Relationships Between Theoretical and Applied Anthropology: A Public Health Program Analysis

Abstract

Many, if not most, American anthropologists regard applied anthropology with ambivalent feelings. On the one hand there is a growing feeling that the anthropologist must play a more positive part on the contemporary scene, that his obligation to society cannot entirely be fulfilled by traditional research and teaching. On the other hand there is evident reluctance to come to grips with the "applied" challenge for fear one's scientific integrity will be compromised. This situation stems from the historical and cultural conditions which have surrounded the evolution of the anthropological disciplines. Until recent years, this developmental period corresponded with an era in which the optimistic belief was generally held that society was steadily and automatically becoming more humane and just. Such an outlook was conducive to a scientific point of view which laid stress on research for its own sake, and which held that any and all new contributions to knowledge were justifiable, simply as contributions to knowledge, and not because of their practical import. The goal structure and value system of anthropology were formed under these conditions, so it is natural that maximum prestige came to be attached to theoreticallybased research. Social and economic progress might require the technological application of the fruits of the physical and biological sciences, it was thought, but not of the social sciences.