Applied anthropologists are not scattered at random. Four settings hire most of them — the development project, the clinic, the firm, and the morgue. Tap a practice to walk its workplace, then switch to the intake desk and decide which specialist each brief belongs to.
Four workplaces
Tap a practice on the right — then tap the numbered spots in the scene.
Field—
Signature method—
Typical employer—
Four places anthropology gets paidpick a practice to begin
The four practices0 of 4 opened
One discipline, four doorwaysNone of these is a fifth field. Development and business anthropology are cultural anthropology pointed at a project or a firm; forensic anthropology is biological anthropology pointed at a medicolegal case; medical anthropology draws on both. What travels into every one of them is the same equipment — long observation, the emic view of the people involved, and the refusal to judge a practice by the observer’s standards rather than its own.
Two ways to earn a living from this. Some applied anthropologists are hired inside an institution to make its work land better; others study the institution itself. Both are honest work, and the second keeps the first honest.
Whose side are you on? An applied anthropologist has a client and a community, and their interests do not always match. The AAA Code of Ethics resolves it in one direction: the primary obligation is to do no harm to the people studied — ahead of the funder, the agency, and the anthropologist’s own career.