Think Like an Anthropologist

I'm a graduate student in Anthropology (undergrad degree was also in Anthropology). I appreciate Engelke's plain language approach to discussing the field of anthropology in a way that weaves the past into a discussion of contemporary concerns. In particular, I appreciate his inclusion of wider array of voices than the usual Great White Man. If I ever achieve my dream of teaching Anthropology at the local community college, I would definitely use this as my textbook. For further accessible anthropological reading, I recommend Grant McCracken's Chief Culture Officer.

This is a comprehensively written book about anthropological world-view from various perspective. The writer is an expert in the subject with personal field-experience. So not only he discusses about various themes and theories of anthropology but gives us many first-hand examples of his experience-inspired perceptions. Read the book to get an interesting overview of anthropology, as a subject as well as a living idea.

In a world that at times seems inexorably bound for a most unpleasant breakdown, where there are many warring tribes, and some of them appear not to care about peace, love and understanding, perhaps an injection of anthropology is what is called for. That might at least help us on the road to the understanding bit.In Think Like an Anthropologist, Matthew Engelke gives a whirlwind tour of the subject to give a flavour of the kinds of things anthropology can and does help with. Perhaps most importantly it shows how anthropology can provide one of the ways in which we can fulfil the Socratic imperative: know yourself. A key stepping stone in that journey is getting to know others and why they live as they do; how the culture – a pivotal concept in anthropology – they are brought up in affects the way they see and interact with the world.Anthropology is driven, Engelke says, by curiosity regarding human expressions, institutions and commitments. Anthropological research has been conducted within a dizzying array of contexts, from tribes in almost complete isolation from the rest of the world and its technologies, to tribes operating within the financial markets in the City of London. In each case, fieldwork is vital, participant observation in which the researcher is embedded in the tribe in question, living and eating with them and learning their language. Perhaps counterintuitively, he considers this harder to do with a group of hunter-gatherers in the bush than with a band of e-traders in Manhattan, yet maybe that is the more pressing subject – the actions of hunter-gatherers affect only a small number of people directly, those of e-traders affect the lives of millions, as the collapse of Lehman Brothers demonstrated.Engelke divides his coverage of anthropology under a number of headings, including Culture, Civilisation, Values, Blood and Identity.Given the significance of Culture to the subject it is probably not too surprising, especially to those of us who have specialised in the social sciences in one way or another, that it is contested, and also that it is difficult to define. By way of explanation he uses a culinary example: it is culture which prevents some people from ever thinking that crickets are food. Extrapolating, it is also what prevents some people from thinking that meat is a suitable foodstuff, some specifically targeting pork or beef as a subset of that viewpoint, and also prevents some people from thinking that black people are discriminated against, and some who believe black people don’t deserve any kinds of rights.Again, some of those views, and their concomitant actions, in themselves have little or no impact upon society as a whole; others have the potential, in some cases devastatingly realised, of resulting in quite catastrophic societal division.In the subject of Blood, then, Engelke gazes into the face of the myth and absurdities of “race”, on the one hand rejecting it as a valid means of categorisation, on the other conceding its power as a category nonetheless. Biologically, race is a fiction; culturally it is a fact.Such considerations may carry no weight at all within the ranks of the Klan or other supremacist groups, but it is to be hoped that the people who legislate on such matters are swayed by science, both in the sense of hard science based upon biological factors and the softer social sciences in which rigorous research and empirical evidence inform us of the way the world works. In a world where biologically human beings belong to one species, one race, why do they behave as if they belong to many?That in turn raises the need for other decision-making processes to take into account multiple perspectives. For example, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Amy Chua highlighted the mistakes made by the US in invading Afghanistan and Iraq, not in the invasions themselves but in the lack of understanding of the dynamics within their respective societies based upon clan, tribe and religion. Had some effort been expended in that direction, the way in which “winning the peace” was prosecuted may have looked different from an attempt to superimpose a US-style electoral system on a very different culture, which in crude terms was what actually happened, and which resulted not, as Bush claimed, in “Mission Accomplished”, but in “Mission Extended Indefinitely”, with instability not only within the two countries in question but also globally. An anthropological perspective, combined with an understanding of military, economic and political factors, may have helped in that respect.Anthropology is not, in short, the only tool in the box, but it is one it would be foolish to neglect. Engelke makes the case with clarity.

The pages are so thick and nice. I wouldn’t read the actual content had it not been required but felt the quality alone was worth the price. Great for annotating

Book is wetEven the box is all tornBad experience