Review of the book

Why the World Needs Anthropologists

(Routledge, London and New York, 2021, 182 pp.)
Edited by
Dan Podjed, Meta Gorup, Pavel Borecký, Carla Guerrón Montero
Contributors
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Lenora Bohren, Joana Breidenbach,
Sarah Pink, Steffen Jöhncke, Tanja Winther, Sophie Bouly De Lesdain,
Rikke Ulk, Jitske Kramer, Anna Kirah, Riall W. Nolan

Joan Manuel Cabezas López

Doctor in Social Anthropology
joanmanuel.cabezas@gmail.com

On April 4, 2006 I had an encounter in Barcelona with Thomas Hylland Eriksen. During the meeting, I was
honoured that he signed his new book to me: Engaging Anthropology. The Case for a Public Presence (Berg,
2006). Several years later, as the culmination of seven symposia held by the European Association of Social
Anthropologists (EASA) with the same name as the title of this publication between 2010 and 2019. Eriksen leads
the first of the eleven individual writings of this collective work, writings located between the introduction and
the conclusions, that were made by the editors. Thirteen perfectly intertwined texts that make up a publication
that is not only indispensable but also has a structure that makes it consistent with one of its mean purposes:
anthropology has to leave the academic bombast and, as Eriksen already emphasized in the work that I just quoted,
should be engaged in the public spheres and, therefore, be accessible to all audiences.
I must acknowledge and value the splendid work of the editors, who, as I have mentioned, blend the writings in
an agile and entertaining way, facilitating common threads and betting on a cast of authors of great diversity, both
in terms of subject matter, nationality, and labour fields. All the texts of the contributions have a similar structure:
the author’s view about the need for anthropology based on their experiences, a story about how they were
initiated in the anthropological science, and an original and gripping list of five tips, often combining scientific
rigor with a glossy sense of humour. The result: a polyphonic and polyhedral book, with a solid framework, and
congruous with its chief aim of restructuring anthropology and positioning it as a profession with an overriding
function in the present and in the future. In my opinion, the Covid-19 pandemic increases even more this role.
This publication also tries to break the clichés that enclose the anthropological world, and succeeds in a resounding
way. Also bets on rebranding anthropology, an essential process and, in the case of my country, Spain, an urgent
need: we must “address the real problems faced by humanity” (p. 11), demonstrate that we are truly far away from the
and untruthful image that still dominates and, among other things, set aside prolonged fieldwork in cases where it
is not relevant (p. 112); flexibility is a key ability. In addition, I should highlight the common thread of this book,
conceived to provide reliable evidence to this statement, which I fully share: “many crises humanity is facing will not be
resolved without anthropologists’ engagement either” (p. 9).
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Editor’s introduction and conclusions, and texts of the contributors: a brief overview

In the introduction, wrote by Dan Podjed and Meta Gorup (p. 1-16), the authors pointed out several items that
are in the nucleus of the whole publication: the need for breaking the stereotypical image of anthropologists, the
need for the applied anthropology, and the need for breaking the perception of anthropology as ‘exotic’, or
‘curious’, even ‘fascinating’ speciality, but without useful targets. In this regard, Podjed and Gorup stress the need
for moving beyond strictly academically centred anthropology to an applied knowledge that informs change for
the better. Podjed and Gorup mark that their main goal is to convince the reader that anthropology has
significantly changed, and that it has become relevant and crucial for addressing some of the most pressing global
issues (p. 13).
By the other hand, Pavel Borecký and Carla Guerrón Montero highlight in their conclusion to this publication (p.
165-177) that the editors and the contributors tried to foreseeing the future of applied and engaged anthropology
worldwide. Borecký and Guerrón Montero state something that is present throughout the publication, and that I
consider vital: for consolidate the broadening of anthropology (grounded and applied, but also taught for a much
larger range of the population than it has been addressed to today) it is basic to enhance visibility (p. 168).

In the first chapter, written by Thomas Hylland Eriksen (“Ethnography in all the right places”, p. 17-31), the
author points out something fundamental: the basis of anthropology lies in studying human societies in a
comparative way, exploring their diversity and what they have in common, and globalization “brings us closer together”
(p.17). Therefore, the very nature of anthropology makes it more needful than ever.

