Studying anthropology in an increasingly competitive job market has not always been easy. Amidst a political climate that has axed anthropology departments, undergraduate students like me are left wondering how a modern anthropology degree can be put to use in an environment that has begun, at times, to devalue the field.
I have found my answer to this question not in anthropology courses, but beyond them, in other disciplines. While pursuing my interest in environment and sustainability, I have begun to realize the value of fieldwork, ethnography, and acute observational skills in the field of environmental justice. Studying various environmental justice cases has shown me that a critical obstacle in issues that disproportionately impact minority populations is a lack of listening and observation from governments, corporations, and powerful actors. When environmental hazards emerge in underprivileged areas such as rural or marginalized communities, the prevailing issue is a lack of attention and effort to explicate the true problem.
I have come to understand that as environmental and climate change issues grow increasingly complex, identifying the hazard is only a smaller portion of a larger entanglement of issues. When governments and corporations are left to conduct public health studies and craft solutions to localized issues, human perspective can easily escape the equation. Furthermore, such investigations do not occur in a vacuum, but frequently encounter influences of racial and gender biases, histories of segregation and redlining, and unequal access to political and economic power.
Take Flint, Michigan for example. When government officials switched Flint’s water source under emergency state management, residents began experiencing high levels of lead in their drinking water. Residents began to report various health issues and foul-smelling water, but local and state officials dismissed their concerns. Thus, working to address these issues can benefit greatly from a focus on lived experience and anthropological input.
Popular epidemiology offers an example of where anthropological input can be valuable to environmental justice work. When an environmental hazard causes disease or illness rates to rise in an area, popular epidemiology refers to the lay work done by locals, such as gathering data on health risks like toxic waste or environmental contamination. These findings should emerge in government and corporation workplaces, but a lack of vested interest may ignore them.
Because people and their health are inextricably linked to the environment they live in, local insight brings a further depth to this form of investigation. People have access to valuable data about themselves, the ability to communicate effectively with the affected population, and the benefit of long-term residence in impacted areas. Oftentimes, the members of these communities that become victims of climate change also become producers of critical environmental knowledge, demonstrating that effective public health knowledge and environmental policy should insure the inclusion of these frontline communities. Thus, popular epidemiology shows us the value in treating local experiences and knowledge as meaningful evidence. While communities produce this type of knowledge, which belongs to them, anthropologists can bring an additional form of expertise by conducting structured interviews, examining different groups, and tracing relationships among locals, governments, and other external actors.
The anthropologist will ask questions such as: “How do residents themselves define the issue? Who bears the largest burden? And, whose knowledge is treated as credible scientific evidence From there, an anthropologist is able to produce a broader explanation of what has gone on from a sociocultural perspective, and inform ongoing investigations on the issue. By providing policymakers with these findings, anthropologists ensure that local experiences inform not only how to understand an issue, but also how to develop effective solutions and policies.
As an anthropology student hoping to pursue a career in environmental justice, I believe the most important skill that I should continue to hone is my ability to understand people’s stories, experiences, and traditional or local knowledge as valuable evidence. Anthropology has taught me to identify important social patterns within these types of accounts and understand them in relation to the bigger picture. These skills are valuable in any field, but particularly so in environmental justice, where work often involves involvement with communities that have historically struggled at the margins to have their voices heard. I believe environmental justice needs anthropologists, as their work complements the legal, scientific, and political knowledge that is already presented in many situations, and helps to form meaningful relationships between local communities and external actors.
