Collaborations and Interdisciplinarity
[Collaborations]
- A valuable skill-set for any anthropologist is the ability to communicate and work with scholars and professionals immersed in different disciplinary languages. A variety of “working groups” bring together faculty and graduate students from many different fields around specific themes. These working groups meet regularly and discuss readings, pressing issues, or the work of an invited speaker. Many working groups bring together scholars from both UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke.
Some recent and current working group titles include: “Human Rights;” “Globalization, Modernity/Coloniality and the Geopolitics of Knowledge;” “Atlantic and Global War;” “Grassroots Politics in Latin America;” “Other Capital Flows;” “Social Movements;” and “Dialogical Ethics and Critical Cosmopolitanism;” “Global Health: Promoting Equity, Improving Access;” “Global Governance and Democracy;” “Transnational Feminisms;” “Social Movements;” and “Cultures of Economics.”
- In addition to working groups and seminars, cross-disciplinary collaborations occur via team research projects on issues of public importance. Some examples include participation in a UNC faculty organized project entitled "Estrangement from the Public Sphere: Economic Change, Democracy and Social Division in North Carolina,” living wage policy research with the Jobs and Economic Development Action Team of a Durham grassroots coalition, and international health and development programming and evaluation with a transnational non-governmental organization.
- Talks and events jointly-sponsored with Duke’s Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy and the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill’s Department of Anthropology also foster exchange among the diverse traditions of anthropology present in the Research Triangle. Jointly sponsored events with a variety social science and humanities departments at Duke sustain departmental engagement with the latest developments in theory and research in other fields.
- A significant number of department faculty, graduate and undergraduate students are active members, organizers and supporters of a Duke coalition of campus groups called Duke Organizing (DO). Organized out of efforts to achieve living wages and livable jobs for all Duke employees, DO brings together a diverse array of campus groups to organize together on issues of shared interest and to build cross-cutting relationships that can transform the cultures of work and living that are common to big research universities. Besides continuing to advocate for living wages, benefits, and fair employment policies, DO is building collaborative relationships across historical divides. As a member organization of Durham CAN (Congregations, Associations and Neighborhoods), a Durham grassroots coalition, DO members work on a variety of Action Teams with other Durham community members in addressing issues in the areas of jobs and economic development, health, public safety, housing, education, youth and public accountability. Recent Durham CAN achievements include living wage policies in Durham county, city and school systems, secured after-school programs, improved lead-testing procedures, expanded domestic violence services, and the regular holding to account of public officials.
- Collaborative Seminar at Butner Federal Corrections Complex – “Culture Questions: What is Culture? And Why Does it Matter?” Cultural Anthropology faculty and graduate students are volunteering an enrichment seminar for inmates interested in the topic of “culture” and a seminar-style experience that is different from the regular format of credit-courses available through local college systems. The seminar offers participating inmates an opportunity to learn about different approaches to studying culture and to workshop their own ideas about why culture matters. Participating department members get the opportunity to learn from people thinking about and experiencing “cultural matters” with very different stakes than their own.