Title: Engaging Engagement: Critical Reflections on a Canadian Tradition
Abstract: IntroductionIn Canada, we have long standing tradition of anthropology. This tradition is best reflected work with Aboriginal peoples but is by no means exclusive to this work, or work Canada for that matter. Engaged anthropology is so embedded within Canadian anthropology that it rarely attracts commentary. John Bennett has argued with respect to anthropology the U.S. (2005:1), that in order for cultural anthropology to reorient itself toward the historical present and the changing status of former tribal people, it had to create separate discipline called applied which it did starting the 1940s. I argue that anthropologists Canada, while flirting with the idea of applied anthropology, never really embraced it as separate sub-discipline as it has been the U.S. Rather, I suggest that what is today referred to as anthropology is, for Canada, nothing new, and remains part of the Canadian anthropological canon.1Foundations of EngagementFor me, the hey-day for applied anthropology Canada was the 1970s and 1980s, and this laid the foundation for the kind of engaged anthropology that I consider this paper. First at the University of Waterloo as an undergraduate, and then as graduate student at the University of Manitoba the mid- to late 1970s, my mentors, Sally Weaver, John Matthiasson and Skip Koolage, argued that, order to be good applied anthropologist, one first had to be good anthropologist, an idea shared at that time with many influential anthropologists south of the border.2 They saw applied anthropology as an advanced credential, an elite sub-field that required both theoretical and methodological sophistication combination with sensibilities of ethics and accountability, all wrapped up blanket of humility. Indeed, this was part of the anthropological Zeitgeist of that era, and others, such as Milton Freeman and Richard Salisbury and, the U.S., John Bennett, were making the same argument that applied anthropology should spring out of serious scholarship, not be divorced from it. And why not, given that some of the earliest proponents of the field included luminaries such as Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson (Bennett 2005). I was reminded by Sally, John and Skip that the currency of applied anthropology was real people and real lives, and not theoretical arguments debated among scholars, and so we had damn well better know what we are doing before we engage with those lives an effort to make things better. I took these lessons to heart, and I took them with me into my Ph.D. program.As graduate student at the University of Connecticut the early 1980s, I had the opportunity to learn great deal about emerging trends U.S. applied and applied medical anthropology from my advisor, Bert Pelto, and from Steve Schensul and Jay Schensul, who were already fixtures on the U.S. applied anthropology scene. For my term paper Jay Schensul's graduate seminar applied anthropology, I decided to write on the Canadian applied anthropology tradition. Since there was relatively little written on this at that time, and much was grey literature and difficult to access that era the U.S., I took the step of writing to all of those names that by now were so familiar to me, including Sally Weaver and Marc-Adelard (Ade) Tremblay. First, you will be pleased to know that virtually everyone I wrote to replied - and remember, this was the era before personal computers and email! Second, I was taken aback by their collective characterization of the field Canada which contrasted with trends emerging the U.S. There was one quote particular that I still recall that seemed to capture the Canadian perspective, and which has guided me all these years, that Canadian applied anthropology represented a sustained critique of society. What revelation! And what difference from the approach my Connecticut applied anthropology courses. …
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 3
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