Careers in Anthropology

The September 1995 issue of the American Anthropology Associations's Anthropology Newsletter reports the results of the 1995 Survey of Anthropology PhDs. First the good news: PhD production remains steady at 400 new degrees per year. Now the not so good news: of those 400 new anthropologists only 42% took jobs in anthropology departments. Now the bad news: of that 42% fully 63% are in non-tenure track jobs.

But one more bit of good news is in order before many readers send off for business school catalogues: there is a thriving job market outside the academy. "Presently," report David Givens and Anthony Jablonski, authors of the Anthropology Newsletter report, "there is no discernible ceiling or cap...for PhD anthropologists targeting the non academic realm for employment.." This issue of the Iowa Anthropology Newsletter looks at the variety of ways in which the Department of Anthropology at the University of Iowa prepares students for careers outside of academic departments. In the articles that follow we focus on career opportunities at the BA, MA and PhD level in all four fields of Anthropology. Through interviews with Department of Anthropology faculty, students, and alumni we present a view of the wide range of opportunities and challenges facing anthropologists in the 1990s.

Iowa Archaeology Graduates Find Jobs Plentiful

While graduates of many academic disciplines struggle to find job opportunities, archaeology graduates from the University of Iowa are finding a strong job market. According to archaeologist Mary Whelan, Associate Professor of anthropology, "I've never heard from an archaeology BA or MA who didn't have a job."

Mary notes that the numerous job opportunities in archaeology come thanks to legislation that ensures the identification and conservation of cultural resources. That legislation requires the employment of archaeologists by any branch of the US government charged with managing land resources. Any private construction requiring an environmental impact statement also requires the filing of a cultural resources survey.

Far from being merely a jobs bill for archaeologists, the goal of this legislation is to protect very fragile cultural resources from the quickening pace of large scale manipulation of the earth's surface. Housing, transportation, and agriculture have been reshaping America since the beginnings of the European migration. In recent years the speed and scale of that transformation have threatened to destroy the primary means of access we have to the ancient history of Native Americans. The protection and preservation of the cultural record of the Americas - cultural resource management - is vital to efforts to halt the destruction of Native American cultures.

As a result of this emphasis many government agencies - Departments of the Interior and Transportation, Army Corps of Engineers, and other branches of the military - and private firms employ archaeology graduates in a wide range of positions. Many jobs are even available to undergraduates, providing valuable summer work experiences. The only requirement for a student entering the summer job market is completion of a summer field school. After that students can gain valuable on the job training in a number of locations. In fact location is at the same time one of the greatest benefits and greatest drawbacks to summer fieldwork. It's a benefit to single undergraduates looking for an exotic location in which to spend their summer. For students with families that same location can turn into a disadvantage.

In the world of apprentice archaeologists a hierarchy of tasks and responsibilities is the order of the day. With a BA and field school training recent graduates enter the profession as "fieldworkers". With experience, some fieldworkers advance to "crew chief". The shortcut to crew chief jobs is to get an MA, but even MA holders must complete a field school and usually have additional experience before becoming crew chiefs. Above fieldworkers and crew chiefs in responsibility and authority are the project supervisors who always have at least an MA and many of whom have completed or are close to completing the PhD.

Many UI archaeology graduates work for the Office of the State Archaeologist (OSA) in Iowa City. OSA conducts evaluations of highway construction sites for the Iowa Department of Transportation as well as private construction projects.

Wendy Combs graduated from UI in December, 1994 and has been working at the OSA in Iowa City ever since. However, she noted this October, "I haven't been in town since March." Working at a site near Ottumwa for seven to ten day stretches, she adds, "you get pretty tired of motels and eating out all the time." As a fieldworker Wendy spends her work day doing everything from Phase 1 work - "walking over fields looking around" - to Phase 3, major excavations. Back in town, lab work consists of washing, labeling, and cataloging artifacts. Despite the time spent away from home Wendy describes her job as challenging and a tremendous learning experience.

Wendy credits her decision to become an archaeologist to the influence of Mary Whelan, who she describes as a "great teacher and a real inspiration for women entering this field." She notes that she has benefited from the growing number of women working in archaeology. "One of the great things about this job is working with a number of strong willed, intelligent, and physically strong women."

