Teaching Social Acxtion: Ethics Access Relevance

Teaching as Social Acxtion: Ethics of Access andRelevance in Introcluctory Anthropology

Deborah Pruitt

These comments are in honor of Gerald Berreman, without whom I would nothave the license to be here. A personal story will make it clear why I say this.

As we all know, sometimes it is hard to distinguish between existential angstand writers' block. One afternoon while finishing my dissertation, I was in the throwsof severe doubts about my abil'ity to finish and in anguish about the ethicality of thetask; questions of representation, authenticity, objectification, and more plagued me.Professor Berreman urged me on, voicing appreciation for my concerns, stressing thatthe questions need to be raised, and that they "need to come from a card carryingmember." His words continued to spur me on and I completed my dissertation soonafter. However, it still took several years to wrestle with my position in whatRaymond Firth has called an "uncomfortable discipline" (Firth 1981:200).

I did not work in academic anthropology for several years after finishing mydissertation, although, like so many, I did submit numerous job applications. I haverecently reconnected to the profession through teaching, so what follows are somecomments from a "card carrying member" after a hiatus that has given me a bit of anoutsider's perspective on anthropology. My gratitude to Professor Berreman isexpressed everyday in the way in which I teach.

What concerns me here is the lack of accomplishment in makinganthropological knowledge and, more importantly, the per-spective that anthropologyoffers, more accessible. Of course, I am not the only one with this concern; "PublicAnthropology" was even the theme at the 2000 annual meeting.

Ninivaggi (1999) examines why it is that anthropology is so absent inacademic conferences and courses on multiculturalism and diversity. She says, "It isthe paradox of our times that as colleges scramble to respond to the demands of aglobalizing and communications technology-driven workplace, anthropology has notexpanded as a discipline....Anthropology is and has been a muted voice in the domainof race relations" (Nin1ivaggi 1999:16). A Ph.D. student who teaches in the fieldcalled "Intercultural Communication" recently discussed with me the need for moreanthropologic-al insigrht in that fie-ld, e-ven while- it sucsflyreache-s largre nuimhersof students and clients.

206 Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers No. 89/90

We can also repeatedly see the need for an anthropological perspective whenwatching the news, pundit talk shows, and various discussions in the media as well asour neighborhoods and civic groups. It is really quite striking what a poor job theanthropology profession has done in communicating to our larger community theunderstandings and insights gained from all the hard work of so many dedicatedprofessionals.

This is largely a problem of detachment: anthropology has become an isolatedspeech community in many ways. This was made poignantly clear to me by acomment from an engineering faculty member as I worked on a multidisciplinarytask-force of the academic senate at the University of California, Berkeley forincreasing student diversity in the sciences and engineering. Saying somethingcomparable to, "you're not like other anthropologists," he remarked to me that heusually found it frustrating to try to work with anthropologists because he could notunderstand what they were talking about most of the time. He thought they speak intheir own language in ways that are esoteric and contribute little to practical matters.

In 1971, Berreman called for an anthropology that is "relevant in the sensethat it address the issues facing people in their social existence, and we ask that itreflect the quality of that social existence as it seeks to provide foundations andpractical recommendations for improving it" (1981). It is disappointing andfrustrating to read some of Professor Beffeman's work from the 1970s and 1980s andrealize how relevant his concerns still are today. This matter of relevance continues toplague the profession.

One only need attend an annual meeting of the American AnthropologicalAssociation to be reminded of how out of touch a great deal of the work published inanthropology actually is. It is often hard to see what the purpose is beyond idlecuriosity. It is terribly extravagant to ask esoteric questions and analyze people'sexperiences for no benefit to them while many people struggle to survive. This is notlost on students and it erodes our credibility.

Clearly much of our profession has lost touch with our responsibility to ourteachers (Michael Agar's (1980) term for what others have called "informants"), ourstudents, and our community (Berreman 1981). Yet our professional code of ethicsincludes the statement that "Anthropological researchers should make the results oftheir research appropriately available to sponsors, students, decision makers, and othernonanthropologists" and ensure that it is "well understood."

