A career in anthropology?

July 21, 2006 11:47 AM

What sort of career options would one have with a bachelor's degree in anthropology?

My fiance is pretty close to deciding to major in anthropology at the University of North Texas. Now, I took an anthropology class in college, and my professor definitely majored in anthropology, and...he was a professor.

Other than teaching, what could someone who gets a bachelor's in anthropology look to be doing after they graduate?

I think she may have some preconceived notions that she'd get to travel all around and visit all these different places (or really, just that it'd be what most people would think an anthropologist does), whereas I have this vision of her being stuck in a labratory or as some research assistant.

I also realize that anthropology probably falls into the category of needing graduate work/a master's before you can really get anything out of it, but coming straight out of college, what might she be able to expect?

posted by mrhaydel to education (21 comments total)

The American Anthropological Association has some ideas: http://www.aaanet.org/students.htm.
posted by chickletworks at 11:56 AM on July 21, 2006

Encyclopædia Britannica lists many sub-fields of applied anthropology, to include forensics and industrial design for example.
posted by ba at 12:24 PM on July 21, 2006

If she majors in anthropology, she will have a liberal arts degree. Assuming she does well and does talks to the career development people about how to manage it, she can expect to be very competitive for entry-level basic corporate jobs and the like.

Almost certainly, nobody will care that she has an anthro degree. She will almost certainly not be called upon to exercise anthropological skills, just as a history major in the corporate world won't be called upon to conduct historical analyses and a drama major won't be called upon to write or perform plays.

What people will care about, most probably, is that she has developed firm information processing skills and communication skills, hallmarks of liberal arts degrees. She'll want to be able to demonstrate this.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:41 PM on July 21, 2006

Just to clarify - is this social anthropology we're talking about, biological anthropology, or somewhere in between?
posted by flashboy at 12:45 PM on July 21, 2006

Temp work.

Okay, sorry to be down, but I just finished my MA in Anthropology and I'm un[der]employed myself. My colleages from undergrad (a Seven Sisters) are all doing crap work unrelated to our major, with one exception, or have gone on to get MAs/PhDs/med/law school degrees (and are currently in the process.) The friend who lucked out was doing physical anthro and got to work in Kenya for a year - I think she's doing graduate work there now. That was internship/NSF grant stuff.

If she's got any sort of focus to her anthropology, she'll need to start doing practical work in it sooner rather than later. If she doesn't have a focus and is just doing the 'cultural' stuff, that's hard, hard work because there isn't much call to spend the money to be travelling around. There are plenty of people with upper level degrees looking to travel to do fieldwork who have a lot of experience writing grants.

One thing we push on students (I ta'd an intro anthro class for two years) is that most anthropology is no longer fantastic undiscovered country stuff, and underlying that is that it makes a good background, but not necessarily a good career, because there isn't much call for it as a career. (on preview, what Xenophobe said.)

The med/law school thing seems to work out for people (or social work.) Maybe a non-profit will hire her, if you live in an area with a lot of those. OTOH, if her program pushes her towards internships and other real world (and not just fieldwork, no one cares about fieldwork) experiences, she'll be in much better shape.
posted by cobaltnine at 12:46 PM on July 21, 2006

My good friend graduated with an anthropology bachelor's degree and had a hard time finding full-time, non-temporary work. He basically worked as a traveling archeological digger for several years, before getting a permanent job with the state performing digs and cataloging of sites before they were excavated for construction. His job involved lots of shoveling, and not much else, though he did once find a (minor) historically-important ingot, which was a great moment for him in a job he otherwise loathed.

He quit last year and became an organic farmer instead.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 12:50 PM on July 21, 2006

I have a bachelor's degree in anthropology and I agree that it will give her a basic liberal arts preparation to do pretty much whatever she wants (except become a mathematician or a biochemist, I guess).

For example, I'm currently working as a political researcher and before that I worked for an environmental organization.

Anthropology is a wonderful field and I loved nearly all of my courses while I was getting my degree. You really get a little bit of everything.
posted by fancypants at 12:53 PM on July 21, 2006

The two most amazing people I've heard of were both anthropologists by major. Gary Snyder ended up winning a Pulitzer for poetry (read 'Anasazi' if you want to see how anthropology affected him). Paul Farmer (read Mountains Beyond Mountains) ended up getting an MD (and now teaches Medical Anthropology), but did/does a ton of work in Haiti, especially.

