Anthropologists have acted as experts and educators on the nature and ways of life of people worldwide, working to understand the human condition in broad comparative perspective. As a discipline, anthropology has often advocated — and even defended — the cultural integrity, authenticity, and autonomy of societies across the globe. Public anthropology today carries out the discipline’s original purpose, grounding theories in lived experience and placing empirical knowledge in deeper historical and comparative frameworks. This is a vitally important kind of anthropology that has the goal of improving the modern human condition by actively engaging with people to make changes through research, education, and political action.

Sam Beck is Senior Lecturer in the College of Human Ecology and Director of the Urban Semester Program at Cornell University. His publications include Manny Almeida’s Ringside Lounge: The Cape Verdean Struggle for Their Neighborhood (1992) and Toward Engaged Anthropology (2013, ed. with Carl A. Maida).

Carl A. Maida is Professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and Director of the Pre-College Science Education Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. His publications include Sustainability and Communities of Place (2007) and Pathways through Crisis: Urban Risk and Public Culture (2008).

“[This] collection fruitfully examines how the turn to public engagement is transforming the discipline, leading anthropologists to reconsider the researcher's subject position and to use new techniques for conducting, communicating, and applying research to communities and publics. Contributors offer candid perspectives on their personal and professional transformations as they turn to a more engaged scholarly practice.”  ·  Krista Harper, University of Massachusetts Amherst

“A truly fascinating read. It should provide countless inspiration for anthropologists of today and tomorrow. The case for public anthropology has now been well made.”  ·  Angie Hart, University of Brighton