Why Practicing Cultural Anthropology Still Has Value for Any Student

it's about what you learn doing real fieldwork...

One of the weddings I documented for a poor local family… This was an arranged marriage with a very unhappy bride. 1998. I was 26.

In November of 2000, I traveled to the American Anthropological Association’s national conference in San Francisco, trying half-heartedly to network while writing my dissertation. The conference experience was miserable, making me question my commitment to the career I had chosen years ago. “Oh, the job boards!… Oh, valley of despond!” one tenured professor blurted out to a colleague with a condescending smile as he passed me on the down escalator. Asshole.

With prompting from a relative before flying into town, I connected with a much older cousin once removed who lived in the Bay Area back then. She was curious about my recent experiences in India and invited me to dinner with her family downtown.

Of course, this meant that her husband would come. We’ll call him Ralph, because he is definitely the sort who sues for defamation.

Ralph is an insufferable narcissist blowhard. He wields his PhD in Physics like a phallic extension (e.g. a highland Papua New Guinea penis gourd). When you first meet him, you’ll learn about the PhD quickly. That’s your first red flag, first of many. After we finished ordering our food, Ralph leaned in aggressively from across the table and said,

“James, tell one practical thing that cultural anthropology contributes to society.”

His tone was NOT curious. He already had his answer. It was technically not a question, either. It was a challenge to a phallic duel. In front of his wife and kids (?!)

Had I been ten years older, I probably would have faked an emergency bowel obstruction and left that dinner before it started. Instead, I paused and mumbled something equivocal in response. I honestly didn’t care at the time if the external world thought my field was worthwhile, yet I was incredulous that a dinner host would challenge the worthiness of the last five years of their guest’s life, including the fieldwork that nearly got him killed three times.

Since that dinner, off and on, I chewed on the idea of issuing a searing retort to Lord Ralph, the ‘under-appreciated’ douchecanoeist of San Francisco Bay. Not that it would change his mind.

Instead of returning fire years later, I have repeatedly talked with college and high school students about my experiences in Tamil-speaking southern India and about applying anthropological sensibilities in business. These discussions helped me synthesize the enormous practical value students can obtain from my old field if they throw themselves into the deep end at least once.

Cultural anthropology’s most lasting contribution is what happens to you when you deploy its core methodology for an extended period - participant observation.

Every intro to anthropology textbook covers “participant observation” up front. I’m sure it has appeared on a thousand college multiple-choice exams.

“What is the primary method of cultural anthropology?” “Participant observation.” Check. Did I get an A?

So, what is this mysterious process?

What Is Participant Observation?

Participant observation is a highly empathetic immersion in an offline social world, a community. It is neither espionage (i.e., arrogant and Machiavellian), nor journalism (i.e., non-immersive), nor a dry survey analysis of anonymous adults (i.e., emotionally uninvolved).

There are many ways to observe a social world in 2025, many of which involve observing from afar. Flippant, remote observations of other groups and communities continue to plague America in poorly contextualized media narratives, charts, etc. The explosion of digital media has made it easier than ever to feed any bigotry with sloppy, de-contextualized observations, thereby stoking the fires of idio-cratic hate (hate on bureaucratic steroids). What is increasingly missing in our voyeuristic world full of surveys and cameras is genuine 1:1 immersion in an alien social world (e.g., moving into and living in a different cultural world). Observing as a participant in a strange social world is what we seldom do in our ordinary lives.

Yet, this kind of immersion is the crucible of extreme empathy, a personal trait badly needed in a multi-cultural America.

It is not easy to initiate participant observation in a community where no one knows you, and you may even need permission to appear. Outside of anthropological fieldwork, the closest thing to it is a simple school-to-school student exchange with family hosts on both ends. At least the exchanges that last for at least a semester.

What cultural anthropologists do, however, involves nation-state permission and far deeper immersion. With this high-level research visa approval, we can drop in like a local ‘student’ living independently as agile lone actors. In most foreign countries, the anthropologist can not work as a way to gain access. Then, we begin networking for stories and information. Additionally, in specific contexts, anthropological networking starts with a highly official, in-person introduction to a local authority - the classic situation in 20th-century research among small, preliterate communities.

