December 2003
Rebecca Zarger, Section Editor
Anthropology and Environment Section
Engagement: It ain’t easy but we gotta do it!
Contributed by: Jessica Glicken Turnley, Galisteo Consulting Group, Inc.
The charge for anthropologists to “become engaged” is a non-trivial one. It means that we must move out of our zones of professional comfort into worlds that involve people who speak different languages and work from different epistemological bases. It would seem that, as anthropologists, this is a challenge we are trained to take, self-selected by interest into a world where this is the norm. However, this type of challenge is a slightly different one than the one we encounter as we set off to do field work. In that environment, we occupy a somewhat privileged and distant position: privileged because we are the ‘other,’ and distant, or not truly engaged, because we leave the situation and do not vest any of our personal selves in the notion of change of any sort in the subject community. Indeed, our charter is usually one of explicit disengagement in that we are there primarily as observers and recorders/analysts.
I have been working recently with a community with whom anthropologists are not frequently engaged. I bring to that community (from my perspective) a clear agenda of change. I am engaging with ecological risk assessors and managers from industry, academia, and government primarily through one of their professional organizations, the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC – www.setac.org), and also through the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA – www.sra.org). The change I would like to effect is one of increased awareness of the impacts of risk assessment and management activities (including regulatory actions) on human communities. I would also like to bring anthropological methodologies for assessing these impacts to their attention. There has been increased awareness of the role of participatory and deliberative processes in risk management and efforts to institutionalize vehicles for incorporating community voices. On the science or risk assessment side, the importance of community input to the determination of assessment endpoints is being recognized.
SETAC (as one representative community in this arena) has about 5,000 members, mostly in the US, although international membership is growing. Disciplinary representation is primarily in fields related to ecotoxicology, biochemistry, and the like. These folks don’t recognize the terms ‘community’ or ‘participation’ or ‘social value’ although they are more and more often asked to consider these concepts in their risk management decisions. I have been giving papers and short courses at their annual meetings… and frankly it’s difficult. I have to recognize that I am speaking to audiences who are educated—but in a different field. Many basic anthropological concepts that we take for granted have to be spelled out. There are very few other folks “like me” at these meetings—it is a large investment of time and money. My return is not the same learning experience that I can get by going to a meeting more focused on “my” subjects, but an opportunity to help others appreciate what we do bring to the table and to begin to use anthropological materials, approaches, and methods in an informed manner. The SRA meetings are a little different from the SETAC meetings. There is a “track” on risk communication, so there are folks there who are “more like me”. However, anthropologists are still few and far between. Again—there is a role and an opportunity for us there.
We are all on limited budgets and are interested in getting the most out of every meeting that we can. However, if we are truly to become ‘engaged,’ we have to consider giving a little first. If we do try to engage others with our ideas, concepts, and approaches, we have a much better chance of gaining their respect, appreciation and interest. It’s hard and it will cost. But I fear that the cost of not doing so is irrelevancy.
If you are interested in pursing this line of engagement or would like to respond to my comments, please feel free to contact me. I can be reached at gturnley@aol.com or 505-889-3927.
Please send essays, news, and other information to the section editor: Rebecca Zarger (zarger@fiu.edu), Department of Environmental Studies & Sociology/Anthropology, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8 St., ECS 332, Miami, FL 33199.