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The Maturing of Anthropology
Brief about:
Journal Article (2023)
Written by:
Exploring anthropology’s future as a discipline bridging local ethnographic understanding and global insights while re-evaluating ethical commitments and expanding its role in addressing contemporary challenges.
Anthropology approaches ”maturity” in the midst of a complex, globalised world, evolving beyond its colonial past and historical methods that often treated studied populations as evolutionary stages. Shifts over the past five decades have moved the field toward inclusivity, ethical rigour, and decolonial methods, guided by thinkers who have brought critical self-awareness to the discipline’s origins. This ongoing transformation strengthens anthropology’s value as both a social science and a humane practice.
Anthropology’s enduring relevance lies in its commitment to ”life as lived” research, grounded in deep ethnographic involvement that reveals individuals’ social worlds rather than relying on broad surveys or experimental data alone. This methodological approach captures people’s lived experiences of technology, privacy loss, and social inequalities, ensuring that anthropology continues to contextualise global issues within specific, human experiences. Emphasising inclusivity, critique, and empathy, a maturing anthropology can offer nuanced insights to address structural inequalities, foster understanding, and engage non-academic audiences with ethnographic knowledge.
Key findings
- Anthropology's dual focus on local ethnographies and universal insights underlines its relevance in a complex global world.Evidence
Recent projects have demonstrated this through digital technology, enabling real-time comparisons of field observations. For example, Miller notes that digital anthropology has increasingly adopted comparative methods that link local, individual experiences with global phenomena, fostering cross-cultural understanding and insight into shared human challenges.
What it meansThis combined approach uniquely positions anthropology to offer deeply informed perspectives on global issues while preserving an appreciation for individual human experiences across diverse settings.
- Ethnographic methods are crucial for understanding social impacts of digital technologies, contrasting with big-data approaches that lack context.Evidence
Research on smartphone use highlights how users in different communities adapt the same technologies, such as Douyin (China's version of TikTok) and TikTok, in culturally distinct ways. This reveals how individuals engage with technologies differently, resulting in varied social impacts.
What it meansBy focusing on human interactions with technology within specific cultural contexts, anthropology underscores the need to consider the broader social meanings that digital tools hold in various communities, enhancing digital anthropology's relevance.
- Empathy is central to anthropology's mission to counter xenophobia and bridge divides, a value increasingly vital in today's fragmented world.Evidence
For example, Miller's studies on smartphone use involved researchers teaching digital literacy courses to older populations, enhancing researchers' understanding of digital exclusion and the elderly's experiences with complex technologies. This kind of empathetic field engagement is essential to anthropology's approach.
What it meansAnthropology's foundational emphasis on empathy offers a powerful framework for understanding and reducing social divides, equipping it uniquely to address ideological and cultural fragmentation in global societies.
- Ethical standards in anthropology prioritize locally relevant approaches to privacy and consent over universal protocols, which may lack contextual sensitivity.Evidence
Miller points to the practice of long-term participant observation as essential to building context-specific ethical standards, allowing researchers to navigate complex ethical terrain in ways that standardized ethics regulations may fail to address.
What it meansAnthropology's commitment to context-driven ethical practice provides a model for ethical sensitivity that is crucial in understanding and respecting the intricacies of local ethical expectations, thus minimizing harm in diverse research settings.
Helpful resources
- BackgroundUCL Press open access libraryUCL Press have made all their books open access as well as translated into the languages of the field areas in order to try and make the material available locally! A great resource for academic papers.Visit resource ↗
- PublicationThe Good Enough Life
- PublicationThe global smartphone
- PublicationAgeing with Smartphones in Ireland
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The Maturing of Anthropology
Cite this brief: Miller, Daniel. 'The Maturing of Anthropology'. Acume. https://www.acume.org/r/the-maturing-of-anthropology/
Brief created by: Professor Daniel Miller | Year brief made: 2024
Original research:
- Miller, D., ‘The Maturing of Anthropology’ (pp. 1–6) https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13236. – https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10184639/1/Thematuringofanthropology.pdf
Research brief:
Exploring anthropology’s future as a discipline bridging local ethnographic understanding and global insights while re-evaluating ethical commitments and expanding its role in addressing contemporary challenges.
Anthropology approaches ”maturity” in the midst of a complex, globalised world, evolving beyond its colonial past and historical methods that often treated studied populations as evolutionary stages. Shifts over the past five decades have moved the field toward inclusivity, ethical rigour, and decolonial methods, guided by thinkers who have brought critical self-awareness to the discipline’s origins. This ongoing transformation strengthens anthropology’s value as both a social science and a humane practice.
Anthropology’s enduring relevance lies in its commitment to ”life as lived” research, grounded in deep ethnographic involvement that reveals individuals’ social worlds rather than relying on broad surveys or experimental data alone. This methodological approach captures people’s lived experiences of technology, privacy loss, and social inequalities, ensuring that anthropology continues to contextualise global issues within specific, human experiences. Emphasising inclusivity, critique, and empathy, a maturing anthropology can offer nuanced insights to address structural inequalities, foster understanding, and engage non-academic audiences with ethnographic knowledge.
Findings:
Anthropology’s dual focus on local ethnographies and universal insights underlines its relevance in a complex global world.
Recent projects have demonstrated this through digital technology, enabling real-time comparisons of field observations. For example, Miller notes that digital anthropology has increasingly adopted comparative methods that link local, individual experiences with global phenomena, fostering cross-cultural understanding and insight into shared human challenges.
This combined approach uniquely positions anthropology to offer deeply informed perspectives on global issues while preserving an appreciation for individual human experiences across diverse settings.
Ethnographic methods are crucial for understanding social impacts of digital technologies, contrasting with big-data approaches that lack context.
Research on smartphone use highlights how users in different communities adapt the same technologies, such as Douyin (China’s version of TikTok) and TikTok, in culturally distinct ways. This reveals how individuals engage with technologies differently, resulting in varied social impacts.
By focusing on human interactions with technology within specific cultural contexts, anthropology underscores the need to consider the broader social meanings that digital tools hold in various communities, enhancing digital anthropology’s relevance.
Empathy is central to anthropology’s mission to counter xenophobia and bridge divides, a value increasingly vital in today’s fragmented world.
For example, Miller’s studies on smartphone use involved researchers teaching digital literacy courses to older populations, enhancing researchers’ understanding of digital exclusion and the elderly’s experiences with complex technologies. This kind of empathetic field engagement is essential to anthropology’s approach.
Anthropology’s foundational emphasis on empathy offers a powerful framework for understanding and reducing social divides, equipping it uniquely to address ideological and cultural fragmentation in global societies.
Ethical standards in anthropology prioritize locally relevant approaches to privacy and consent over universal protocols, which may lack contextual sensitivity.
Miller points to the practice of long-term participant observation as essential to building context-specific ethical standards, allowing researchers to navigate complex ethical terrain in ways that standardized ethics regulations may fail to address.
Anthropology’s commitment to context-driven ethical practice provides a model for ethical sensitivity that is crucial in understanding and respecting the intricacies of local ethical expectations, thus minimizing harm in diverse research settings.