Denzin (1997) takes it a steD fuirther and refers to ethnograDhv as the moraldiscourse of our time. To have real significance, our work must relate to those aroundus and be accessible to our entire community. One important mechanism forremaining relevant and significant is the introductory anthropology course.

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Pubfic Anthropology

I am a "public anthropologist" and a very fortunate woman. I spend my daysintroducing scores of people to the perspective that cross-cultural research inanthropology provides. I teach introductory anthropology in more than sixcommunity and private colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition, I providecoaching and consulting services to managers and directors of non-profitorganizations. Both occupations enable me to 'impart an anthropological perspectiveon life's challenges.

My focus here is on my experience as a teacher and my attempt to engageteaching as social action. I have joined the ranks of many others as a broker ofanthropological knowledge. I don't have time for much original research andproduction of knowledge these days thanks to the realities of academic employment inan adjunct economy. Rather, I play the crucial role of presenting the knowledge ofour profession in a formi that is accessible to non-specialists.

I can think of no better place to confront the ethical issues of anthropologythan when teaching an introductory course. Deciding what our students must learn,how they will learn it, and how they will demonstrate their learin calls up all of thethorny moral questions facing our profession today. The dilenunas over science,explanation, description, representation, fiction, journalism, access, relevance, andauthority are all present-whether they are consciously addressed, or unconsciouslyresolved through doing what is most familiar, the uncritical move of repetition.

While the field is challenged directly on many fronts (such as the subjects ofethnographic studies talking back, members of the profession from the culturestraditionally studied by anthropologists, and so forth) the same dynamics areoccunring, more quietly perhaps, in the classroom. I have had numerous students fromthose cultural groups that frequently provide the source material in anthropologicalliterature. And the overall ethnic and social diversity of my classroom constantlyreminds me of the hegemonic potential when presenting representations of"otherness." This is the advantage of the community college envirornment in the SanFrancisco Bay Area.

Comm-iunity College Learning

The vital role of the conmmnity college in adult learning is indisputable. In1995, thirty-seven percent of all enrollments in post-secondary education were incommunitv collegyes (W. Norton Grubb & Assoc. 1999:333). The signifilcance of thisfigure is made more apparent by the fact that upper division and graduate students areincluded in the statistics at the four-year schools, while community colleges onlyinclude lower division. In California in 1999, there were three-quarters of a millionmore students enrolled in community colleges than in all the rest of the public and


private four-year colleges and universities combined (California Department ofFinance 2000:96).

We reach a substantial portion of the communilty through state supportedcommunity colleges. And we reach niany people who would never be in a four-year,post-secondary institution. Many people take advantage of the community college toget associates degrees and vocational degrees that advance their work opportunities.And there are always a few who take classes because they are interested in learningwith no degree objectives.

The community college is the avenue for what are called "non-traditional"students to enter the college track. This includes those who did not continue throughcollege directly after high school, those who can only afford to go to college part-time, and many who are developing second and third language skills to enable them toadvance in their new society. Most of the students work, many of them full-time, andmany have children. For self-supporting students who end up taking variable loadseach semester (three-quarters of the students at Laney College in Oakland attend part-time), a B.A. might take six or seven years or longer, but is literally made possiblethrough part-time and creative scheduling options.

Because the community college offers an open door to students who needalternatives to the conventional four-year colleges and universities, students tend to beolder than those at four-year schools. At Laney College 45 percent of the students in2000 were between the ages of 25 and 54. Nationally, 52 percent of communitycollege students are older than 24 (W. Norton Grubb & Assoc. 1999-:333). They alsotend to be more culturally diverse. While community colleges are one-third of allU.S., colleges and universities, they enroll nearly half of all the minority students inhigher education (McClenney 2001: 1).

My classroom is a veritable microcosm of the world. Every semester I have acombination of students from every part of the globe-fiirst generation inunigrants,recent immigrants struggling to study college level courses in a new language, andAmerican-born folks from African, European, Latin, and Asian heritages. The 1999enrollment at Laney College is reported as 20% Asian, 32% African American, 5%Filipino, 10% Hispanic/Latino, 2% Native American, and 23% White non-Hispanic..These categories obscure the complex diversity, as I encounter students from Kenya,Camaroon, Turkey, Afganistan, Pakistan, India, Iran, China, Vietnam, Cambodia,Columbia, Argentina, Navajo, Black Feet, Russia, Nigeria, Mexico, Guatamala,Guam, Hawaii-to name just a few.. At least half of my students identify asmulticultural. It is an exciting learning environment in which the students oftenbecome the teacher.