Lenora Bohren (“Living in and researching a diverse world”, p. 32-41) emphasizes the role of anthropology as a
science specialized in intercultural relations, being able to face problems such as the crisis of refugees. Bohren also
observes the importance of applying the anthropological prism in matters related to diversity in areas such as
health and the environment.

Joana Breidenbach (“What is it like to be an anthropologist?”, P. 42-55) spotlights the characteristics of

anthropology that make it a key science for capturing, in the very concrete, the fluidity of social life and its internal
and invisible processes. The multi-perspectivity prism of anthropology shows internal and external structures of
life as constructed and contested.

Sarah Pink (“Anthropology in an uncertain world”, p. 57-70) delves into the role of anthropology in relation to
emerging technologies, highlighting the importance of working side by side with populations to contribute to their
self-organization. Pink also emphasizes that this work is carried out by interdisciplinary teams, one of the threads
that traverse, as we will see, the whole of this collective work.

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Steffen Jöhncke (“Making anthropology relevant to others people’s problems”, p. 71-84) considers that
anthropology is a professional, analytical tool that we need to keep sharp. For doing this, we must keep away from
‘the Church of Anthropology’. Jöhncke remarks that we should humbly listen and explore the problems that
humanity faces, and to account for good reasons people have for doing what they do.

Tanja Winther (“Searching for variation and complexity”, p. 85-98) foregrounds that a key mission for
anthropology today is to disclose power relations. In comparison with many other disciplines, anthropologists are
trained to ask qualitative questions including how, who, and why; and this type of data can help understand power
relations which come into play in any process involving technological change.

Sophie Bouly de Lesdain (“An anthropologist’s journey from the rainforest to solar fields”, p. 99-109) underlines
that anthropology allow us to go beyond deterministic discourses, such as those which put forward biological
arguments to justify societal facts, or tautological culturalist discourses, and brings practical applications in
industrial and commercial fields.

Rikke Ulk (“Anthropologist make sense, provide insight and co-create change”, p. 110-122) asserts that
anthropology offer fresh perspectives, engage people, and explain how they act and why they do what they do.
Ulk points out that outside academia informants are usually more explicitly treated as project participants and co-
authors. And make it clear that citizens are not ‘users’, but real complex human being engaged in everyday
endeavours.

Jitske Kramer (“Open up the treasure of anthropology to the world”, p. 123-135) speaks about the anthropology
that is carried out on a type of tribe that the dominant culture does not usually consider as such: organizations,
including companies. Kramer emphasizes something that I consider to be basic: as people organize themselves
into tribes all over the world, we can talk with business leaders in terms of tribes, totems, clans and rituals.

Anna Kirah (“The practitioner’s role of facilitating change”, p. 136-149) sends literally anthropology hight up in
the sky talking about her research on Boeing airplanes. Kirah points out that anthropology views the obvious with
new filters, and uncovers what is being taken for granted. Besides, anthropologists identify the mechanism of
culture creation as a part of the everyday life dynamics.

Riall W. Nolan (“Do we really need more anthropologists?”, p. 150-164) raises different qualities that makes
anthropology valuable: complements other ways of thinking without replacing them, and enhance our ability to
understand the world around us. Nolan also appeals for the presence of anthropological teaching in primary and
secondary schools, and underscore the importance of anthropology out of the university field.

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Some common threads found throughout the publication

