Applied Anthropology in the Creation and Implementation of Policy
Applied anthropology as discipline, is important to bring a
fair, just, understandable, functional policy framework that will suit the
people who it is being implemented into or for. Cultural or societal values,
virtues, norms, perception and perspective on economic, social, political,
lingual, private and public realm must be brought into consideration when
bringing any sort of policy. The discussion here is on how applied anthropology
may be used in creation and implementation of policy.
The
Language Policy: In the implementation and creation of policy, it
would be wise for economists, sociologist, politicians, statisticians,
bureaucrats and other policy makers to be alert about the culture or society
the policy is being implemented for; that is, it should first take a language
frame work that is suitable for the readers. Wardhaugh, R (2006:01) state how
we need firstly to discuss the relationship between language and society as
well as many functions of language within the society. Taking into account a
society as group of people who reside together and share common aspects, we
also need to see language as what a particular society speak and it has
different formulations across cultural groups, looking at whether the culture
might have monolingual or pluralingual and taking into consideration that what
makes or being defined as language is not universal, each nation or society has
its own view of language.
Athorpe (1997:43) state how the usage of language in
policies has got to do with power, for that it is no longer about informing the
average countrymen but to persuade them, the anthropological outlook would be to
take a different path, see were language is used in a manipulative sense and
correct that; to scrutinise the policy critically through its language. This is
not just about whether the language is a business language or common language
but the propound use of vocabulary; whether it is line with common man’s
perspective. The political, cultural, social and economic intuition hold the
power of language; so it arise within the congruencies; he also state how the
policy its formulation, whether in written or spoken language needs both
institutionalists and mechanism examination. He talks about how genre as policy
writing tool, making the artefact analysable; “providing counterpart at the textual level at the concept of
sociological boundaries thereby
defending inquiries from the danger degenerating into purely mechanist,
technical, linguistic analysis”
(Athorpe., 1997:43). The genre needs to be looked into: “The
word comes from the French (and originally Latin) word for 'kind' or 'class'.
The term is widely used in rhetoric, literary theory, media theory, and more
recently linguistics, to refer to a distinctive type of 'text” (Chandler, D.,
2000:01).
Cultural
Contextualisation: The field of anthropology deals with the
cultural framework in an intensive, holistic and comparative analysis; the
cultural mobility across time and cultural influences from one to another
(Belshaw.,1974:520). When talking about development, it is appropriate to
culturally contextualise. Seeing each culture as material and non-material
ideas whereby man has produced and values (Belshaw., 1974:520). There needs to
be a “central to the analysis of culture
to identify symbol, since without symbolization there can be no recognition,
identification, communication, or valuation; valuation is a most important
element in the analysis of cultural processes, since it is central to choice
and decision-making, which in turn are the essential elements of social
action”.
Developmental
Anthropology: Acquiring knowledge about the symbols, values,
communications and choice would be important in answering profound questions” (Belshaw.,
1974:520). Anthropologists also study
social relations, linking up with the work of other social scientists”, what
they need to be oriented on would be number one, the social relations, which
are placed in cultural context, being related to values, communication and choice;
secondly studied from a cross-cultural perspective; thirdly studied with the
objective of cross-cultural comparison; and lastly analysed in a cross-disciplinary
manner (Belshaw., 1974:520).
Anthropological approach may be to draw theoretical perspectives
from their neighbouring social sciences, and hence apply the theories of, for
example, psychology, economics, game theory, ecology, political science,
sociology, to their materials (Belshaw., 1974:520). When looking at the
anthropological approach to development, there needs to be distinction between
of three terms and two spheres of scholarly activity; “the terms are
"growth," "performance" and "development." The
spheres of activity are anthropological contributions to the macro-analysis of
social processes, and the implications of empirical field studies for
development theory and interpretations”(Belshaw., 1974:520).
A New
Approach to Positivistic Classical Economics: The positivists economy theory has now come to connote both the method and the substance of
economic theory. In fact, it is intended as a logical positivist interpretation
of the method of neo-classical theory, even normative economics is not taken
seriously (Katouzian., 1980:43). The positivistic classical economics deals
with empirical validations of what is, whilst normative deals with an
extentialist way of thought, a subjective way should be done or not done. In
addition that can just be subject to scientific methodologies and linear way of
explanation (Shell., 1974:347). Caldwell
(1980:55-6) sates how positivistic way of thought swept into social sciences
such as economics, that what is true should be based on empirical methods and
formulations.
The words which are usually associated with empirical
classical economics such as growth, performance and development are usually
preceded with word economic. Implying
that” the indicators used to judge movement, or used in comparison, are derived
from data about the formal system which provides for the exchange of goods and
services, as recognized by economic statisticians” (Belshaw., 1974:520-21).
Which means these terms are looked into an empiricist and positivistic way of
thought, the cultural outlook is not look into. Which is why there need to be
renamed or redefined as the socio-economic tends. Which is why it is really
appropriate to apply the term social to a social
science or social welfare, since such
sectors may be treated from the point of view of either economic analysis or
anthropological socio-cultural analysis (Belshaw., 1974:520-21).
The classical
economics’ definition of economic sector is not enough, since it can be treated
in terms of cultural components and social relations. There needs to an
attention on “ movements in the economy of such organizations as households,
subsistence production, religious groups, voluntary organizations; and
non-measured elements in socio-economic processes, such as the ideological
influence of business executives upon each other, which are frequently ignored,
or fail to be integrated into an analysis(Belshaw., 1974:521).
Public
Policy: The anthropological way of thought on this matter would be
to critique the presuppositions of policy as legal rational way to get things
done; dismantling the frame of public policy questions with an anthropological approach to uncover the
constellations of actors, activities, and influences that shape policy
decisions, their implementation, and their results (Widel, Shore, Feldman and
Lathrop., 2005:30).They state how in a fast changing world, the anthropological
empiricist and ethnographic methodologies are able to show the way policies
keep on, creating new categories of individuals to be governed. Suggesting how
the long established framework of state
and private, local or national and
global, macro and "micro, top down and bottom up, and centralized and
"decentralized" not only fail to capture current dynamics in the
world but actually obfuscate the understanding of many policy processes.
Anthropological main focus is on globalisation; ethnographic methods; social
network analysis; ethics code (Widel et al., 2005:30).
Health
Care Implementation: There is quite a lot of work that can be done
by anthropological skills in the implementation of public policy, to assist a
holistic outlook on a culture, to avoid the imperial and colonial anthropology
that was used during the Age of Discovery (
Champbell:2010). Medical
anthropology deals with how health and illness are shaped, experienced and understood
in light of global, historical and political forces. We cannot just look into
the physical and biological process of health and disease, to take into account
the disease or illness is part of the life of a person and how this person is
part of a society where many things are at stake’ (Mogensen et al. 2002: 45).
Because living and working conditions and lifestyles have major importance for
health (Hardon et al. 2001: 11). Medical Anthropology being part of
socio-cultural anthropology; has laid out the better way of approaching health
care system, of how there needs to understating and consideration of each
culture’s view of health and illness, the importance of ethno medicine. About
how to just accept western medicine and apply it universally (Champbell:
2010:76-77).
Apthorpe, R. (1997). Writing Development
Policy and Policy Analysis Plain or Clear: On Language, Genre and Power. In,
Shore, C. and Wright, S. (eds). Anthropology
of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power. London: Routledge.
Belshaw, C.S. (1974). The Contribution
of Anthropology to Development. In, Current
Anthropology, vol. 15, no. 9, pgs 520 – 526.
Wedel, (2005). Towards an Anthropology
of Public Policy. In, Annals of American
Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 600, pgs 30 – 51
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