The role of the community college in providing access to higher education isprofound, a role which will only expand as the gap between the elite and the rest of usgrows.

I have been unable to find any reliable statistics on how much anthropology isbeing taught in community colleges. ,The American Anthropological Association doesnot accumulate such information. This is unfortunate because it reflects an oversightand perhaps bias about the importance of what happens in the community colleges.Given the overall statistics, I feel comfortable saying that at least as many studentsbrush up against anthropology in community colleges as the rest of the schoolscombined. It is an invaluable opportunity to impart an anthropological message tovast numbers of people, and to significantly broaden our perspective from the insightgained from our diverse students.

Yet, the conditions for many of us teaching in community colleges makes itvery difficult to exploit the full depth of the opportunity available.

Introducing Anthropology

I suspect that my situation is not unusual. My first teaching assignment camewhen I was asked to teach a summer course at the last minute--one week beforeclasses started. With no time to order books, I inherited a text book from the priorinstructor. By the time I had constructed the course schedule, lectures, class projects,exams, and assignments, I had quite an investment in that design around thatparticular textbook, a textbook that is frequently used and represents the classicalapproach to an introductory course. By the next semester, when I was slated to teachsix courses at three different schools, I was not in the position to redesign the coursefrom a more creative perspective. A full-time teaching load at a community college isfive courses. Yet, most of us are part-time adjuncts, a full 52 percent according to arecent study (W. Norton Grubb & Assoc. 1999)1, and teach six to seven courses asemester. We must teach at multiple schools and most of us do other contract work inorder to make ends meet. The time and energy to creatively design courses is veryhard to come by.

So,, we rely on the materials readily available. This is what concerns me- thenature of the materials easily obtained for teachers of introductory level anthropologycourses. Graduate school prepares us to conduct research and function at the mostsophisticated levels of the discipline. Thus, we become better adept at teaching upperdivision and graduate level courses. I suspect it would be quite easy for most of us topull together a sophisticated course on any number of topics in anthropology in a fewweeks time. It is much more challenging to devise a meaningful introduction tocultural diversity that is relevant and accessible to people with little to no academicbackground.


Yet, this is perhaps the most important work we do. It is the introduction thatis often the most radical moment. Students who have cultivated their curiosity anddeveloped skill at pursuing knowledge on a subject need very little assistance.Encouragement and guidance in unknown areas is often the most substantial thing wedo. But the uninitiated, the students who have never learned to independently pursuetheir curiosity or been exposed to experiences beyond their particular community, arethe students to whom we have the most to offer and I believe the greatest obligation toreach.

But the materials ready-at-hand, the textbooks provided at no cost by thepublishers, replete with instructors' manuals and computerized test-banks, arevirtually unchanged since my first anthropology class in 1983. In reviewing textbooksfor my introductory classes I have examined more than twenty textbooks, most ofthem current, with a few from the middle 1980s. There is a pronounced paradigmvisible from that time that is still alive and well. We all probably experienced it in ourfirst anthropology course: chapter one introduces anthropology, chapter two explainsculture, chapter three describes anthropological theory, chapter four discusseslanguage and communication, chapter five introduces different modes of subsistence,chapter six deals with economic systems, then comes family and niarriagel, kinship,religion, and so forth. Some have added a chapter on peasants, or colonialisnm, orrearranged chapters, but overall the format for the introductory course has not changedmuch., notwithstanding all the years of "reflexive discourse"" about the anthropologicalproject. While the discipline has been undergoing a transformation and renewal as wehave reexamined our motives, our methods., and our results., the introductory courseplods along., largely unchanged.

Now I am sure many authors would take exception to my comments, and I donot mean in any way to disregard the value of the many modifications and additionsmade by various authors over the years. But structurally and stylistically., mostintroductory textbooks are an updated version, not a new model.

Whither Holism?