Cultural relativism and the paramount importance of the relational context

By one side, cultural relativism is at the utmost importance in anthropological attempts to understand societies in
neutral terms (p. 19), and because of concepts such as holism and cultural relativism, anthropologists can be
important players in decision-making and the formation of effective policies (p.37). By being as aware as one can
be about our own biases and filters, and entering ‘the field’ with as open agenda as possible, anthropologist often
manage to come up with surprising and counter-intuitive insights. This requires the researcher to apply a culturally
relativistic lens and suspend judgement (p.43). To tell the truth, we must decenter and deconstruct ourselves from
such (still hegemonic) concepts as ‘common sense’, ‘cultural identity’, ‘uniqueness’, and so on. Anthropology can
tell us that almost unimaginably different lives from our own are meaningful and valuable: that everything could
have been otherwise; that an alternative world is possible; that even people who seem to be very strange to you
and me are, ultimately, like ourselves (p.24); that culture is a fluid space continuously (re)created by people through
social interactions (p. 139). From this standpoint, one reason because the world need anthropologists is that the
only way everybody can learn about themselves and their cultural assumptions, is through meeting people who
are different (p. 131).
This cultural relativism, for sure, cannot constitute a postmodern nihilistic approach about the
‘incommensurability of cultures’: a relativism should be relativist for being coherent with itself. That is because
anthropology should move beyond cultural relativism and help policy makers, institutions and people find ways
to negotiate the vast differences we find ourselves confronted with (p. 142-143).
Deeply linked with cultural relativism is the paramount importance of the relational context, i.e.: the social spaces
that generates and shapes what I entitle ‘social ecosystems’ or ‘ethnosystems’. Only focusing in the grounded
nature of the social life with the decentered lens that facilitate us cultural relativism, can we be able to understand
its characteristics and to explain the inner properties that remain below their expressions.
Anthropologists know a variety of ways to reveal the cultural meanings under the surface: we not just suspend
judgement, moreover, we look for wider connections, and build understanding from the ground up (p. 151),
listening to the small details to get the bigger picture, making the strange familiar (and vice versa…) (p. 125). The
smallest unit that anthropology studies is not the isolated individual but the relationship between two people and
their environment: whereas society is a web of relationships, culture, as activated between sentient bodies, not
inside them, is what makes communication possible. We are constituted by our relationships with others, and this
is why we have to engage with human beings in their full social context (p. 21).

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Flexibility, complexity, creativity: a vindication for qualitative research

Anthropology deals with complexity and one of its key capacities rely in its ability to grasp multiple perspectives
simultaneously. We need to be comfortable with ambiguity and ambivalence (p. 43), even more in an era
characterized by the increase of global interconnectedness. Perhaps the only certitude, nowadays, are the
ambivalence, ambiguity and unpredictability (p. 170), and that all observed phenomena are connected in complex
and often entirely invisible webs (p.151). Anthropology always takes complexity into account, surpassing the
behavioural approaches (p. 101).
Where numbers explain what might be important to the individuals, qualitative data provide the explanations and
understanding of why things are important and how is possible to improve on existing conditions (p. 137).
Anthropologists accept that complex realities tend to have complex causes: to understand human worlds,
qualitative research and interpretation are necessary (p. 22).

Interdisciplinarity

The world needs an interdisciplinary and interventional anthropology, with anthropologists engaged in
interdisciplinary teams (p.57, p.60, p.89), namely: teams of researchers with complementary skills (p. 19).
Regarding, for instances, the field of the study of the energy, only interdisciplinary teams and projects can deal
with formulating the research questions and conducting data collection jointly in the field (p. 87). And because
energy choices are embedded within social, cultural and political configurations (the study of which falls into the
domain of social anthropology), this opens up interdisciplinary fields of research (p. 107). As practitioners, is our
duty to smooth the way for change, understanding all the possible ways in which we are affected by it: there is a
need for trans-disciplinarity (p. 145), as we are bound to work in transdisciplinary environments, and we should
accept the limits of the discipline and reach out to other people and professions (p.121), transcending our own
methods, models and processes, and find ourselves in new realms (p. 141).
In point of fact, interdisciplinarity, and the need to co-think and co-create with others, have brought practitioners
into contact with new ideas and perspectives (p. 154). As anthropologists engage head-on with societal,
organizational, environmental and other problems in need of solutions, interdisciplinarity becomes unavoidable
(p. 6).

Reach wider audiences

We strive to make our reports available and accessible for non-academic audiences (p. 75), we must bring results
of our researches in an understable way to the people involved (p. 139). We need to make people understand the
value of anthropology by translating and interpreting their concerns in such a way that the discipline becomes
understandable to them (p. 107).

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In addition, it is necessary to translate complex findings and representations into clear recommendations (p. 97),
and we may practice explaining in plain words our theoretically informed approach to understanding why people
do as they do (p. 82). And it is crucial to teach anthropology in all the learning levels, besides university (p. 155).

