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Moving Past Public Anthropology and Doing Collaborative Research

“…While I have indeed argued in previous writings for a more publicly engaged anthropology (see, e.g., Lassiter 2005b), and have been a participant in discussions about public/engaged anthropology (see, e.g., Lassiter 2005c), I find that most of my ideas do not fit all that well within the now dominant discourse on public anthropology (see, e.g., Borofsky 2006). Moreover, my focus on the local (see, e.g., Lassiter 2003), expressive culture (see, e.g., Lassiter 2004b), collaborative ethnography (Lassiter 2005a), and pedagogy (see, e.g., Lassiter 2006)—as well as my “academic applied research” (Erwin 2000:2–4), which includes practice such as consulting for archives and museums, working for and administering local nonprofits, and conducting evaluation research (see, e.g., Lassiter 1998a, 1999a; Lassiter and Heaton 2006; respectively)—often seems distant from these prevailing conversations.…”