Action Anthropology

The Tenets of Action Anthropology

Action anthropologists recognize general tenets for conducting applied work in an intercultural setting. While each situation is unique and demands unique responses, the following principles help the action anthropologist stay focused and true to core professional standards:

• We serve at the community's discretion and direction.
• We recognize that we can never fully know a community and its needs, but to the extent we can, it takes time. We therefore temper our bias for action by avoiding premature choices and responses.
• We work collaboratively with the community to develop alternatives for improving conditions.
• We respect the right and ability of a community to make choices affecting its future and the freedom to make its own mistakes.
• We are open and truthful.
• We promote community sustainability and capacity building and strive to work ourselves out of a job.
• As professionals, we learn from our experiences and use them to improve our method and theory.
• We recognize that our source of funding can present conflicts of interest and confront this problem by insisting on professional independence.
• We share what we have learned with the community, our professional colleagues and others, as appropriate, to improve the human condition.

Action anthropology emerged from the Anthropology Department at the University of Chicago in the 1950s. Its roots are traced to a University of Chicago field school involving the Meskwaki Indian community at Tama, Iowa, which ran from 1948 to 1959 and was documented by Judith Daubenmier. The goals of the field school, known as the Fox Project, were to understand the processes of acculturation taking place in the late 1940s and to intervene in those processes to help the community improve the quality of everyday life. Before long, the anthropologists realized that assimilation to American society was not going to be the end point for these American Indians, and their attention turned to issues of self-determination and cultural persistence. Rather than study the community, these anthropologists began taking action.

This action spirit spread during the 1960s and 1970s. Examples of work conducted include the 1961 American Indian Chicago Conference, documented by Nancy Lurie; the 1960s Colorado workshops for Indian college students and projects designed to assist various Cherokee and Sioux communities during the 1960s and 1970s. Others took action anthropology to Central America and elsewhere. Action anthropology contributed to programmes involved in community education, health services, economic development, resource protection, American Indian studies and native languages. Workshops, meetings and gatherings of all sorts became a hallmark of the action anthropology process.

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