Applied anthropology

One premise present for start to finish in this work is that we need to take non-academic anthropological practice
seriously (p. 154). To my thinking, this is a pivotal feature, firmly linked with the contribution of our profession
to the renovation (as least, in my country, Spain) of the so-called ‘community actions’, that clearly lack the
fundamental contribution of anthropology. In this direction, is really important to pick out that one of the reasons
the world need anthropologists is that we act as catalysts that help people to see the same old things with new
eyes and new understandings (p. 141). Furthermore, as I will remark at the end of this text, this publication points
out the prominent role of the applied anthropology in much more fields, like, for example, public policy and
industry (p. 100).
Anthropologists account with the expertise to conceptually recast problems based on empirical observation and
can apply their endowments to make recommendations for possible solutions after reframe problems. The ability
to collaborate across disciplinary and professional boundaries amounts to a new paradigm in anthropology, a shift
of emphasis that is but one expression of a more general development in the status of anthropology from being a
discipline to becoming a profession (p. 77).
It is compelling to close down, to suppress, the gap between ‘theoretical’/’academic’ anthropology, and ‘applied’/
‘practical’ anthropology: they are continuously interlinking (p. 4-5). As a matter of fact, the underline in the
outstanding relevance of the applied anthropology is, indeed, one of the main goals of this book, and the
underscoring in this outlook flow throughout its leaves.

Conclusions

As I have suggest at the beginning of this review, this publication has the virtue of being extraordinarily coherent
with itself: thus, emphasizes utility in the social function of anthropology, and works as a handy tool for being
able to clear paths and plausibly visualize the future: anthropology has a lot of things to say and to do, not only in
the social and community domain, but also in the fight against climate change, the crisis of refugees, the growth
of national-populism, and aspects as diverse as the economy social, associationism, engineering, energy,
community organization, advice and consultancy in multiple areas such as business corporations (including airline
companies), design, technologies, the environment, and so forth.

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And it is fair to recognize the added value provided by bibliographic references attached at the end of each section
(in the introduction, along the eleven chapters, and in the conclusions), because these references allow us to
broaden such areas and subjects, and invite us to explore new routes in the anthropological practice and theory.
What are the contributions that afford anthropology for postulate itself as a fundamental profession in such
different realms? The common threads that run through the publication give us the answers: proximity work,
attentive to complexity, to the plurality of ways of saying, doing and thinking, to the dynamics of change that
characterize social life, as well as the role of “anthropological estrangement” (p. 125, 139) and the importance of (I have
to repeat this as many times as needed) the qualitative approach: “it is impossible to address and resolve the pressing global
issues merely by looking at numbers, statistics, figures and diagrams” (p. 13).
In a general way, this collective work constitutes an essential publication to know a huge number of concrete
samples of applied social anthropology and, through them, to value the fundamental role that anthropologists
should have in multiple areas of our society. This publication is basic in order to highlight the primordial task of
anthropologist in professional fields where, until today, our presence has been practically nil (I know directly the
case of Spain and, within it, in a more lacerating way, Catalonia).
More specifically, and as I have already stressed previously, this book certifies the importance of the
anthropological prism in a professional area like the socio-community action. Both the socio-educational
dynamization and the community mediation (in the strict sense), and the whole sphere of the so-called 'community'
or 'social' field, has to bear in mind the contribution of anthropology, equally in the theory and methods, as in
techniques and praxis: “It is our role to enable people who are the experts on their own culture to engage their local knowledge in
ways that are empowering for them” (p. 59).
To conclude this review, I will like to express that, from a strictly personal point of view, this book has given to
me fresh air and an injection of hope concerning the professional future of so many people who are still trapped
in a kind of limbo: among an academic world that too often rejects the importance of applied social anthropology,
and a world of work (including the so-called labour ‘market’) that does not take into account the essential
contributions that this social science is able to do, and how much worthy and useful it is for improving our
societies. It is for this reason that my gratitude to the authors of this collective work goes much more beyond the
quality of their writings, and also beyond the opportune of its publication: they have shown us ways and, moreover,
have provided us light to be able to walk through them.
My final conclusion is diaphanous: for sure, the world needs anthropologists, and I dare to add that the world
needs anthropologists more than ever before. Thomas Hylland Eriksen already stated it in the publication to which
I referred at the beginning of this review, specifically on its page 96: “One may ask rhetorically: Is anyone better equipped
to make sense of these complexities- religion, identification, modernities, migration, mixing- than anthropologists?”.
This book proves it. Amply. And brilliantly.

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Sitges (Barcelona, Spain) - May 7th 2021