Anthropologists in All Walks of Life

#Anthropology #Interdisciplinary #CareerTraining #KnowledgeService

Take Anthropology to the Streets

The USR Program of the Ministry of Education (MOE) primarily aims to bring young people closer to society and their communities through tertiary university courses. During the course of their learning, university students are encouraged to use their creativity and energy to solve social issues. What about university faculty members? What can they do to engage in social issues? Three professors with a background in anthropology came up with a social practice project to make use of their knowledge—Anthropologists for the Future.

Created in December 2012, Anthropologists for the Future is a Facebook page that aims to introduce anthropology to non-academic people in different fields, as knowledge on the subject usually stays confined within the boundaries of academia, causing anthropology students to have a narrow view towards their career path and prospects. In 2014, I returned to Taiwan from the US and started working with page co-founders Huai-Hsuan Chen (currently Project Assistant Professor of D-School, NTU) and Mokki Hsiao (real name being Tsung-Jung Hsiao, currently a food writer and mediaperson) to organize all kinds of anthropology activities in Taipei. The three core objectives of the activities have been to promote anthropology to the general public, introduce interdisciplinary anthropology career paths, and cultivate interdisciplinary anthropology talent. In 2020, Ting-Yu Wang (Assistant Professor of the Graduate Institute of Museum Studies, Fu Jen University) also joined the team in operating the page.

To promote anthropology to the general public, Anthropologists for the Future shares two news articles daily with short summaries and comments to help anthropology enthusiasts stay up-to-date with the latest research and news. The Facebook page has been running for eight consecutive years and has become a gateway for the general public to learn about anthropology and relevant cultural knowledge. Our team also writes column articles on a periodic basis to share the latest interdisciplinary applications of anthropology along with their reflections. In addition, our team organizes annual book-sharing events in Taipei to introduce the latest subject-related books or themed topics to anthropology-lovers. Moreover, I have received venue sponsorship to hold monthly anthropology book talks at the Eslite Bookstore in SOGO Kaohsiung, where a number of anthropologists and authors from various fields have been invited to share their knowledge with Kaohsiung residents. To date, the book talks have been one of the longest-running series of humanities and social sciences talks in southern Taiwan.

To introduce interdisciplinary career paths to anthropology students, our team has invited standout anthropology graduates who work in different fields to talk about how they apply anthropological knowledge and methods in their respective industries. For instance, for an online event that took place in early September this year, different generations of female anthropology graduates were invited to share how they have applied what they learned to their work and how to improve their competitiveness in the industry from the standpoint of women and women empowerment. The speakers included Liao Yunchan (Director of Opinion@CommonWealth Magazine), May Liu (Fitness YouTuber/blogger and Founder of May U Fit), and Ying Lin (Founder of OWL Consulting.co). We have also invited journalists, writers, nurses, UX researchers, editors, curators, social enterprise founders, international NGO workers, cultural and creatives professionals, and regional revitalization experts, among many others, to share their stories.

To cultivate interdisciplinary talent, we hold periodic workshops on UX research, design thinking, thick-data mining and application, and body mapping. It is hoped that through the events, anthropology students and students from other related departments with future plans outside of academia can acquire practical job skills, while young working people can learn how anthropology can be applied in the workplace.

Anthropologists for the Future and USR Projects

To put knowledge into social practice, Anthropologists for the Future also directly and indirectly works with different USR projects. For instance, I am one of the co-directors of National Sun Yat-sen University's USR type-C project, The City as a Commuseum. For years, I have guided students to transform the local Yancheng business district and community in Kaohsiung City into a creative street block. Several activities have been held to invigorate the community in a creative and innovative manner, such as holding a children's game day and a night event named Don't Sleep in Yancheng: The ZOO. The book talks regularly held at the Eslite Bookstore in SOGO Kaohsiung have also become an extension of the USR courses. At the book talks, students can learn about field research skills, regional revitalization, playground design, community design, and many other topics.

Professor Huai-Hsuan Chen serves as a co-director of NTU's USR project, NTU Plus. She co-teaches Fieldwork Workshop, a practice-based course, with instructors from other fields to practice the spirit of “Anthropologists in All Walks of Life.” She also leads NTU students to Yilan to study models and mechanisms of mobile learning. In this way, the larger field of Yilan and the smaller field of NTU become spaces for open co-learning, where local people in different locations are the subject of the fields. Together, they manifest the concept of a living museum in response to local needs for quality education and those of the general population. Professor Chen also invites Lin Cheng Yi, a partner with Anthropologists for the Future, to give students a deeper understanding of experience and ritual designs.

Ethnographic fieldwork in anthropology is a common methodology used in USR projects. The concept means that teachers and students stay in a community for an extended period of time so as to gain a deeper understanding of the local social context and therefore discover the community's pending issues or developmental potential. Professor Chen, Mokki Hsiao, and I expect that everything the students have learned in ethnographic fieldwork USR projects will make them outstanding Anthropologists for the Future.

※ Anthropologists for the Future

We are committed to promoting anthropology to the general public and providing knowledge services. We are also devoted to promoting the interdisciplinary application of anthropology and the application of anthropology skill sets in career training. We strive to accomplish the following tasks:

A. Running the Anthropologists for the Future Facebook page.

B. Holding interdisciplinary-themed lectures and workshops on anthropology in Taipei on a periodic basis.

C. Holding interdisciplinary themed lectures on anthropology in Kaohsiung on a monthly basis.

D. Having published two books about anthropologists in various walks of life, which respectively are 百工裡的人類學家 (Anthropologists for the Future ) and 百工裡的人類學家2: 厚數據的創新課 (Anthropologists for the Future 2: A Innovation Course Using Thick Data).

Contact: cafesea1020@gmail.com