#55 Doing Right By Others: Robert Borofsky On The Value Of Anthropology

The Familiar Strange

"Realistically there's many people - maybe most anthropologists - are caught up in their own world, like many people are, trying to just get ahead. That’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is that I try and do [good]. I try and move forward with it." Content Warning: This interview has mention of addictions and the rehabilitation process. In this episode we bring you an interview with Professor Robert Borofsky, Professor of Anthropology at the Hawai'i Pacific University, Founder and Director of the Center for a Public Anthropology, editor for the California Series in Public Anthropology, author of Making History: Pukapukan and Anthropological Constructions of Knowledge, Yanomami: The Fierce Controversy and What We Can Learn From It, and most recently An Anthropology of Anthropology: Is It Time To Shift Paradigms?, and one of the keynote speakers at the AAS Conference last year, where this interview was recorded. It is quite fitting that the theme of the AAS was 'Values in Anthropology, Values of Anthropology', since he, along with our own Kylie Wong Dolan, unpack how to do meaningful anthropology. They explore questions like: who is anthropology serving? If we want anthropology to do good, how do we decide what that 'good' actually is, and how do we measure it? Rob also shares his own fieldwork experiences, emphasizing the importance of longevity and reciprocity in fieldwork relationships, and how to find ways to reach beyond the discipline and ensure that the work anthropology does matters. Quotes, Links and Citations can be found on our website thefamiliarstrange.com If you like what we do and are in a position to do so, you can help us to keep making content by supporting us through Patreon. Our Patreon can be found at https://www.patreon.com/thefamiliarstrange This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association. Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com Shownotes by Deanna Catto and Matthew Phung Podcast edited by Kylie Wong Dolan and Matthew Phung