Description
Book Synopsis More and more, anthropologists are recruited as consultants by government departments, companies or as observers of development processes in their field areas generally. Although these roles can be very gratifying, they can create ambiguous situations for the anthropologists who find that new pressures and responsibilities are placed upon them for which their training did not prepare them. This volume explores some of the problems, opportunities, issues, debates, and dilemmas surrounding these roles. The geographic focus of the studies is Papua New Guinea, but the topic and its importance apply widely through the world, for example, Africa, South America, Australia, and the Pacific in general, as well as in relation to indigenous groups in Canada and elsewhere. All the authors have first-hand experience and they address these new pressures and responsibilities of anthropological research. The book's chapters are written in a way that combines scholarship with a style accessible to general readers.
Trade Review “I do recommend this volume to anthropologists. This collection would be appropriate for training social or cultural anthropologists… Several of these cases are well written, insightful, and instructive.” • Journal of Anthropological Research
Table of Contents Preface
Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart
Introduction: Anthropology and Consultancy—Ethnographic Dilemmas and Opportunites
Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart
Chapter 1. On Knowing the Baining and Other Minor Ethnic Groups of East New Britain
Marta A. Rohatynskyj
Chapter 2. From Athropologist to Government Officer and Back Again
Richard Scaglion
Chapter 3. Environmental Non-governmental Organizations and the Nature of Ethnographic Inquiry
Paige West
Chapter 4. The Politics of Accountability: An Institutional Analysis of the Conservation Movement in Papua New Guinea
John Richard Wagner
Chapter 5. Where Anthropologists Fear to Tread: Notes and Queries on Anthropology and Consultancy, Inspired by a Fieldwork Experience
Lorenzo Brutti
Chapter 6. Taking Care of Culture: Consultancy, Anthropology, and Gender Issues
Martha Macintyre
Notes on Contributors
Index