But, in an urban field site like mine, there is no ONE authority. Not really. Well, where I did research, there was one powerful local individual, but it took a friendly nudge from a local businessman to get me to realize his power. I had never considered getting the local mayor’s ‘approval’ for my work, and the central government did not require this.

One evening, about six months into my fieldwork, an unusually large man and his buddies from the local Devar community approached me aggressively in the streets. He warned me about running around asking random questions. He wanted to know what the hell I was doing.

I didn’t know him, but his community is known for organized violence in politics and business. It’s not a group you want to piss off. Imagine Italian Brooklyn in the 1930s (minus the guns).

The next morning, I went to see my business friend from the Devar community in a mild panic and asked him, “How can I calm these folks down?” He sipped his morning coffee and smiled. Then, he suggested I have lunch with the mayor. I responded in my usual literal-minded manner (when I’m stressed), “What would that accomplish? Isn’t he a brahmin priest? He’s not one of them.”

“James, if he has lunch with you, you’re in! The Devars love him. They put him in office!”

I smiled. Ah…ancient temple politics at work. My ‘white man’ mistake.

The lunch happened a week or so later (after an initial coffee meetup), and I was never bothered by anyone again from the Devar community. I became quite popular due to my free photography service! This all led eventually to some killer interviews and coffee stall conversations. And it also led to a neighborhood temple donation solicitation at my front doorstep (numbering easily 25 dudes). (Pro tip: When 25 people show up at your front door to request a donation, ‘no’ is not a feasible answer.)

As you can tell from this vignette, participant observation is a bit of a young person’s game. It places the investigator in a position of extreme psycho-social risk. Embedding alone in a real community requires you to establish protective relationships AND maintain your reputation locally. And to apologize a lot.

The cultural anthropologist is wildly exposed in her work. You are one person, easily dismissed or even attacked. Initially, locals have no incentive to help or protect you. Rejection is common. This requires enormous psychological bravery and a willingness to charm. You must find ways to kickstart reciprocity in order to unlock relationships before you even understand local gift-giving nuances. In post-colonial societies like India, even something as simple as your consistent ‘American’ presence at family events could be a ‘gift’ to a local person trying to angle for more social status.

The structural risk in field anthropology is as humbling as Army boot camp. The boot camp inductee has to dissolve his ego to fit in quickly, or his peers will pummel him into alignment (sometimes literally). The Army group quickly tames any lone wolf. The anthropologist, however, often operates alone and has to build relationships deftly to gain deep access and minimal protection for her work. Not all of us are that great at this kind of relationship building, even when our attitude is relatively humble. But fear for personal safety is a powerful motivator!

Participant observation in a vastly alien cultural world is not just humbling, it’s like being a six-year-old in terms of cultural maturity. You either become curious about how to function better or leave in a frenzy of nonstop irritation at all the constant corrections. No one can give you a ‘download’ for a culture. And your Frommer’s guide does not contain the most subtle aspects of local interactions (because tourists never access this level of depth). Tourists exist inside a series of curated retail transactions.

Your reaction to being humbled in the field should be extreme curiosity. If it is, you will start learning more than you would merely observing from afar (i.e., from books or media or a brief tourist jaunt). By participating directly, you can ask questions about what is happening in real time when the answers become easiest to absorb, apply and remember through bodily practice. Most importantly, immersion alone makes it easier to have your bad assumptions challenged (versus occupying a position in an NGO).

But how do you participate as an outsider? What grants you access to ‘accepted’? Well, it starts with one of the most ancient of human behaviors - gift-giving. This could be philanthropy (i.e., cash donations), goods, or something more clever.