I view the introductory course as first and foremost about learnn from across-cultural holistic understanding of the world. I am much less concerned with"training" new anthropologists than with giin my students a sense of the experienceof different ways of constructing reality. I rarely see a student who is pllannn tomajor in anthropology. Rather, most of my students are pursuing a wide range ofinterests and careers., and take anthropology to satisfy a general educationrequirement. But if I can helD them acqui're a holistic persDective, then in addition toa richer, more complex understanding of different cultures, they will become moreaware of the links in our own seemingly fragmented culture and can be more effectiveagents in their own lives.

Pruitt Teaching as Social Action 211

Thus, I look for ways to help my students imagine the experience of realitiesdefined by different cultures. I want them to identify with people in other cultures, toponder questions like, "What would it be like to grow up in that family? How might Imake a living in that place?" and so forth. But the introductory paradigm is still toooften a litany of analytic categories and essentially lists of (often some of the most"6exotic" or salacious) facts. Far too little of the complexity of the lived realities ofpeople in different cultures comes through.

This is in part a problem of dividing up the world, and the anthropologicaltext, into analytic classifications. We preach about holism (well, I do anyway), thenpresent our most basic introductory information in the formi of discrete categories.Even when something close to a "thick description" is provided, sometimes a vignetteor a case study of a particular culture, it is usually only one element of life that iselaborated-the economic system, or family structure, or ritual practice for instance.We rarely get a holistic sense of the connections between that element and other day-to-day aspects of life in that culture.

It is difficult to grasp the integrated nature of culture when it is in separatechapters. Yet this is one of the most valuable and pertinent things we can teach. It is,in fact, perhaps one of the only purposes (justifilcations) for anthropology today. IfAnthony Giddens is right, as I think he is, the practical relevance of anthropology liesin "forging new perspectives, new ways of looking at things" (1995:277).

The new perspectives needed emerge from our roots-the holistic andcomparative perspective. While sociologists, historians, economists, and many othersgrapple with many of the same issues today, my reading suggests that none of thosedisciplines grasp the nuances of holism as well as anthropology does. This is thepowerful contribution we make, when we make it in tenms that others can understand.

A considerable challenge is to bring this squarely into the introductory class.This means integrating the most 'important and cutting edge work of our discipline inthe introductory moment.

I try to address this challenge by teaching about typologies and telling mystudents to think in terms of the value of analytic categories while being aware of thede(con)struction involved. But this is ultimately not sufficient, and the introductorycourse too often becomes an exercise in learning a catalog of tenms. The meaning ofthe term "6exogamy" or "matrilineage" can take on far too much signifilcancecompared to the real potential of the introductory course for developing globalawareness, deep understanding and empathy for different realities, and a criticalperspective.

This is particularly a danger in college settings such as those in which I teachwhere most students have had little exposure to anything but rote learning. They are


anxious and sometimes demanding for clear, familiar, masterable formulas for gettinga grade. The instructor is equally impacted by the political economy of education: thetime constraints, the pitiful wages, and overall lack of resources that we find ourselvessubmerged in means that we repeatedly have to make the compromise choice such asdeciding "well, a multiple choice test can be graded by a machine."

Evidently others have had similar concerns as mine. A few of the currenttexts are organized according to subsistence strategy or type of political organization.These categories can be seen as "first order" distinctions that allow for moreintegrated descniptions of the cultures that fall within those categories. Authors suchas Mari Womack (2001), whose text Being Human is partially organized bysubsistence strategy uses examples well and integrates more vignettes andcomprehensive descriptions than most any other text. She even includes short piecesby different authors who write about the people they know best.

However, I find most of the introductory texts still lack the politicalperspective needed to fully understand today's world. For instance, references to thecurrent conditions indigenous people confront are described as a "pattern" of life that"has emerged" (Womack 2001:268). Seated firnily in the conventional paradigm, toomany texts still deal with colonialism and globalization in one chapter at the end ofthe book on culture change. Thus, most of the semester would be spent.tL% ing. aboutpeople and ways of life that no longer exist; the introductory course is thus squarelystuck in the "ethnographic present."

