探访世界最后的疯狂部落（四）Seeing like an anthropologist（4）

亲爱的听众朋友们大家好！欢迎收听墨尔本大学官方音频节目。

我们的电台节目将为大家带来最新鲜有趣的，关于科学、文化等前沿英文原版节目。欢迎您持续关注！

探访世界最后的疯狂部落（四）Seeing like an anthropologist（4）

Steve Grimwade 
Having spent so much time with these various people, I mean they've drawn youinto their lives and obviously you must be very closely connected to a numberof people in PNG. How to remain separate from the cultures you're embedded in,how do you keep a little bit of distance?

Monica Minnegal 

I'm never going to be aKubo, I'm sorry, I can't walk through the forest in the way that they do. Ifall off logs and I can't chop down trees. I mean every time they swing the axeit goes in the same place, I can't do. So they know and I know that I'm not them.Frankly, I don't want to live my life in a bush material house in Papua NewGuinea with no access to books and no access to the other parts of my life. 

So that's really important as ananthropologist, to know that you're not the people you're working with. You canbe deeply committed to trying to make a difference. I mean one of the thingsthat they are trying to organise at the moment, in the people in the wider areaincluding Bedamuni people who we've also worked with, is to organise a highschool and a distance college at Mogulu. The first time they will have anythinglike this so that the kids don't have to leave town if they want to go to highschool. 

That's really important but it'salso known that unless the local people own it, it's not going to besustainable. So they want people like us to come in and work with them to tryand say, how do we do this? How do we communicate? How do we perhaps create asense of ownership in the community here? Why don't they have that sense ofownership? Well, actually there's good reason because in the past you didn'tbecome committed to particular things. You didn't fix stuff in advance becauseyou didn't know - it was much more important to wait till it broke down. Theydidn't have that sense of continual ongoing maintenance of something, ofplanning ahead in that sense. Because what matters was being ready to reactnow.

There are good reasons why theyinteract as they do. If you start simply changing those and saying, you've gotto do things otherwise, it seems easy but you actually destroy their connectionto the land. Like the commercial fishermen who said, I believe in globalwarming. I think people are doing it. But if we talk that talk to our kids, ourkids will no longer be able to fish. Because we're saying what shapes theenvironment is out there, it's people on the other side of the world. It's thisabstract category called people. Our kids need to know to pay attention - well,young fishermen, not too many of them anymore. But our kids need to know aboutwhat the waves are doing here and now, what the wind is doing. Where the fishare, what the birds are doing.

Steve Grimwade 

I don't want to use theword impact again, but when you - I mean you're really, I mean like a novelistyou're getting into the heart of what is making these people and their livestick, and their view of the society and the culture that informs them. But I'minterested now, I mean surely someone is going to be reading this work to helpthem inform the way they impact these communities. Has there been much change?

Monica Minnegal 
The industry has certainly been interested in some of the questions around howthey organise. The fact that the scallop fishermen organise quite differentlyfrom the Danish Seine fishermen and how that causes tensions in the community.I have students who have done PhDs as part of this project. One of them forexample, a young woman called Tanya King who's now a lecturer at Deakin inanthropology, has done a lot of work on the psychological problems of change.So she's worked with fishing industry bodies, she's worked with the FisheriesManagement Authority. Looking at what are the social implications, how can weput support networks into place for people who are being displaced by some ofthis stuff.

There's a - you have torecognise that change happens. That we're not going to stop change, that's notthe purpose. But perhaps to work out how to do it better. The way that youmanage a buy-back so that it doesn't sort of leave people feeling, like Kubo,"we are not respected, we are just not of any value, any importance tothem whatsoever".

How do you deal with the mentalhealth issues that have to - that are associated with a really dangerousactivity? How do you deal with the family support questions when fishermenincreasingly may have to go out to sea for months at a time, instead of goingout on much shorter trips? How do you have conversations with fishermen aboutchanges to fish stocks that are partly their fault? Partly the problems arebecause they caught so many they flooded the market. Partly it's because globalwarming is happening and fish are moving. 