In my fieldwork, I used cash on a limited basis when the family/individual was desperately poor. To many middle-class people, this seems corrupt and gross because, perhaps, they have never been cash poor to the extent of not being able to feed everyone at home properly or regularly. Judgment of cash-based research access as illegitimate reciprocity makes little sense in a society that is permeated by urban poverty and low-level malnutrition, as Madurai was in the 1990s.

But I preferred the ‘clever’ approach, honestly. My go-to choice? Free event photography! Photo albums became my go-to gift to jumpstart a relationship (and whenever cash was openly refused). This service was far more popular than I thought it would be. And it only irritated one person - a local event photographer. Of course, he offered video, too, which was the new fad in the 1990s; so he went upmarket more or less, and we rarely conflicted. He was pretty nice about my interference after we spoke about it.

Public gift-giving inside participant observation generates an interference effect, yes, and it is part of the risk of doing this kind of fieldwork. Yet, photography was a perfect gift in an era before camera-equipped smartphones. I spent a couple of thousand dollars putting together physical photo albums for families that let me into their family events. And I got fed! And I got social access I could never have obtained otherwise.

Side note: The higher-status, wealthy families in the community did not avail themselves of my ‘free’ photography. This access trade-off was fine with me because no anthropologist worth their dissertation focuses on networking solely with non-representative elites in a complex urban society. And I already had access to them in a sense. One of these wealthier folks did actually get up in my face one afternoon and demanded to know if I was ‘truly invited’ to all these private events I was taking pictures at. Good grief. What was he so afraid of? I’ll never know.

Creative social reciprocity is the key tool for accessing a local community that otherwise has no incentive to help you. Or care what you’re doing. And in seeking this out, in part for your safety, the field anthropologist has to become more empathetic to local norms and customs. Maybe not perfectly empathetic, but more than the tourist nearby. More than the journalist on a tight deadline.

Here’s how my analytical brain summarizes the process of participant observation.

Structural humility forces adaptive curiosity and creative reciprocity to obtain access and protection. Reciprocity builds empathy the old-fashioned way, by connecting you to local people.

In reality, field anthropologists practice the art of participant observation along a continuum of intimacy. Some are more intimate than others. In complex communities like the one I did fieldwork in, reciprocity takes different forms and may have different effects on access. Access also varies by gender a lot in Asian societies. My access in India was extremely male-limited. Luckily for my research focus, this permitted me to wander and explore public spaces in ways that American women might have been penalized for doing (in terms of local respect). So, other than widows, sisters, and wives of my closer friends, I had limited access to female perceptions of local social life. As in any scientific experiment, acknowledging this limitation helps with analysis later.

And the Value for Students?

You have probably figured it out by now.

Students at any stage from high school onwards benefit enormously from doing field anthropology in a real-life community or institution. The humbling nature alone is a valuable lesson for so many contexts later in life (e.g., joining a new company, starting a new career, etc.) The key is to adopt a social role of local importance that offers you the ability to kickstart reciprocity. Volunteering is one way to do this. Getting a local job is another. Offering freelance services of general applicability also works!

The value of participant observation for a younger student lies in making oneself structurally humble, curious, and giving in a world where you may or may not agree with what is going on. The outcome is empathy across cultural lines, where your initial, superficial moral judgments/assumption get challenged through more profound empathy for the native perspective. All is not what it appears on the surface. Field anthropology grabs you by the neck and shoves your face in this truth like no other methodology. It’s much harder to hide from your bad, or bigoted assumptions, than scrolling Facebook posts.

One of my initial bad assumptions was that ‘adopting a morally superior attitude’ by local Christians has no social benefit. It’s just obnoxious. As I connected with families and learned about their stories of harassment and discrimination for being Dalit (e.g., from stigmatized caste communities), I realized that the performance of moral superiority (as a Christian) offers an immense psychological power to those who wield it. This bravery helps you persist in a world where being ‘outed’ is a constant risk inside your Christian community as much as beyond it.

Cultural anthropology asks an enormous amount of any one individual and delivers unparalleled personal growth as a result.

Lord Ralph would not understand any of this. After all, he is American arrogance personified.