An obvious solution is to build a course on ethnographies. Yet, I struggle tofind ethnographies to use. They are too often a relatively dry description and analysisthat does little to evoke an experience, or convey a new wisdom into the nature of life.They also are usually aimed at an 4anthropological audience, too often caught up in thejargon of the discipline and attempts to prove a scientifilc or intellectuallysophisticated approach. Furthermore, much of the more progressive forms ofethnography since the 1980s that emphasize new fonrns of writing and representationare simply not accessible to most people. This is the problem with mostpoststructuralist, postmodernist, discursive anthropology-it is not comprehensible toanyone outside the field, or even outside that particular speech community. No oneoutside a very narrow segment of the profession can understand it, or, morefrequently, is likely to bother to read it. If the idiom used by many in the profession isquite impenetrable, even to myself, an indoctrinated one, how would anyone elseunderstand any of it?

Another major hindrance to using ethnographies in many introductory coursesis that most are simply too long to use. To convey the breadth important in anintroductory course, I would have to assign a half dozen books or more. This is, ofcourse, absurd. Finances are a maj.9or consideration for most of my students. The cost

pnitt Teaching as Social Action 213

of educational books is having a substantial negative impact on access to higherleaming. A single textbook is a financial obstacle for many students.

Malcolm Margolin's works, The Ohlone Way (1978) and The Way We Li'ved(1981) are two of the best things I have read for conveying an experience of life of apeople while also transmitting a lot of the sort of factual information that is consideredimportant in anthropology textbooks. Interestingly, Margolin is not an anthropologist.He seems less concerned with presenting anthropology and more concerned withdescribing a way of life. Too much ethnography is so predominantly theanthropologist's voice and preoccupation that it holds little meaning for my students.

This is true of many of the introductory materials; they tend to be overlyconcerned with anthropology and teaching about the discipline, rather than impartingthe information and perspective we have to offer. It is as though the purpose has beeninverted. A look at textbooks in the fields of economics, math, biology, physics, andastronomy, for instance, is enlightening. They present what they know. They do notburden the students with the twists and turns of debate in the field. This is all valuableknowledge for a specialist, but not necessary when introduc'ing people to the insightsgained from intensive learning about other cultures.

As a teacher and educator of a broad public, I need more stories. Our studentsand neighbors need the kind of narratives, the short stories, vignettes, and quotes thatreveal people's lives and their views of reality-in their own voices. These are thekinds of stories that engage the reader and help her to identify with the individuals,even though they may resolve life's questions very differently. This involves muchless concern with categorizing and analyzing, and much more description andempathy.

Multiple Perspectives

This is the radical shift of an interpretive epistemology-to act as a translatorand facilitator of multiple voices/worldviews. It requires a constant rem-a-;n ofourselves as we confront the new insight gained from listening to other realities.Kilani states that anthropology "must never stop tearing itself from particular systemsof thought...including those which are at the origins of its own conditions of existence;in other words, universalistic authority and the modern ideology which accompaniesit" (Kilani 1994).

This is a complex move, but not impossible, and does not necessarily involvethe self-centeredness so prevalent in much of the postmodernist experiments.Criticisms of being overly reflexive and narcisistic have been levied. I recallProfessor Laura Nader referring to "navel gazing." I couldn't agree more. Much ofwhat is being done in the name of anthropology today verges on the fetishization ofanthropology.


I interpret the retreat to hyper-intellectualism as elitism par excellence. Themore esoteric, obscure, and pedantic their language, the more superior some peopleseem to feel. They certainly would be seen as no "ordinary" person. It appears to beanother example of constructions of the "distinctilons" Pierre Bourdieu (1984) soobscurely described. And at this level it is not at all unlike the retreat to ""scientismf"characteristic of the previous generations of scholars that is so often scorned by thepostmodernists .

Continual parsing of experience into ever more esoteric categories is not whatwe need more of at this time on earth. And I think we are no longer there, or nolonger need be anyway. There is an alternative to the self-absorbed stance that hasconsumed so much of the poststructuralist/postmodernist/discursive work of the pastdecade in which the anthropologist has too often become the focus.

