Comments from the Editor
What Are Your Favorite HO Articles?
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From, the Society for Applied Anthropology Newsletter
Vol, 14, No. 1
REPORT FROM THE HO EDITOR
By Donald D. Stull
<stull@lark.cc.ukans.edu>
University of Kansas
On November 21, 2002, Michael Paolisso, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland, College Park, received Anthropology and Environment’s Junior Scholar Award “for outstanding scholarship in the field of environmental anthropology, as evidenced in the article, ‘Blue Crabs and Controversy on the Chesapeake Bay: A Cultural Model for Understanding Watermen’s Reasoning about Blue Crab Management’” which appeared in the fall 2002 issue of Human Organization (61:226-239). Congratulations, Michael. Keep up the good work. Every article we publish in HO is a winner, but it is always nice when other professional societies recognize the work that appears in our journal—and, more importantly, the social scientists who produce it.
In the last issue of the SfAA Newsletter, I asked readers to tell me about their favorite article in Human Organization. I got the following message from Brigitte Jordan, consulting corporate anthropologist at the
Systems and Practices Laboratory, Palo Alto Research
Center, in California:
By the way, loved your favorite article idea in the SfAA Newsletter. I have a feeling that will get some number of readers involved and I think it’ll be
really interesting to see what people choose. As for myself, I am partial to the article on “Steel Axes for Stone-Age Australians” by Lauriston Sharp, that he wrote in 1952 (17[2]: 17-22). I use this example all the time when I talk about the difference between the use value and the symbolic value of artifacts and tools. It is very powerful in corporate settings where one can easily go from the stone axes to raising questions about the symbolism (both positive and negative) attached to new technologies managers may be trying to introduce.
Brian Garavalia, HO editorial assistant, is very fond of Robert B. Everhart’s 1975 article on “Problems of Doing Fieldwork in Educational Evaluation” (34:205- 215):
For several years now I have been interested in the administration or management (depending upon one’s leadership mind set) of education. Everhart discussed the difficulties a field researcher faces in doing evaluations in an educational environment. He captures the very essence in being made responsible for a serious evaluative process, and at the same time being responsible to many stakeholders, clients, sponsoring agencies, and a parent organization, to name a few. In addition, and making the
process even more complex, the field researcher attempts to gather information from those who believe their very livelihood depends on the
thumbs up or down of the evaluation results. Historically, evaluations (data) have been reported in statistical form, not in a descriptive record.
Everhart makes clear that the field researcher can provide the picture not seen through “pure” raw data.
Educational institutions affect the lives of many people around the world, and it is necessary to provide a form of evaluation that not only appeases the bureaucrat (the program worked or not) but provides a descriptive record of a process (why it worked or didn’t) that has been implemented for better or worse. These issues are as relevant today as they were in 1975.
Brigitte and Brian have their favorites. What are yours?
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