Basically, to lead somewhere itself its a worthless degree. The important thing you get out of it is the mindset you need for just about every social field. If she did some public policy or polsci work, maybe some geostatistics, she could probably get a job at the county or state level in public policy, where being able to understand people is a massive advantage.
posted by devilsbrigade at 12:58 PM on July 21, 2006

I appreciate my undergraduate Anthropology degree for the way it taught me to look at the world, and to resist simple interpretations. While this isn't necessarily a practical skill, in the way computer science or biology might be, it is an invaluable life skill. Caveat: My mother is also a professor of Anthropology, which may influence my opinion.
posted by Uccellina at 1:24 PM on July 21, 2006

Professorship, OR whatever she wants, nearly.

My anthro degree taught me new was of getting information, looking at the world, thinking. I have an endless supply of weird stories, too.

If she wants to stay in academia, she'll be competing with a very large pool of people for a very small number of grants or jobs. My recommendation is that she use her studies as a jumping-off point to find something she loves - in my case, it was software development and analysis and development research for non-profit companies. That ability to look at the world sideways keeps coming in handy...
posted by kalimac at 1:42 PM on July 21, 2006

Social Anthropology doesn't necessarily mean studying "exotic" cultures. Anthropology teaches (among other things) a broad set of skills for understanding people and culture that is broadly applicable. In college, my Anth 102 professor was a legal anthropologist, who studied how legal systems affect cultures. She's looked out how the Hawai'ian legal system imposed by the US was basically legal imperialism. More recently, she's been looking at international human rights issues, spending time in Geneva attending UN meetings. This may still feel kind of exotic, but the point is anthro doesn't have to mean living in Africa. This book also has lots of articles in the same vein.

There also exist opportunities to work in applied anthropology in corporate environments. Big companies like Intel, Microsoft, IBM, and Motorola have ethnographers on staff who do various kinds of anthropology-like work, and would appreciate people with real anthropology training. There's even a conference called EPIC for these kinds of people.

So don't despair, there are lots of really exciting options out there that don't require becoming a non-descript functionary.
posted by heresiarch at 1:53 PM on July 21, 2006

I was an anth. major. I'm now a nanny and a waitress. Go figure. To really want to do anything in the field, you need a higher degree, as stated above. Otherwise, unless she has connections or really good luck, she just needs to search for basic entry-level jobs in whatever interests her. Currently I'm going to be applying to grad school for social work, and I think that my undergraduate degree has adequately prepared me for that-- so she just needs to figure out what actual job she wants to do, and use aspects of her education to support that instead of using her education to figure out what job she wants.
posted by greta simone at 2:09 PM on July 21, 2006

My B.S. in Anthro prepared me for the exciting world of publications! Seriously, I don't use the degree specifically but just having a degree can help you get jobs. It is also an excellent degree to prepare you for a MA in Library Science or in Museum Studies. If you couple a Physical or Archeological Anthro degree with a science degree, you got something. If you couple a Cultural or Linguistic degree with one or two solid foreign languages, you also got something. You can also take a few more classes in the humanities such as history and economics, then take some specific education classes to get your high school education certificate in social sciences. I know a fellow graduate who did just that and really enjoys it. I am sticking with publications but, if you should get in a fight and have your teeth knocked out, I can reconstruct your dentition!
posted by Foam Pants at 2:27 PM on July 21, 2006

One thing you can do, if you're so inclined, is become an account planner (sometimes called a strategic planner) at an advertising agency.

There are many who feel that ad agencies attract and reward mediocrity. I think that's true, but I think that's true of any office you'll ever work in. And advertising pays pretty well, if you care about that.