Denzin refers to the "Sixth Moment" in anthropology and provides a usefuldiscussion of the possibilities for a new writing in anthropology that is based incommunitarian femnii'msm and a combination of anthropology and the new journalism(Denzi 1997). We have effectively decentered the claim to a singular authoritativevoice inevitable due to the inherent challenge to authority implied in the acceptanceof differing versions of realities. Our consciousness has expanded beyond the purelyscientif'ic. We have opened the door to multiple voices, to different perspectives.

There is an ethical imperative to welcome different voices into our ranks,different approaches and philosophies for what we do as ethnographers. It wasProfessor Berreman who helped me appreciate the diversity within the disciplinewhen I heard him describe the "catholic nature" of anthropology in an introductorycourse.

Anything less is a sham. We cannot argue for cross-cultural understandingand acceptance if we cannot resolve our own tendencies to resist and seek to eliminatedifferences within the profession.

I was reminded of the bickering over differences again recently whilelistening to a discussion on the national radio program "6To the Best of OurKnowledge." The topic was the current thikin about culture among chimpanzees.When asked about what responses this idea had received, the primatologist beinginterviewed remarked that one might expect strong reactions from culturalanthropologists on this question. But, he said, "they're so busy arguing amongstthemselves, we haven't heard much from them." I felt sad and embarrassed that thisis how our profession is talked about.

I must say that I also see some of the bickering that anthropology isreknowned for as akin to the squabbles that arise from "too much ado about nothing-"This appears as a relentless search for meaning because too many folks are engaged in


predominantly self-serving preoccupations rather than engagement with things thatreally matter to our communities.

We must also see that as the profession struggles with competing points ofview about "what anthropology is," how to do it, and how to present it, we are simplyexhibiting the same responses that all people tend to have to people of differentperspectives and different cultures. Our experience as a profession is illustrative ofthe challenge cultural diversity presents to society. Uncertainty, frustration,confusion, irritation-all the things we have all experienced who have lived in aculture other than our own or even when dealing with a neighbor or the shopkeeper intown-are common to the experience of confronting someone who defines the worldsubstantially differently than we do. We should not be surprised if confronting aradically different point of view in our midst makes us uncomfortable and resistant. Ifanyone knows this experience, anthropologists do. And what we claim to possess is auniquely powerful perspective for coming to terms with those different voices.

T'his is what we have to share with our communities and in our classrooms.Our greatest contribution is our experience of difference-the act and process oflearning to understand it, come to terms with it, and perhaps even to appreciate it.This is where our authority lies, in our experience of that "other" reality and how wereconcile it with our own. This experience is distinctive and profound and from it wehave developed the perspective, at once -intensely personal and political, that stilldistinguishes anthropology. We can speak about the disturbance and confusion thatcan go along with confronting difference and the accompanying shift in perspective aswell as ways to resolve that distress, ways to find commonality, understanding, andempathy.

T'his foundation of experience that we build on is sound and badly needed inthe world. We have tools and perspectives that are extremely valuable to people if wedo not retreat to the seemingly safe, but detached, intellectualization.

I think in our own ways most of us are probably trying to do this. My purposehere is simply to encourage us to look carefully at our method of teaching and to pressharder for bringing the best of our experience to our introductory classes.

'SVhat Then, Must We Do?" - Tolstoy

So, once again I will say, We need more stories. Stories from people ofdifferent cultures, in their own voices, that can convey to our students the richness anddiversity of human experience. And stories of our own experiences in learning toreconcile those differences. Publish your stories.

Research on learning and the human brain suggests the need for multisensoryrersentations. We need to create rich experiences that are simnilar in complexity,


challenge, and creativity to those of the experts (Caine and Caine 1991). This requiresdoing a better job of translating our findings into a form that is accessible to outsidersand, most importantly, supporting more experiential learning methods.

This means we need to support people who can do this work. Some of us willalways be working on the more esoteric side of questions. It is in the nature ofscholarship and how we push the limits of knowledge. Yet, it is a mistake to allowthat mode of scholarship to dominate. For ensuring accessibility and relevance, weneed translators, in much the same way we can translate for those of diverse culturesthat we live amongst and from whom we learn so much.

Because most of this translation occurs in the introductory classrooms weneed to support teaching more, especially at the lower echelon schools likecommunity colleges. As I speak here at the University of California, Berkeley, I feelcompelled to remind you that you are at the top of the food chain. That conveys a

particular ethical responsibility to address the needs of those of us closer to thebottom.

