Anthropologist observes native academics in their natural habitat

Anthropologists seem to get more interested in academic culture. Not long ago we heard about anthropologists studying students. Now, anthropologist Rena Lederman is doing fieldwork among her her fellow academics. She is writing a book called “Anthropology Among the Disciplines,” which will examine the distinctions among several academic fields and explore how and when those borders become important, according to News at Princeton.

In an era when academia is emphasizing interdisciplinarity, Lederman sees significant differences in how anthropologists, sociologists, historians and social psychologists approach their fields, she says:

"My topic is not conventional perhaps, but my approach is classic participant observation: I attend closely to how disciplinary distinctions come up in everyday conversations. I pay attention to how scholars in one field talk about other fields or how they might defend their own if they feel it’s being challenged."

“She’s one of a handful of people who’s taking the opportunity to reflect ethnographically on the kinds of institutional lives that academics live,” said Don Brenneis, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Santa Cruz. “It’s complicated for different reasons when you’re working with your own tribe.

>> read the whole story in News at Princeton

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