Wednesday, May 13, 2020

ANTHROPOLOGY - -" Can I get a brutally honest opinion on this major?"

I think you are asking a good good question but for the wrong reason. By this I mean that anthropology is a great major, It has served me well since the1960’s. But to think you can be employed as an anthropologist, that is another question.


When I enter the discipline as an undergraduate one expected that either it was just another liberal art major, or a potential career. As a career, you would go on to Graduate School earn a Ph.D. and retire into a tenured teaching and/or research role. Today, the latter is a rare and very unpredictable career plan and course. 


Remember your major will label you. You should realize that the job label is determined by the employer, not you.  To expect the employer to jump at the "anthropologist" label is to assume that she/he knows what a “rocks and bones” person could do for a marketing, manufacturing, financial or other business. This puts you at a disadvantage if you feel that you have to sell your major and training, rather than yourself. as qualified for the position.


In a global economy, anthropology is the NEW Liberal Arts. As a perspective, anthropology  enables you to understand how different peoples behave and why they do what they do. This is your advantage if packaged to meet the employer’s need.


At the undergraduate level, a traditional 4 field approach — physical/biological, archaeological/ethnohistorical, linguistic/psychological, and cultural/psychological — equipt one to appreciate the role of the human as both an individual biological organism and as a cultural member of society.
This is a perspective that has, in my own case, opened may opportunities and provided an adaptability to respond to changes within and across the job market. 

In today’s employment market, I found that being a generalist gave me the ability to read the market and adapt in advance to societal and economic change.
 As you grow older, you either advance in the organization — changing from technical to administrative role in the specialty or organization. Or you lock yourself into a speciality niche that competes with technological innovation and younger workers with more current state of the art training.


Who would you be competing with? Today, there are many more people looking for work, It’s a global market for skills.  And with technology replacing people through mechanization and AI more traditional human jobs are being lost. The anthropological perspective, if applied effectively, enables you to read the changing socio-cultural environment and adjust to it.


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