Constructing a Workplace: A Personal Tale from aPracticing Anthropologist

Elaine SimonUniversity of Pennsylvania

It is always easier to find coherence after the fact than to plan a coher-ent life, and so it is in making sense of a career. I could say that I plannedto be a practicing anthropologist and deliberately worked toward my cur-rent lofty status, but I would be fantasizing. To begin with, there are nomodels. All of us who do this work have had to invent it and ourselves in theprocess. In my case, I have followed my interests, taken advantage ofopportunities, made some compromises, and eventually constructeda workplace both inside and outside of an academic institution.

I have worked in many different settings that have drawn on my an-thropological thinking. After completing a master's degree in urban educa-tion and a two-year stint as a high school teacher, I returned to school tostudy anthropology with the hope of gaining insight into the culture ofschools and bureaucratic organizations, as well as into the urban settingand diverse populations I encountered. During my graduate student pe-riod, I also had a number of opportunities to apply my anthropologicalthinking and research skills in contract research firms and research divi-sions of public agencies. I evaluated education and adult employment andtraining programs and developed community profiles. After I finished myPh.D. in 1983, I did more consulting and then assumed a visiting profes-sorship in urban studies at Temple University (where I had studied for myPh.D.). Now at the University of Pennsylvania, I continue to do educationalevaluation and research with a nonprofit research organization andcodirectthe graduate and undergraduate programs in urban studies.

As a practicing anthropologist, I have constructed a workplace thatmeets my needs. I am someone who appreciates theory, but my talentsand tendencies have led me to want to make practical applications of the-ory. I have shaped my career out of choices that reflect my need to participatein conversations that come from both theoretical and practical perspectives.In a sense, the career I chronicle here is a construction, still in progress.

I am now codirector of the urban studies program (for more details,see http://www.sas.upenn.edu/urban/) at the University of Pennsylvania. Iwork with both undergraduates, teaching a research seminar and over-seeing their internships, and graduate students in the Urban StudiesGraduate Certificate Program. I also do qualitative evaluation and research

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on education reform and community revitalization. My interests are in par-ticipatory research and in the connection of schools and communities. Iteach a graduate course in the School of Education on qualitative evalu-ation with my colleague and long-time friend Jolley Christman. Jolleystarted the nonprofit research firm called Research for Action a few yearsago, and much of the research I am involved in is as an associate of that or-ganization. I have a great deal of flexibility in my daily schedule, which al-lows me to fulfill obligations both at Penn and at Research for Action. Itdoes not, however, leave much room for academic writing, which I regret.

In the university part of my workplace, I feel constantly challenged topush the limits of the questions I ask—to look at my work in a larger con-text. This stimulation informs my continuing educational evaluation re-search. I also learn a great deal from my students, and I think that they ap-preciate a teacher who is doing applied work and research in the world.

At Research for Action I am connected to people struggling to im-prove the chances of kids and to help organizations become more reflec-tive about their work. Research for Action is different from other "con-tract" research firms I have worked for because the associatesself-consciously take a stance on the kind of work they do and how theywork together. It is an organization dedicated to participatory researchand issues of social justice. As a workplace, Research for Action tries tounderstand itself as a feminist organization, which forces colleagues toconsider assumptions underlying methodology and relationships.

When I decided to get a Ph.D., I did not deliberately intend to pursuea traditional academic path. I had some pressing questions I wanted to ex-plore, and that was about as concrete a goal as I had. I soon found myselfworking in contract research settings as an anthropologist, which seemedincredibly lucky in some ways. But there was something unsatisfying aboutworking in those settings. While I learned a lot about policy and writing fornonacademic audiences during that period, I felt constrained both politi-cally and intellectually. I feel that my current constructed workplace, hecticas it is, satisfies my need to answer questions that matter to people in edu-cation, as well as my need to think about those questions in the broad con-text of changing urban economic, social, and spatial conditions. Though Iretain the outlook, the methodological orientation, and the appreciation of com-plexity of the anthropologist, the literature I read ranges across disciplines.

My constructed workplace allows me to teach, work with students tofind their own niches, carry out research on topics I care very much about,and interact with colleagues who force my constant intellectual renewal.Another aspect of my constructed workplace is its location only fourblocks from my home—giving me an old-fashioned urban existence.That was the one thing I actually planned from the beginning.

Originally appeared in Anthropology Newsletter, May 1994Revised, spring 1998 and summer 1999