We need more teaching positions, more support for developing materials forintroductory courses, and more support for working outside the academy in aneducational capacity. We need more recognition of the specializations in the field thatinvolve translation and application of the rich and profound understandings thatanthropologists generate. Make room on the faculties, support our publications,acknowledge and include these efforts in the prestige economy of the profession. Thisultimately means we must change the reward structure in the profession even if wecannot affect the entire academy. While we may not be able to radically alter thepolitical economy of higher education today, we are in control of the profession. Ifnot us, then who?

Conclusion

The face of education is chanlging rapidly at all levels. It is taking on manynew forms under the rubric of "distance learning." It is being privatized andcomputerized. Stanford University offers an engineering program online; DukeUniversity offers an MBA program online. The for-profit University of Phoenix, withstandardized, packaged curricula, is the fastest growing higher education institution inthe world. In 1998, there were 1.6 million students enrolled in on-line courses.Education happens everyday in the workplace, on the radio, and on cable TVchannels.

Anthropology needs to be a part of this. I hope more people get inspired tocommunicate to a larger audience. Opportunities abound to reach the largercommunity.

Pruitt Teaching as Social Action 21 7

I am reminded of one of the lessons I learned while living in Jamaica. I oftentried to help people with limited opportunities by providing introductions to peoplewith jobs, access to resources, suggestions of things that might offer them a way outof their restricted situation. Yet, they often failed to follow up on introductions madeon their behalf such as not showing up when agreed to for a job opportunity, and invarious other ways failing to take advantage of a new opportunity. As I observed thisclosely, I saw time and again how their behaviors were based on the options, values,and expectations defined by the community surrounding them and their immediatesituation and perspective, while miss'ing sight of the larger viewpoint and possibilitilespresent. It was often a matter of making choices derived from the community inwhich their reputation and prestige were earned. It might have been a choice thatfailed to take advantage of a new opportunity, but it was the choice that made the mostsense to them because it would gain them the most prestige in their community, orminimally would serve to reinforce reciprocal obligations.

I cannot say it was a bad choice for them, but I can say that it frequentlylimited their options. I urge us all not to fall into the trap of segregation into aprofessional prestige economy and miss the larger and much more importantopportunities here.

Works Cited

Agar, Michael1980 The Professional Stranger. New York: Academic Press.

Berreman, Gerald1981 The Politics of Truth: Essays in Critical Anthropology. New Delhi: South

Asian Publishers Pvt. Ltd.

Bourdieu, Pierre1984 Distinction: A Social Critilque of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press.

Caine, Renate Nummela & Geoffrey Caine1991 Making Connections: Teaching & the Human Brain. Menlo Park:

Addison-Wesley.California Department of Finance

2000 California Statistical Abstract, California Department of Finance,Economic Research Unit.

Denzn Norman K.1997 Interpretive Ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century.

Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.


Firth, Raymond1981 Engagement and detachment: reflections on applying social anthropology

to social affairs. Human Organization 40:193-201.

Giddens, Anthony1995 Politics, Sociology, and Social Theory: Encounters with Classical and

Contemporary Social Thought. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

Kilani, Mondher1994 L'invention de I'autre: Essais sur le discours anthropologique. Editions

Payot, Lausanne, cited in Be'nthall, "From Self-Applause through Self-Criticism to Self-Confidence." In The Future of Anthropology. London:Athlone, 9.

Margolin, Malcolm1978 The Ohlone Way, Berkeley: Heyday Books.

1981 The Way We Lived, Berkeley: Heyday Books.

McClenney, Kay M.2001 Celebrations, Austin, IX: College of Education, University of Texas at

Austin.

Ninivaggi, Cynthia C.1999 Teaching Anthropology in Diversity Class: The Pedagogy of Intergroup

Relations. Teaching Anthropology: SACC Notes 6(2): 16.

W. Norton Grubb & Associates1999 Honored But Invisible. New York: Routledge.

Womack, Mari2001 Being Human: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. Upper Saddle

River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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Teaching Social Acxtion: Ethics Access Relevance