Practicing Anthropology in Iowa

Like many recent anthropology PhDs, Kendall Thu found his job through contacts made while he was in graduate school. Kendall is a Research Scientist at the University of Iowa's Institute for Rural and Environmental Health located at the Oakdale Research Campus. In that position he manages several research efforts related to occupational health issues in Iowa agriculture. Recent controversies concerning the environmental and health risks of large scale hog farming in Iowa have put his research at the center of an ongoing debate about the future of Iowa agriculture.

When asked if he envisioned that he would some day be doing this kind of work, Kendall noted that, like most graduate students, he didn't have very clear expectations about future job opportunities. As it is his current position provides a good fit with his doctoral research on the influence of the state in Norwegian agriculture.

Despite some perceptions that applied anthropology is a lower status profession than traditional academic work Kendall says this position provides him with more research opportunities than might be available to a full time faculty member. Other than the single drawback of not providing the security that goes with a tenured academic position, applied anthropological research is equal in all ways to traditional academic research. And it adds the benefit of being directly relevant to a variety of pressing social issues. "The issue of whether anthropology should be humanistic or positivistic is irrelevant," Kendall notes. "These are important issues but I don't have time to deal with them. The important issues for Iowans involve the rise in diseases and injuries and the ravaging of rural communities that stems from the activities of corporate swine producers."

Kendall sees a tremendous potential for the professionalization of anthropology. Although anthropologists are well aware of the unique perspective that ethnographic fieldwork brings, the benefits of that perspective have to be demonstrated to others. When asked to assess the job prospects for applied anthropologists Kendall noted, "you have to call what you do something other than ethnography, if you want to prove your worth." He added that the distinctive feature of applied anthropology is really its methodology. The importance and distinctiveness of that methodology underscores the continual blurring of anthropology into other disciplines where ethnography sheds light on long standing problems. Kendall adds that he also brings anthropology's holistic framework to being part of an interdisciplinary team at the Institute. Working to fit the parts of the team together provides yet another way for anthropology to benefit an organization. Despite, or maybe because of, being the only anthropologist at the Institute, Kendall concludes "My contribution is clear."

Tobacco and Smoking Control Programs in Micronesia

Mac Marshall is paying back some old debts. Since doing his doctoral fieldwork in the Federated States of Micronesia over 25 years ago, Mac has spent a good part of his career working with the people of the FSM. Now, as part of a research project on the effects of tobacco use in Micronesia, he has initiated a program that will not only contribute to reducing the use of tobacco but will also provide FSM citizens with research skills geared to helping them combat the epidemic of tobacco related diseases.

"As tobacco use has risen in the FSM I've seen an increase in the amount of smoking related diseases and deaths. And I've seen friends die," Mac says. As the FSM passed through the epidemiological transition, where the leading causes of death become chronic rather than infectious diseases, the preventable smoking related diseases began to attract the attention of health researchers. In addition to heart disease and lung cancer, which most Americans are familiar with as a result of tobacco use, FSM citizens face health problems related to their environment and to their culture. The presence of wind borne fine silicas in sandy areas often combines with smoking to exacerbate the effects of asthma and other lung diseases. In addition the combined effects of tobacco with the widespread practice of chewing betel are at this point unknown.

Increasing awareness of tobacco-related health problems led the FSM Department of Health Services to sponsor Mac's research. Last spring, Mac completed an initial survey of agencies and resources in the FSM in order to draw together the elements that will contribute to both the academic and applied aspects of this project. One of the ways Mac plans to evaluate tobacco use is through a "brand-price survey" an attempt to identify who markets what, where, and at what price. Using local residents trained as data collectors Mac hopes to survey not only tobacco but food products as well. "These data help make an argument that people really respond to - when they see how much money is being spent on cigarettes that could have been spent on food. It shows the opportunity cost of smoking."

Mac's work provides an example of the ways in which academic and applied research can be carried out by anthropologists. It also demonstrates the many cross disciplinary connections that come with medical anthropology and other areas of applied anthropology. Those connections often entail working with teams of scientists rather than conducting independent research. When asked what it was that anthropologists could contribute to the kinds of multidisciplinary teams that are often used in developing country health research, Mac noted that "anthropologists are much more cognizant of the multicausality of phenomena. We are more tolerant of a certain amount of fuzziness in the data, more willing to employ rigorous qualitative studies to complement quantitative work." He also advised those planning to work in applied anthropology, especially medical anthropology, to consider additional training outside of an anthropology department, particularly in biostatistics and research methodology, or to consider a Master's degree in Public Health.

