Applying Anthropology in the Global Village

The realities of the globalized world have revolutionized traditional concepts of culture, community, and identity—so how do applied social scientists use complicated, fluid new ideas such as translocality and ethnoscape to solve pressing human problems? In this book, leading scholar/practitioners survey the development of different subfields over at least two decades, then offer concrete case studies to show how they have incorporated and refined new concepts and methods. After an introduction synthesizing anthropological practice, key theoretical concepts, and ethnographic methods, chapters examine the arenas of public health, community development, finance, technology, transportation, gender, environment, immigration, aging, and child welfare. An innovative guide to joining dynamic theoretical concepts to on-the-ground problem solving, this book is also an excellent addition to graduate and undergraduate courses.

Christina Wasson is associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Texas. She is a design and linguistic anthropologist who has also worked in the private sector and as a consultant with companies including Motorola, Microsoft, and the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. She has edited two volumes on practicing anthropology and published numerous articles and book chapters.Mary Odell Butler is an anthropologist with 35 years of experience in research design, management, and supervision of public health projects, working largely with federal agencies including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. She recently retired from Battelle Centers for Public Health Research and Evaluation, where she served as Office Director of Battelle CPHRE’s Arlington Office. She is past president of the National Association for Practicing Anthropology and is now adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland.Jacqueline Copeland-Carson is an Africanist anthropologist and urban planner specializing in community and identity development who has worked for over 25 years as an executive, grant-maker, evaluator, or researcher for foundations, including the Pew, Lilly, Noyes and Northwest Area foundations. She has served as vice president of The Philadelphia Foundation and founding managing director for philanthropic services at U.S. Bank Private Client Group. She is also founding director of Copeland Carson & Associates, a global philanthropic services and evaluation firm. She is author of Creating Africa in America (2004) and co-editor of Creating Evaluation Anthropology (with Mary Odell Butler, 2005).