Here's one link that describes it ok, but if you're really interested, read Jon Steel's book, "Truth, Lies and Advertising : The Art of Account Planning". The intro gives you a good sense of what's involved, and you'll see immediately how anthropology fits in.
posted by cloudscratcher at 2:34 PM on July 21, 2006

A more practical degree would be one in psychology or political science, especially if she's interested in doing writing. Those majors introduce one to rigorous statistical and experimental methods, whereas anthropology introduces one to lukewarm, semi-scientific methodology that's difficult to replicate and often proves inconclusive. Even sociology could be far more useful as a major than anthropology. Tell her to seriously reconsider.
posted by limeonaire at 2:37 PM on July 21, 2006

I have three friends with an undergrad anthro degree. One works with indigenous people, right here in the US, on building governing structures that work for them. One works for the EPA as a liasion with tribal peoples. And one does freelance archeology surveys- and spends 4 months a year in Mexico surfing. Before that he conducted research on communities and their eating habits for industry.

We are West Coast and none of them are city people or averse to living in a tribal village for months at a time but there seems to be plenty of job opportunities for at least the folks I know.

Oh! I have one other friend. Anthro degree and technical diver- she's an underwater archaeologist. Pretty cool.
posted by fshgrl at 3:08 PM on July 21, 2006

Ethnographic research. Companies like Cheskin do this for product/organizational design and market research.
posted by qwip at 4:23 PM on July 21, 2006

North Texas graduate here. (Political Science/Geography)

As has been pointed out, liberal arts degrees are useful for all sorts of things, but they're not "keys to the kingdom", so to speak. Ultimately, the value of a liberal arts degree in one's job search has just as much to do with attendant abilities/interests/experience as it does with what you learned in class. The options are endless, but you have to put the effort into finding them yourself. Your dream job won't fall in your lap... not right away, at least.

That said, liberal arts degrees ARE especially attractive when it comes to entry-level corporate positions that require good communication and critical thinking skills. That may not sound very romantic, but it beats unemployment. Chances are, you'll be doing something entirely different a few years down the road anyway.

As far as liberal arts degrees go, Anthropology is probably one of the least marketable, however, so that could limit your fiance's options somewhat. Of course, if she's simply THAT interested in Anthropology, she might as well go for it. College is about learning, after all... who knows what she'll discover about herself over the course of four years (or, in my case, seven).

One last thought... has she taken a look at the International Studies program? It's housed within the Political Science Department; the requirements are comprised of a healthy mix of Poli Sci, History, Geography, Anthropology, and Foreign Language courses (to start). If she's primarily looking to study something with an international focus, it might be a better fit. I'd also argue that it's pretty good preparation for a future career in international business, government, or with non-profit organizations. Honestly, I would have majored in this myself, but the program wasn't established until I was pretty far along with my plain vanilla Poli Sci degree (as is, I did an International Relations concentration, so I shared classes with a lot of IS students anyway). It's worth a look.
posted by jal0021 at 7:13 PM on July 21, 2006

Anthro BA here as well. I did the traveling archaeologist thing for six years out of college, and I loved it. There are enough people interested in it that the pay isn't great, but I really enjoyed my time as a CRM (cultural resource management) worker at a small firm in the southeast.

I went on to do an International MBA, and I now work in a non-profit doing more international consulting/business-ey things, but my anthro degree still comes in handy.

It teaches you a lot of life skills, like others have said, and provides a unique framework for looking at the world. Some of the international firms I work with employ ethnographers, like heresiarch said, and the cultural sensitivity training does come in really handy in an international business environment

That said, if she wants to do the kind of fieldwork you read about in anthro textbooks, she will need to go on to get a PhD, and more than likely will have a lot of competition for the jobs she wants.
posted by gemmy at 10:56 PM on July 21, 2006

Market research and Marketing
posted by Mick at 6:47 AM on July 22, 2006

Wow. I have just skimmed over everyone's answers and comments, and this is exactly the sort of info she needs and that I was looking for.

I'm out of town at the moment, and am going to print this page out at our hotel for her to read over.

I really appreciate everyone's input (*this* is why I love MeFi).

To answer flashboy's question, my guess is it would lean towards more social anthro, but it may also be somewhere in between. That being said, I'm pretty sure she will also pick some sort of focus too, so it very well may be one specific aspect as well. Ok, so maybe not the best answer, but one nevertheless.

Keep your thoughts and comments coming!
posted by mrhaydel at 8:24 PM on July 22, 2006