Helpful for students who want to work in anthropology without necessarily becoming academics

1. PRACTICING
ANTHROPOLOGY
SUSAN MAZUR-STOMMEN, PH.D.
SUMMER 2019

2. INTRODUCTION
• Who I am:
• Hybrid
academic/practitioner
• My firm
• Founded 2006
• Qualitative Research
• Big clients (DOE, Bosch)

3. CONSUMER
BEHAVIOR
IDIs
Surveys
Focus groups

4. OUR FOCUS
• Behavior and Sustainability
• Reducing carbon
• Saving energy
• Emerging technologies
• Energy management
• Lighting
• Utility programs

5. WHAT KINDS OF THINGS
DOES THIS ENTAIL?
• Manage the process from soup
to nuts:
• Gather data ethically using
mixed methods
• Organize and process data with
a variety of tools
• Produce outputs in many forms
• Distribute across various
platforms
• Promote work across various
media

6. What do you need to succeed?

7. STRONG
EMPHASIS ON
ETHNOGRAPHIC
METHODS AND
TECHNIQUES
Different types of interviewing
methods/scenarios: IDIs vs intercepts
Understanding what Participant
Observation is and does
Practice with tools for recording:
audio, visual, but especially fieldnotes
Let students use phones – we don’t
use cameras and the like

8. MULTIPLE TIMES IN THE FIELD
Look for internships in for
profit and government
organizations
Reach out to those
organizations, don’t wait
for opportunities

9. INTENSE TRAINING
ON ETHICS
ESPECIALLY DATA
PRIVACY, PROTECTION,
AND STORAGE.

10. EXPOSURE TO
RESEARCH
DESIGN AND
ANALYSIS
When to use what
method
Connecting theory to
method
What kinds of claims
can you make
Understand mixed
methods

11. QUANTIFYING…
Coding
Ethnographic Software
Basic statistics
Conduct robust surveys

12. QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH IN
TODAY’S WORLD
• You need to know a LOT of applications just
to function in a collaborative environment
with dispersed/virtual teams:
• Many may be familiar
• (Google docs, Dropbox)
• Many may not be familiar
• (Slack, Doodle, Trello, Zotero)

13. IDEALLY YOU
WILL HAVE...
• Interned in a business/government
agency
• Taken applied anthropology
• Taken a class in entrepreneurship

14. WHAT NOT TO DO
• Don’t run out and set up your
own business
• Look for people doing the work
you want to do
• Work with/for them while
figuring out your path

15. WHAT NEXT?
Take a few moments/envision
yourself ten years from now
Write down on a piece of paper:
• What are you doing
• Where are you living
• Who are you with

16. ROADMAP
Take a few moments to think through a logical pathway to your goals
On a piece of paper, sketch out this
pathway
What skills do you need to add/work on?
What qualifications must you posses?
What is amount of ‘runway’ you need to get there

17. GETTING
STARTED
• Write up a provisional business plan/put
everything on paper
• What do you want to do?
• Why do you want to do it?
• I wanted to do more fieldwork
• Who will pay you to do it?
• Why will they pay you to do it?
• Work on boiling it down

18. STRUCTURING YOUR BUSINESS
WHAT ARE THE STEPS
INVOLVED?
FOR PROFIT/NON PROFIT SOLE PROPRIETOR/LLC/S
CORP
WOSB AND OTHER
FEDERAL CONTRACTING

19. Indiciaconsulting.com
susanmazur
Facebook/indiciaconsulting
Twıtter/indiciainfo
info@indiciaconsulting.com
https://www.linkedin.com/compan
y/indicia-consulting