Development, the environment and development policy

Scarlett Epstein, Director of PEGS (Practical Education and Gender Support) and SESAC (Scarlett Epstein Social Assessment Consultancy)

Scarlett Epstein was a pioneer of development anthropology in the 1950s. Since then she has worked in a range of roles including researcher, consultant and adviser. Now in her early eighties, Scarlett's skills remain in great demand. Her career is an example of how anthropological skills can be applied in a range of circumstances and may have influence on a great number of people and places. She thinks that Applied Anthropologists need to acquire skills in working out the policy implications of their findings, as well as establishing links with appropriate policy makers or administrators, and that this will ensure that the effectiveness of the recommendations will be tried out in pilot activities.

Scarlett came to England as a Jewish refugee in 1939 and started her working career as a machinist in one of London's East End sweat-shops. She says of that time: "I knew what it is to have a miserable life. When ultimately I managed to become an academic I was determined to apply my knowledge to help improve the quality of life of the downtrodden." This made Scarlett a pioneer of development anthropology. She says that Applied Anthropology gives her the chance to get to know the socio-economic conditions under which different peoples are operating and enables her to act as mouthpiece for them to help them achieve at least some of their own ambitions.

Scarlett obtained a BSc followed by PhD in Economics from The University of Manchester. While there, she came under the influence of Max Gluckman and M. N. Srinivas. She explains: "It was these two 'Big men' in social anthropology that attracted me to the subject." Scarlett's PhD fieldwork was based in Mysore, South India. Following her PhD she worked as a research fellow at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, and since then has held a range of academic positions across the world, including in the U.S., Australia and the U.K. More recently she was Research Professor at the University of Sussex in the U.K.

While in her academic positions, Scarlett has held numerous consultancy roles. She has worked as a research adviser, as well as advising on development projects. She has also used her knowledge to brief volunteers for Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) before they travelled to their countries of work. Scarlett has worked in a number of locations including India, Africa, Southeast Asia, Papua New Guinea and China, and she speaks several languages, which she has employed during fieldwork. For instance, Scarlett speaks Tolai, which is spoken in East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. Much of her work has been published in reports, books, chapters and articles. As such, her writing appeals to both academic and practice-orientated audiences.

She was involved also in the making of three documentary films: 'Maragoli', which focused on Third World population growth; 'Hump - The Desert Dairy', which showed how the milk yield of camels can be greatly increased and thereby help to reduce the impact of famines among desert tribes; and 'Village Voices - Forty Years Of Rural Transformation In South Indian Villages.' Recently, Scarlett's applied work has included diverse topics such as a Marketing Training workshop for the Chinese Women Federation in Xian Province, China. Continuing her long-standing connection with Papua New Guinea, in 2004 Scarlett worked for the British High Commission in Port Moresby, to promote HIV/AIDS awareness as well as tourism.

Scarlett explains her liking for her career in this way:

I like being an Applied Anthropologist because by living for lengthy spells of time with different societies and succeeded to help them in one way or the other I have become accepted by them. I was on a recent trip to one of the South Indian villages I began to study in 1954, when at the farewell party I told them that as I am getting on in age it may the last time that I would ever be with them, one young men got up and said, 'Do not worry yourself, you will be reborn as one of us!' which made me feel really good.

Scarlett's autobiography 'Swimming Upstream' published by Valentine Mitchell was launched at the Austrian Embassy in London where Lord Desai and Dr John Shaw from the World Food Programme praised her applied work and the Papua New Guinea Commissioner pointed out that Scarlett had been awarded a well deserved OBE for her services to rural and women's development, especially in Papua New Guinea. The Papua New Guinea Government on the occasion of the country’s  30th  Anniversary of independence awarded Scarlett a medal for her developmental contributions. She recently focused her action-research on the disadvantageous impact of the rural-urban developmental imbalances and the resulting ever-increasing rural to urban migration have on  both the affected rural and urban societies.  This resulted in the documentary BACK TO THE VILLAGE for she conducted the background research in South India and also organised the film production. The film has been enthusiastically  received by audiences at the World Bank, World Resource Centre, USAID,  Portcullis House, and numerous universities. She presented the 2006 Professor M. N. Srinivas Memorial Lecture at NIAS in Bangalore also entitled “Back to the Village” which has been published by NIAS. Scarlett is now planning to mount an action research of  the “the impact of traditional belief systems and cultural norms on present-day sexual practices” in Papua New Guinea where the population is already plagued by an AIDS pandemic.

scarlett and students in PNG

Scarlett and the group of PNG students to whom she taught research methods. The students conducted a pilot AIDS focused action study with Scarlett.

Veronica Strang, Executive Director, Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University

My research as an environmental anthropologist has a particular focus on water issues, and this work has always been both theoretically and practically inclined. In fact, increasingly, I feel that it is unhelpful to classify anthropology as ‘theoretical’ or ‘applied’: most ethnographic research has a range of theoretical and practical applications, and most anthropological careers involve ‘on the ground’ helping out in host communities as well as involvement in theoretical debates. Thus my research on The Meaning of Water (Berg 2004) has been used both by water companies in the UK, as well as by a range of people interested in how people conceptualise and engage with the material environment.
In the last decade I have assisted indigenous communities in Queensland with land and water claims, cultural heritage recording and other strategic planning, while at the same time completing a major ARC project on water issues in Australia (in collaboration with Sandy Toussaint at UWA). The findings from this project have now been published (Gardening the World: agency, identity and the ownership of water, Berghahn 2009), and are widely used by Australian policy makers and water managers. This research also speaks directly to theoretical debates about human-environmental relationships and tackles broader questions about sustainability.

