropology so much, I often was able to explain by comparing. My impression of sociology was when people went about fixing others. I liked anthropology because it seeks to understand, and not “fix.” I hate the idea of impressing my opinions and motivations onto others because I’m so convinced I don’t know enough to do that, no matter how long I study. I want to just understand, not act. Maybe “act” by way of not judging like I used to. So to read here that you wanted to use your work in anthropology to help communities, it’s clearly a different perspective. Why anthropology instead of sociolgy?
Glad you liked it. When I was a practicing anthropologist, much of what I did was to promote understanding. Not to generate change. Sometimes a change occurred. there was one seminar we did where we had an Asian American film festival in my primarily Euro-American immigrant community. We had an amazing and unexpected discussion between groups in which 2nd-generation European-Americans and Asian Americans started digging into the similarities of their experiences. It was unplanned and unexpected, but extremely exciting. I was in charge of getting the Asian American filmmakers to present, and worked hard to get the local community to attend. But what happened when the discussion started floored me – in a good way!
That is so cool!