The professional organization that caught my eye is called Society for Applied Anthropology. Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA), founded in 1941, is a professional organization serving a purpose for looking into human behavior and applying behaviors to current societal issues. SfAA views themselves as a unique committee different from other anthropology committees. The reason for this being is due to the SfAA shifting focus on more than just the study of human behavior, but also tackling concepts of law, health and medicine, business, et cetera in order to fully grasp the concept of applied anthropology. Many anthropology organizations sought to focus on only one field of study, however, SfAA seeks to focus on numerous different studies. Moreover, many professional organizations enjoy perfecting one field of anthropologic studies, but when combining multiples together such as business and medicine, there is a wide range of studies that can be done to help better observe and understand human behavior. In order to reach out to members of the committee and those who are interested in studying anthropology, SfAA’s journal, Human Organization, contains articles discussing the application of methods and data to solve solutions of practical problems. The journal revolves itself around social science and serving as an outlet of promoting scholarship in the area of social sciences.
SfAA also has an important project that benefits applied anthropology. Through the use of audio tapes, SfAA focuses on the oral history of anthropology through interviews. The Oral History project is used to document things learned from practicing anthropologists through recorded oral interviews that are properly assessed. Interviews are done by volunteers and members of the SfAA that are discussing significant topics of applied anthropology to current practicing anthropologists. Information from the interview helps benefit the ability to assess the history of SfAA, along with other professional organizations dedicated to anthropology studies. Moreover, members get to look into past training programs and the history of applied anthropology in order to benefit their future work. The overall goal is to capture and assess experiences of practicing anthropologist.
Overall, SfAA is seeking to better human civilization in the world. Looking at the main purpose of SfAA, this reminds me of one of the subfields that we are studying called archeology. Archeology seeks to understand variation in human behavior, particularly in the past, and why humans behave the way that they do. Of course, in the past, people were only able to document human behavior through ancient behavior to help come to the conclusion of current behavior. This was done through observation and interpretation. SfAA uses these types of similar approaches through concepts of oral interviews, methods and data interpretation to piece together human behavior in relation to current civil issues. I find this the most interesting concept and something I would want to look into studying more. There are a lot of societal issues caused by human interaction, and furthermore, it would be amazing to see the different types of studies that can be done to help prevent problems in civilization just by understanding why humans behave the way that they do.
Hanna,
You did a very nice job explaining the main objectives of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) in a way that is easy to understand. In regard to the way the SfAA helps expand the overall knowledge existing in the world’s anthropological ‘database’, I think it is very useful to have the Oral History podcasts available to members of the society, and possibly the public, as a method of spreading research conclusions. Because research is so important in this field, it seems as if the SfAA is doing its part to expand anthropological findings to everyone, in hopes of implementing ideas that will create positive change in the behaviors of all humans living on this planet.
I also like how you compared the similar actions of the SfAA to those of the subfield of archaeology and expressed that the SfAA strives to influence the presence of civility in the world.
(Also, I would recommend categorizing this blog post, Edit Post > Categories > Blog One, so you get credit for your work.)
Hanna, thank you so much for sharing this. It was very well wrote and contained a lot of knowledge to get your point across. You go onto databases and usually are swarmed with a ton of articles to go through to analysis past findings but the way that SfAA uses interviews to present findings is brilliant. Not only is it easier to analyze but hearing the person themselves shares their findings is very interactive. As a psychology major, I am a strong believer in studying how human interaction affects society and vice versa. Society has such a huge impact on mental health overall that a powerful event can change the way that person thinks forever. Let’s use soldiers for example, the environment around them caused them to develop ptsd. Studies have shown that having the support of people when they return can make the difference between someone who is suicidal and someone who wants to get help. As going back to the beginning of evolution, all primates needed interaction with one another to create a society and that has never changed. Evolution or natural selection would not have even occurred if it was just a single organism. All of the unanswered questions in the universe are so interesting.
Again, great job with this post.