sNAPAshots: Chip Colwell

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Transcript

Interviewer 0:08
Welcome to sNAPAhots conversations with professional, practicing, and applied anthropologists.

0:14
[On Screen Text] Chip Colwell. Wenner-Gren Foundation. Anthropological Archaeologist.

Chip Colwell 0:24
I’m an anthropological archeologist. I’m a researcher, and I am also a editor at Sapiens magazine. Most immediately I got interested in anthropology because of a high school teacher named Elliot Lacks who convinced the high school administration to for somehow to let him teach an anthropology class. And he was a spectacular teacher and mentor. Introduced me the field I had no idea existed, but it brought together a lot of my then interests in history and culture, in the land, kind of the adventure of of finding out what it meant to be human. He would take us to the zoo to watch closely the the behavior of primates. We went to visit archeological sites, and it really just ignited this total passion in a 16 year old me, for the questions around being human.

Interviewer 1:23
[On Screen Text] How has the Anthropological mindset enhanced your contribution to your workplace?

Chip Colwell 1:23
Being an anthropologist involves having a set of theories, a set of tools, but I think most fundamentally, it’s a kind of worldview. And so once you begin to understand some of the most foundational ideas in the field, it becomes a lens to see the world. And so whether you know I’m thinking about hierarchies in the workplace, you know whether it’s thinking about symbolism and the kind of symbols that we use and the clothes we wear, or the language we’re using the things that we present behind us in our zoom calls the kind of symbols of our identity. It’s just this. For me, it’s this kind of permanent way of seeing the world. It’s what my colleague Gillian Tet calls Anthro vision. You know? It’s just a perspective that once is there is very hard to erase.

Interviewer 2:25
[On Screen Text] What is the one thing about the practice fo anthropology that nobody told you about as a student?

Chip Colwell 2:25
You know, I think there’s a couple things that come to mind, so I’m just trying to pick one. I think one thing that I’ve reflected on through the years is the reality of just how messy and discordant the research process can be and how discordant anthropology out in the world can actually be. I think my initial concepts of anthropology as I was coming up in the field was that it’s kind of in that a little bit, in that scientific mode of you have a question, you do some research, you get an answer, you know, and you put your answer out in the world. And I think I’ve just grown through the year to see how every single part of that entire process is a tangled mess, you know. So the kinds of questions we ask, where do those questions come from? Who gets to decide which questions are valid, which are asked, which are pursued, which are funded? That’s just as a starting point, which is the beginning of any anthropological inquiry in the world. That’s incredibly messy. Then, when you’re doing the research itself, as I’ve been talking about, you have stakeholders. You have different kinds of voices and perspectives that you’re trying to incorporate and address. I’ve had projects, you know, out in the real world that go really smoothly, and others that essentially collapse upon themselves, because people just can’t get along. So, you know, actually putting a project together to try, even just try to answer the question, can be very difficult, and have all kinds of challenges. And then putting those ideas out in the world also have all kinds of complications, where to put them out. Who gets to decide what ideas are put out? Who proves what kind of publications, what kind of pay walls do those ideas stay stuck behind? What kind of pay walls are broken through and those ideas get out into the media, to the news, to communities, to corporations, whoever may be invested in the practice of anthropology. So I think, yeah, definitely one element of doing anthropology out in the world is just truly how complicated and messy it can often be.

Interviewer 4:57
[On Screen Text] What advice would you give to future anthropologists seeking roles in professional, practicing, and applied fields?

Chip Colwell 4:57
I would love to see our discipline take on much bigger questions that truly have something at stake for more people. In my view, anthropology, through kind of the twists and turns of the discipline’s maturation through the years, I think, has too often been pigeon-holed as a field that is studying the quirky little corners of the human universe. We’ve, I think, handed over some of the biggest questions of human existence to other fields, like social psychology, even business economics. Those fields are tackling, I think, some of the most pressing questions that we face as human beings right now. So, you know, I would love us to move much more towards the front of conversations around big questions that can affect so many of us on so many levels, whether you know it has to do with human rights and migration, whether it’s climate change, whether it’s just the pursuit of happiness. You know, there’s so many parts of what it means to be human that I think anthropology can have a clear voice in and yet our voice has often been hushed or pushed to the corners of the room. So I’d love us to move back towards kind of the really big anthropology, the big questions of human existence, the whys of of how we get along, how we don’t get along, how we can fix our problems. And I think that would make for a much more productive anthropology, much more impactful anthropology on the world. I All these years later. You know, I’ve been in the field now for if you include my high school years, 30 plus years, and I every year as part of my job, I look at the work of hundreds and hundreds of anthropologists. I still continue to be profoundly hopeful about the promise of the field, the foundational ideas of anthropology, of what we share as humans, the human universals, and yet the breathtaking and wondrous diversity of humanity within those universals, those kinds of those just core ideas of within the field and how they’re expressed through our theories and methods, I continue to have deep hope for their potential impact To make humanity better. So I think it’s just to offer a a kind of optimism for the field, and to encourage everyone you know who’s interested and they also share in that promise to pursue it and find their own path in it.

Credits 7:57
PRODUCED BY Niel Tashima Cathleen Crain Joshua Liggett DIRECTED BY Reshama Damle EDITED BY Whitney Margaritis ADDITIONAL FOOTAGE VIA PEXELS BY: Kindel Media, Cottonbro Studio, Monstera Production, Fauxels, Rone MUSIC VIA PIXABAY: “Fat Chillin” by Lazy Chill Zone, “Early Morning LoFi HipHop Background” by Fassounds, “Goog Night LoFi Cozy Chill Music” by Fassounds, “LoFi Girl” by Snoozy Beats

Interviewer 8:01
[On screen text] Like what you see. Let us know, find us at PracticingAnthropology.org, LinkedIn, meta, X, BlueSky and YouTube.

Credits 8:09
[On Screen Text] Many Thanks to NAPA’s Governing Council for supporting sNAPAshots. NAPA is a section of the Anthropological Association.

Volunteer Plug 8:14
[On Screen Images] Starbursts with the words: Social Media, Organization, Promotions, and Events. [On Screen Text] Want to volunteer with NAPA? We’d love to hear from YOU! Contact: ntashima@ltgassociates.com

AAP Plug 8:22
[On Screen Text] Stay connected with 40 Years of The Annals of Anthropological Practice. [On Screen Image] AAP Cover Page. [On Screen Text] https://practicinganthropology.org/communicate/submit-to-the-annals/

Interviewer 8:29
sNAPAshots

Transcribed by https://otter.ai