# Applied Anthropology Today History I · Anthropology · https://tryals.app/learn/history-i/applied-anthropology-today ## Anthropology Leaves the Seminar Room **Applied anthropology** puts ethnographic method to work on practical problems where culture and institutions collide. | Subfield | Works on | Example finding | |---|---|---| | **Development** | Aid and infrastructure | Wells fail when water rights are ignored | | **Medical** | Health and healing systems | Epidemics follow burial traditions | | **Business** | Workplaces and markets | Real use beats what users **say** they do | The founding lesson, paid for in failed projects: **consult the users first**. The graveyard of development holds pumps nobody maintains and latrines used as grain stores. During the 2014 Ebola outbreak, transmission dropped when responders worked **with** communities to redesign burials rather than banning them. Cultural knowledge is operational knowledge. ## The Ethics of Showing Up Intervention raises immediate questions that pure research can often defer: - **Informed consent**: participants must understand and accept the research every time. No outcome excuses skipping it. - **Do no harm**: the anthropologist's first obligation is to the people studied, above funders, governments, and publication. - **Whose goals?**: improvement defined in a distant capital may be dispossession on the ground. > **The cautionary tale:** the US Army's Human Terrain System (2007) embedded social scientists with combat units. The American Anthropological Association condemned it because research and counterinsurgency cannot be reconciled. Ethnography must never become intelligence. ## Practice questions 7 of this lesson's 14 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app. ### 1. If a project is clearly beneficial, an applied anthropologist may skip informed consent to save time. **Answer:** False **Why:** No projected benefit suspends consent, the people studied get to define their own good. "Beneficial without asking" is precisely the paternalism the discipline’s ethics codes were written against. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/applied-anthropology-today/if-a-project-is-clearly-beneficial-an-applied-anthropologist-may ### 2. The Human Terrain System paid anthropologists to advise the military in Afghanistan. Which professional principle did the AAA judge it to violate? A. The requirement to publish findings in peer-reviewed venues B. The rule against working in active conflict zones C. Informed consent and do-no-harm to informants D. The prohibition on paid consultancy work outside academia **Answer:** C. Informed consent and do-no-harm to informants **Why:** Consent requires a real ability to refuse and the setting removed it, while the research product could be turned against the informants, the two obligations fail together. The dispute is genuinely hard, since the programme's defenders argued better cultural knowledge would reduce casualties. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/applied-anthropology-today/the-human-terrain-system-paid-anthropologists-to-advise-the-military ### 3. Why did the American Anthropological Association condemn the Human Terrain System? A. Ethnography serving targeting cannot honour do-no-harm B. It used quantitative rather than qualitative methods C. The program paid anthropologists too little D. It operated without any government authorization **Answer:** A. Ethnography serving targeting cannot honour do-no-harm **Why:** When field notes can guide military operations, informants become potential targets, irreconcilable with the first ethical obligation. The 2007 controversy drew the discipline’s brightest red line: ethnography is not intelligence. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/applied-anthropology-today/why-did-the-american-anthropological-association-condemn-the-human ### 4. Sort each project decision: **ethical practice** or **red flag**? **Answer:** - Ethical practice: Consent renegotiated when the study changes scope, Findings shared back with the community first, Local co-researchers credited and paid - Red flag: Informant lists handed to a security agency, "They’ll thank us later" replacing consultation, Success declared by the funder, no independent evaluation **Why:** The pattern behind every red flag: someone other than the community holds the pen. Ethical practice keeps consent live, credit shared, and evaluation independent. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/applied-anthropology-today/sort-each-project-decision-ethical-practice-or-red-flag ### 5. Which are documented failure modes of development projects that skipped ethnography? A. Pumps abandoned because no one owned their maintenance B. Projects failing because villagers could not understand technology C. Improved stoves rejected for ignoring how cooking is actually done D. Latrines repurposed as grain stores **Answer:** A. Pumps abandoned because no one owned their maintenance; C. Improved stoves rejected for ignoring how cooking is actually done; D. Latrines repurposed as grain stores **Why:** Real failures are institutional and cultural, unowned maintenance, misread practice, better local uses. The second option inverts the lesson: users understood perfectly; the designers didn’t. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/applied-anthropology-today/which-are-documented-failure-modes-of-development-projects-that ### 6. Order the steps of a live informed-consent process. **Answer:** 1. Explain the research in terms participants actually use 2. Confirm understanding and the freedom to refuse 3. Agree what will be recorded and who may see it 4. Revisit consent whenever the study’s scope changes **Why:** Consent is a relationship, not a signature: explained, confirmed, scoped, and renewed. The final step is the one weak projects forget. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/applied-anthropology-today/order-the-steps-of-a-live-informed-consent-process ### 7. Order the phases of a well-run applied-anthropology project. **Answer:** 1. Ethnographic groundwork: listen, map practices and stakeholders 2. Co-design the intervention with the community 3. Pilot on a small scale 4. Evaluate honestly, including the failures 5. Adapt and scale what actually worked **Why:** Listen → co-design → pilot → evaluate → scale. Every inverted version of this sequence — design in the capital, announce, build, leave — has its own graveyard of rusting pumps. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/applied-anthropology-today/order-the-phases-of-a-well-run-applied-anthropology-project