Applied anthropology is the aspect of anthropology that serves practical community or organizational needs. In Europe this subfield started in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when ethnographic information was collected and used by colonial Belgian, French, British, Dutch, and Russian administrators. In North America the Mexican government in 1917 was the first to officially recognize its usefulness.

All branches of anthropology have applied aspects. Physical anthropologists work in forensics and industrial design. Archaeologists support historic preservation. Anthropological linguists have designed educational programs and whole writing systems. Some degree of identification with other disciplines, especially sociology, is frequent. Practitioners may have supplementary credentials in fields such as public health or law.

Among the many professional groups associated with applied anthropology are Anthropology in Action (in Britain), the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) and the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (in the United States), and the Society of Applied Anthropology (in Canada). France, Russia, and India have government departments devoted to anthropological research, some of which has applied value. Since the 1980s anthropologists working outside of research institutions at times have been called “practicing anthropologists.” Applied or practicing anthropologists are almost never licensed or certified. They may, however, perform legally mandated studies, such as environmental impact assessments or gender analyses, for governments or international agencies.

The support of policy-related decision making is common to much of applied social or cultural anthropology. The typical approach is holistic and gives attention to context. Flexible research methodologies often combine statistical techniques with participatory, qualitative methods such as participant observation, case studies, focus groups, key informant interviews, or rapid appraisal. The work may entail service as a “culture broker” or even conflict mediation. Some practitioners become advocates promoting specific groups’ interests. “Action anthropologists” work as insiders to help manage change and build self-sufficiency. Applied activities are rarely documented in widely accessible publications.

Applied anthropology has made positive contributions to public life. Industrial research in the 1930s and ’40s influenced modern business administration and management techniques and theories. In many countries, including Australia, Canada, India, Mexico, Russia, and the United States, anthropologists have helped to negotiate or implement policies strengthening indigenous peoples’ rights. On a global scale, Franz Boas deserves credit for stimulating the research that proved, as a 1963 United Nations declaration states, “that any doctrine of racial differentiation or superiority is scientifically false.”

Present-day employment of applied anthropologists by industries such as mining (e.g., in Western Australia) shows, on the other hand, that practitioners may work against indigenous peoples’ interests rather than for them. Anthropologists working on behalf of governments (e.g., Mexico or China) have at times promoted an approach to “acculturation” that disregards indigenous peoples’ social needs and values.

Applied anthropology tends to be a controversial pursuit. Early anthropologists’ claims of “ethical neutrality” vis-à-vis colonial policies were challenged in France and Great Britain. Conflicts about involvement in the Vietnam War and other Cold War projects created deep rifts in American anthropology during the 1960s and ’70s. In the 1980s American, British, and Canadian professional associations responded to such conflicts by writing codes of ethics establishing minimum (but nonenforceable) standards for professional conduct. Ongoing debates sustain a wholesome concern about moral and political dilemmas posed by some applied projects. Some of the most vigorous critiques are written by applied anthropologists themselves.

Visual anthropology

Visual anthropology is both the practice of anthropology through a visual medium and the study of visual phenomena in culture and society. Therein lie the promise and dilemma of the field. Associated with anthropology since the mid-to-late 19th century, it has not attained the status of a subdiscipline with a distinct set of theories and methods. Historically, it has been a collection of diverse interests and practices, most notably in the use of visual data for analysis, the application of film and photography as tools in field research, and, to a lesser extent, the dissemination of anthropological ideas through visual media, pedagogical and other public interest applications in education, museums, and commercial and public media. More specifically, there have been two recent developments: the study of all manner of visual representation and communication and, most promising though less widely pursued, the attempt to realize an entire anthropological project through visual media (especially film) alone.

Film and photography have been the longest-standing concerns, but ethnographic film has come closest to achieving genre status and received the most attention and blame. There is still no agreement about the status of ethnographic film in anthropology or in film studies. This ambivalence is due to the 19th-century heritage of anthropology, representing science and positivism on the one hand and humanities, romanticism, and hermeneutics on the other. Add to this the dual components of filmmaking, documentation and aesthetics. Initially wedded to functional theory in anthropology and realist aesthetics in art and literature, film seemed easily adaptable to a “scientific” visual project. Though largely ignored by anthropologists, the aesthetic aspects of film were also present from the beginning, a circumstance that led to 100 years of misunderstanding. Filmmaking and ethnographic requirements are often at odds, compounded by the different competencies demanded by the two disciplines—expertise in both is rarely brought together in one person.

Nevertheless, over the past 100 years, a large body of visual work that is loosely identified as ethnographic has grown up around the world. Films so designated either are made by anthropologists or have significant anthropological components in their production or substance. North American, Australian, and western European varieties of ethnographic film are better known and more available than the significant though less accessible traditions of central and eastern European, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese filmmaking. In the West, even stylistically different bodies of work have been recognized: from the classic films of Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North) to the films of Robert Gardner, Jean Rouch, John Marshall, David and Judith MacDougall, and Tim Asch and Napoleon Chagnon, TV series such as Disappearing World, Odyssey, and the longest-running Japanese TV series, Our Wonderful World.

Today visual anthropology is home to a wide array of approaches and concerns, ranging from cultural studies (with their textual orientation) to new digital media technologies—namely, the Internet (with its worldwide reach)—and indigenous or intercultural media (film or video produced by members of First Nations [native peoples of North America], non-Western societies, or those outside the majority cultures in Western societies). Some of these new departures rely on visual-aural media as the sole and autonomous means of creating and delivering anthropological knowledge and understanding.

Film still has a role in visual anthropology, but photography and other media, especially new digital technologies, have largely replaced it. Despite many production problems, “ethnographic” films are being made in ever-increasing numbers throughout the world, festivals showcasing these films have multiplied, and new centres and associations of visual anthropology have been set up in many places. With the decreasing cost of new technologies, access to visual communication is being democratized. And, with the gradual liberation of visual expression from dependence on written materials, the stage is set for the flowering of diverse approaches in the garden of visual anthropology, fulfilling the promise of an anthropology entirely through visual means.