Of Dictionaries and Spies

At first glance linguistics seems to be the one field in anthropology least likely to have applications outside of the academy. In one sense, as Nora England, linguist and Chair of the UI Department of Anthropology notes, that perception is true - most linguistics jobs in the US are in academe. The exceptions to that rule illustrate both the positive and the negative effects of applied social science. In this section we contrast the role of academics and native linguists with the linguistic work carried out by Christian fundamentalist sects in Latin America.

Nora describes her own work, developing dictionaries and grammars of dialects of Mayan languages, as "entirely applied work". In addition, she and other US academics also assist in training native speakers as linguists. Many of these students, especially among Native American tribes in North America, go on to work as tribal linguists. Tribal linguists may be involved in a wide range of activities from providing linguistically adequate instructional materials and general literacy materials to language standardization projects and language promotion. Efforts on the part of academic linguists to provide training for native linguists are relatively few. Nora notes that only her own position as an academic allows her the freedom to pursue this kind of effort. Most university linguistics departments are highly theoretical in approach, and applied work, such as training native linguists, is primarily the province of anthropological linguists. Nora does note that in many Native American Studies programs this kind of work often has a stronger backing as part of an attempt to encourage language recovery among a younger generation of Native Americans.

One of the more troubling developments for anthropological linguists is the work of the notorious Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) in Central America and many other parts of the world. The SIL is part of the fundamentalist Wycliffe Bible Society which translates the bible into many languages and dialects. The group has frequently been accused of having ties with right wing dictatorships and the Central Intelligence Agency. Though Nora characterizes the quality of SIL's linguistics work as ranging from poor to above average, she notes that some SIL employees have graduate degrees from US linguistics programs. Several SIL members hold university faculty positions in the US.

The SIL represents one of the challenges to applied anthropology as the field tries to shed its old association with colonialism. Nora described her experience of a long car ride with a Mexican who upon learning that she was a linguist refused to talk to her, assuming that all linguists worked for SIL. Nora also described the polarizing effect on communities when SIL staff provide otherwise unobtainable goods and services to new converts. In Guatemala the SIL is believed to have collaborated with the military in setting up "model villages" which were little more than concentration camps for the Mayan Indians. SIL members often conceal their connections to the organization both in host countries and in the US. Such duplicitousness, part of the larger strategy of fundamentalist groups to "infiltrate" academia, contradicts the ethical standards adhered to by anthropologists. The contrast between Native Americans trained in linguistics to help sustain their own language and the work of American fundamentalists trained in linguistics to pursue a much different religious and political agenda, illustrates the ethical difficulties confronting anthropologists when they move beyond lecture halls and libraries.

From Biological Anthropology to Law School

UI senior Allison Werner credits a strong high school science curriculum for her interest in anthropology, particularly biological anthropology. Allison brings a number of intellectual interests together to form an eclectic vision of her own future and the future of anthropology. Building on another skill developed in high school, Allison is a also a member of UI's nationally prominent debate team. Her views on the relationship between these two seemingly diverse interests illustrate the ways in which the holistic goals of anthropology provide a creative stimulus for her own and the discipline's future development.

Debate, Allison notes, has helped her understand the importance of argument in anthropology. She plans on combining the two approaches in her Honors Thesis which will look at narrative structure in physical anthropology's depiction of human evolution. Allison stresses that students need to become more aware of how arguments are constructed and defended. The analytical skills needed by debaters provide a good framework for studying and applying many disciplines, including anthropology. To that end Allison and other members of the debate team are encouraging and participating in an effort to introduce debating principles into the UI curriculum.

After graduation, Allison is considering attending law school at UI. She sees several possible ways in which her background in anthropology can fit into a legal career. These possibilities range from legal issues surrounding the patenting of organisms to the rights of indigenous peoples. Allison describes these issues as "the kinds of things anthropology can study but has a hard time affecting change in." As she sees it, the important task both for herself and for the discipline is to demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of an anthropological education to a wide variety of human problems. In Allison's words, "if only more people knew about the kinds of things we can apply this to..."

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

The kinds of things we can apply this to are even broader than these articles suggest. That may be why reports of the disintegration of anthropology are always premature. What appears, even to insiders, as a confusing muddle of interests and inclinations is in fact a discipline continually reinventing itself in response to the people it studies. That process of reinvention is what holds the promise for future careers in anthropology.

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