Thinking outside anthropology's box: Socializing undergraduates through collaborative research, teaching, and service
Annals of Anthropological Practice
Engaging Undergraduates through Neuroanthropological Research
Anthropology Now
Neuroanthropology is an increasingly popular brand of anthropology that combines anthropological ... more Neuroanthropology is an increasingly popular brand of anthropology that combines anthropological ethnography with neuroscientific methods to understand the brain in culture. However, in situ fieldwork limits the utility of neuroscientific methods that require large, expensive, or invasive equipment. Neuroanthropological approaches therefore compromise some precision to use smaller, more affordable, and minimally invasive versions of neuroscientific tools or utilize rapid assessment ethnography when taking advantage of lab-based facilities. Developing the expertise to efficiently use such methods involves another compromise—training students, especially undergraduates—as ethnography and brain science both involve intensive training. This problem can be overcome using a best-practices interdisciplinary approach, the core of which involves a lab-based organization, multiple overlapping projects, and a workbook system to guide independent fieldwork. The lab format provides a basis for project development, training, collaboration, and facilitates developing team esprit de corps. Working multiple projects enables students to experience all phases of research and gain exposure to ethnography and neuroscience methods, though in a non-linear fashion. Workbooks provide guidance for students in ethnographic data collection through focusing them on a systematic project but with a high degree of flexibility. In just over three years, approximately 45 students have received neuroanthropological training through our program, many have presented findings at numerous conferences, and a handful have already gone on to prestigious graduate programs. This instructive approach to neuroanthropology is limited in methodological sophistication and grain of data but, despite this, is a fruitful way both to train new researchers and advance the field of anthropology.
Examining rural and urban cultural models of nervios in Honduras through a biocultural lens
My talk today is based on data collected in 2012 in the Limon Province of Costa Rica in conjuncti... more My talk today is based on data collected in 2012 in the Limon Province of Costa Rica in conjunction with Max Stein and Andrew Bishop. Max was a master's student then and is currently a PhD candidate in our program at the University of Alabama. Andrew had just received his bachelor's degree from UA and was working in my lab to develop his exposure to human behavioral ecology and has since gone on to graduate school at Arizona State. And this is Pastor Melinda Johnson, our gateway informant for this study. We were interested in testing the parasite-driven wedge hypothesis among a contemporary population, a model that many of you are already familiar with but about which I will provide more background shortly.
Field-based data collection provides an extraordinary opportunity for comparative research. Howev... more Field-based data collection provides an extraordinary opportunity for comparative research. However, the demands of pursuing research away from home creates an expectation of unburdened individuals who have the temporal, financial, and social resources to conduct this work. Here we examine whether this myth of the socially unencumbered scholar contributes to the loss of professionals and trainees. To investigate this, we conducted an internet-based survey of professional and graduate student anthropologists (n = 1025) focused on the challenges and barriers associated with developing and maintaining a fieldwork-oriented career path and an active family life. This study sought to determine how (1) family socioeconomic status impacts becoming an anthropologist, (2) expectations of field-based research influence family planning, and (3) fieldwork experiences influence perceptions of family-career balance and stress. We found that most anthropologists and anthropology students come from educated households and that white men were significantly more likely to become tenured professionals than other demographic groups. The gender disparity is striking because a larger number of women are trained in anthropology and were more likely than men to report delaying parenthood to pursue their career. Furthermore, regardless of socioeconomic background, anthropologists reported significant lack of family-career balance and high stress associated with the profession. For professionals, lack of balance was most associated with gender, age, SES, tenure, and impacts of parenting on their career, while for students it was ethnicity, relative degree speed, graduate funding, employment status, total research conducted, career impact on family planning, and concern with tenure (p < .05). Anthropology bridges the sciences and humanities, making it the ideal discipline to initiate discussions on the embedded structural components of field-based careers generalizable across specialties.
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Papers by Max J Stein