How do you have conversationswith people to help them make decisions differently? Does the government wantanthropologists to tell them how to make policy? Mmm, we complicate matters. Wemake it harder to make simple policy so there's resistance there. But you dohave some influence along the way. 

Steve Grimwade 
You want influence, but you don't want to change policy. I mean…

Monica Minnegal 
I don't personally.

Steve Grimwade 
But does that mean can an anthropologist want to change policy?

Monica Minnegal 
Oh, absolutely. Yes, so there are a lot of people who do work on - I mean theanthropology of policy is actually a field. Where there - now what you'restudying is the policymakers and how policymakers make decisions. But that canbe difficult. So again I know of people who have worked with fisheries whobecause they'd worked with fisheries were then excluded from the policymakingbodies because of the suspicion that policymakers have about the people they'remaking policy for.

Steve Grimwade 
Who's sponsoring your work.

Monica Minnegal 
That's right. So there's actually talk about being on the dark side. A lot ofanthropologists, for example in Papua New Guinea, do work for mining companiesin trying to map the communities. Trying to say, how do we work out who isentitled to a share of the benefits. I explicitly have made a decision not todo that. Because if I did once go up there as an employee of the mining companyit would completely change my relationship, my position in the community. 

So people do work forgovernment. Another one of my students who actually also started off workingwith fishermen now works for the Environment Department in Victoria, I cannotremember what the latest acronym is. It has changed over the years. But sheworks on fire knowledge. So she's a researcher in the public service inVictoria working on fire knowledge, negotiating with people in communities asto how we should shape a policy about burning, controlled burning, those sortsof policies.

Steve Grimwade 

Given the students you'reworking with and who are going on to do PhDs and work in all these gloriousplaces, what advice would you give them, or new researchers, new studentsentering the field?

Monica Minnegal 
Advice about what?

That you can make a difference. That if you want to make a differenceunderstand what's going on first. So don't go in there saying, I know what theworld should look like, I know what should be done. Be prepared to have yourassumptions about how the world works challenged, and your assumptions abouthow the world should work challenged. Because some of the biggest mistakeswe've made is sticking our fingers in pies without understanding what's in thepie first.

Steve Grimwade 
Finally, when I'm visiting another culture how can I - I'm not an anthropologist- but how can I best open my eyes to what's really going on?

Monica Minnegal 
By asking what's going on. Too often we don't even ask what's going on. This isone of the first things we do when we're training anthropology students. Wesay, we've got to teach you how to see like an anthropologist before we ask. Sowe send people out to do observation exercises. Go see something that'sprobably something you've done - go to a football game, you do this often. Nowtell someone about what was happening there. Write down what you actually saw.Suddenly you see things that you just took for granted before. So seeing likean anthropologist is the first step of becoming an anthropologist. After thatwe can move into, so now ask questions like an anthropologist. But first of alljust see the extraordinary things that people do.

Steve Grimwade 
No, there you have it, that's the name of my sixth album, 'Seeing Like anAnthropologist.' Monica Minnegal, thank you so much for joining us.

Monica Minnegal 
Thank you. 

Chris Hatzis 
Thanks to Monica Minnegal, Associate Professor and Lecturer in anthropology atThe University of Melbourne. And thanks to our reporter Steve Grimwade. Thanksalso to Claudia Hooper. 

Eavesdrop on Experts - storiesof inspiration and insights - was made possible by the University of Melbourne.This episode was recorded on February 23, 2018. You'll find a full transcripton the Pursuit website. 

Audio engineering by me, ChrisHatzis. Co-production by Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-Wall. 

Eavesdrop on Experts is licensedunder Creative Commons, copyright 2018, the University of Melbourne. 

If you enjoyed this podcast,drop us a review on iTunes and check out the rest of the episodes in ourarchive. I'm Chris Hatzis, producer and editor. Join us again next time foranother Eavesdrop on Experts.

更多节目欢迎关注墨尔本大学官方中文频道：

微博：墨尔本大学官微

微信：MelbUni1853

网址：www.unimelb.edu.au

本期节目网址：https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/podcasts/seeing-like-an-anthropologist