Recently I also did a project looking at what kinds of work people are doing with anthropology around the world. This was for a very introductory book aimed primarily at school leavers and potential research users (What Anthropologists Do, Berg 2009). Hopefully this is now recruiting good students into the discipline.
In New Zealand, I did some consultancy work with Maori iwis (in collaboration with my colleague at Auckland University, Mark Busse). A project concerned with indigenous issues around the ownership and control of water linked usefully with a major international conference on Ownership and Appropriation that we co-convened in 2008. This also led me to focus more on issues of property, and to get involved in theoretical debates in that area. Working with the Maori community was also useful in relation to some broader comparative research I have been doing for the last several years, which is concerned with societies whose cosmologies have (or had) water beings/deities. It examines the way that representations of these beings can illuminate very long-term trajectories of engagement with water.

A key new direction for me is towards more interdisciplinary research. For a number of years I have been involved in bringing the social sciences into UNESCO’s International Ecohydrology programme, and also their Water and Cultural Diversity programme, both of which are primarily oriented towards policy development. At a more theoretical level, I have been having a lot of fun working on a project called ‘Thinking With Water’ with an interdisciplinary group led by some philosophers in Canada. 

I also spent some months as a Fellow at the interdisciplinary Institute for Advanced Study at Durham University. This not only allowed me to do some research on water and material culture with a range of non-anthropological Fellows, it had a rather more radical effect on my career, as the University approached me recently to see if I would be willing to take over the direction of the Institute. This was impossible to resist, so at the time of writing I am about to move back to the UK to take up this post. One of my first tasks will be to write a paper about the use of anthropological theories and methods in interdisciplinary research. (I think anthropology is very underused in this area).  I will also continue with my own ‘water beings’ research, and another international collaboration which entails developing new theories on materiality, with a view to contributing to this area of environmental anthropology.  

Kathryn Tomlinson, Research Project Manager for Commonwealth Education Fund

At a party of artists recently I was asked, expectantly, 'Are you an artist too?' No, I am a social researcher, though if I am circulating in a world that understands what it means, I add that I am a social anthropologist by training. But since that training (undergraduate in Cambridge, PhD on displaced Muslims in southern Russia at UCL), I have moved into the world I am happy in: qualitative research with practical application.

I'm presently working as the Research Project Manager for Commonwealth Education Fund (CEF), which supports local organisations campaigning on education in Africa and Asia. I am responsible for two research projects: on nationally appropriate funding models to replace CEF in 2008, and a guide to building national coalitions. I lead a team of 20 researchers in 17 countries in a role that has seen me visit seven African and Asian countries in three months and facilitate training and planning workshops for researchers and fund managers. Most of my time has been spent managing 'my' researchers, and interviewing senior people, analysing data and co-writing two international reports. A short-term contract, it's enjoyable but intense.

The anthropologist in me comes out in this role rarely; maybe in my participatory facilitation, my critical eye to strategy, and my insistence on qualitative research, talking to people and writing down what they say. But other work I have done since my PhD has been far more influential in developing the skills I need for such a job.

Directly after completing my PhD I spent two and a half years as a Senior Research Officer at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER, www.nfer.ac.uk). There I worked in teams on national and international policy-related research for the UK government (DfES and local government), NGOs and other sponsors. Most of my work related to social inclusion: researching and evaluating the systems for including all children (including those with special educational needs, in public care, and in conflict-related circumstances) in the mainstream education system. I also researched and supported teachers carrying out their own research. Most of my fieldwork took place in Britain, although an evaluation took me to Mozambique, Cambodia, Finland and Denmark.

Working in an independent research institute taught me a range of practical research skills which usefully supplemented my anthropological experience. I carried out semi-structured face-to-face and telephone interviews, surveys, and literature reviews. My anthropological background informed much of my work: interviewing people of varying status, designing questions that will provide data that cannot be requested directly, analysing and writing about diverse data.

From there I moved to Aceh, Indonesia, as a volunteer for Peace Brigades International (PBI) (www.peacebrigades.org), providing 'protective accompaniment' and peace education to local activists who feel threatened carrying out their work. PBI worked in Aceh before the tsunami, and returned to this conflict zone on the request of partners in the province. Working with local people in fluent Indonesian and living in Acehnese communities brought me back almost to anthropological research; it was challenging and satisfying, and more so as we were immediately using the information we gathered to make links, make things hopefully better.

I don't feel that the anthropological and social research worlds need to be distinct, but like any little world they both throw up boundaries, and my energy levels to climb the high walls back into engaging with academic anthropology are slowly dwindling. I remain an anthropologist who does not work in anthropology (whatever that might mean); a social researcher and now research manager who still finds what people do, what they say, and what they say about what they do to be a fascinating world in which to spend my working hours.

Kathryn

Photograph shows Kathryn as part of a team preparing to facilitate an 'alternatives to violence' workshop in Aceh.