Action Anthropology

Abstract

Action anthropology is an approach that seeks to develop the understanding of social and cultural life while helping communities address the challenges they face. In contrast to applied anthropology, when seeking to help the communities with whom they work, action anthropologists facilitate the communities' own decision making about what actions should be taken to address those challenges rather than implementing decisions made outside of the community or for the community by the anthropologist. In seeking new theoretical understanding, action anthropologists work on problems identified in collaboration with communities, rather than only pursuing questions that emerge independently from social theory, in contrast to basic research. Action anthropology originated in the work of Sol Tax and his students in the Fox Project, conducted with the Meskwaki Indians in the 1950s. It has since been used with communities throughout the world to promote social change and develop anthropological theory.

Action anthropology and public policy change: Lead poisoning in Syracuse, NY

“…The CARE model is an elaboration, in the context of medical anthropology and public health, of the Action Anthropology developed by Sol Tax and his students and built upon briefly by others (Tumin 1958; Gearing et al., 1960; Schensul 1974). Bennett (1996, S35) notes that “Tax conveyed to the students in preparatory seminars his vision of a participative ethnography in which the informants were coinvestigators and the investigators were students of the informants.” Although they hoped at that time that Action Anthropology would transform the ways in which anthropology is conducted and how anthropologists relate to the people with whom they work, their hopes were not realized (Rubinstein, 1986; Smith, 2015; Rubinstein, 2018). Now is the time to heed their example of how to radically reorient anthropological practice.…”