Family & the Field
Family & the Field is a group of studies and publications that reflexively explore training and practice in anthropology. This area of interest began because I was a father of 1-year-old triplet boys when I was admitted to an MA/PhD program in Anthropology at the University at Albany (SUNY). I was constantly struggling to balance full-time teaching assistantship and course load and raising a family. My wife had opted to leave her career as a dance/movement therapist to raise our boys, we lived near relatives who could help with the kids, so I commuted 90 minutes each way to campus, and we went into considerable debt and much therapy to stay afloat. Furthermore, I took on teaching jobs over and above the teaching assistantship (not technically allowed) and work in my adviser's lab. As the time approached that I would do fieldwork, my struggle was how I could conduct local work because there was no way I could leave my wife and three infants, either logistically or emotionally, and we could not afford to go to a distant field site together. So, after much consultation with my committee and friends, I settled upon working in local Pentecostal churches after exploring several. As I was teaching in local community college settings, I was using basic textbooks and readers in my courses and enjoyed small articles that highlight the thousand flavors of anthropology, including the kind of local anthropology I was trying to navigate. Starting with the following article, I began by reflecting on the pros and cons of local anthropology, but this reflexivity has guided more purposive investigation of work-life balance in anthropology and applied anthropology through a collaborative, mixed methods laboratory, and development of a service-learning course to introduce anthropological perspectives to elementary school students.
2008 CD Lynn. Parent Seeking PhD: The Practicality and Pitfalls of Staying Local. Anthropology News 49(6):16. http://www.aaanet.org/pdf/upload/49-6-christopher_lynn_infocus.pdf
HBERG is loosely designed to train students in methods of neuroanthropology. Neuroanthropology simply refers to a mixed methods approach that combines theory or methods of neuroscience with ethnography and is a variety of biocultural anthropology. Our approach provides this training through involving students in multiple ongoing projects, some of which utilize neuroscientific techniques, such as skin conductance, while others involve more participant observation. This approach emphasizes exposure over mastery with the idea that students learn how to troubleshoot research problems and figure out methodology to investigate them, rather than pursue only research restricted to particular techniques.
2008 CD Lynn. Parent Seeking PhD: The Practicality and Pitfalls of Staying Local. Anthropology News 49(6):16. http://www.aaanet.org/pdf/upload/49-6-christopher_lynn_infocus.pdf
HBERG is loosely designed to train students in methods of neuroanthropology. Neuroanthropology simply refers to a mixed methods approach that combines theory or methods of neuroscience with ethnography and is a variety of biocultural anthropology. Our approach provides this training through involving students in multiple ongoing projects, some of which utilize neuroscientific techniques, such as skin conductance, while others involve more participant observation. This approach emphasizes exposure over mastery with the idea that students learn how to troubleshoot research problems and figure out methodology to investigate them, rather than pursue only research restricted to particular techniques.
Family & the Field Study
The goal of this study, in collaboration with Michaela Howells, is to examine pressures, decisions, and compromises that field-based anthropologists make in deciding to do fieldwork, have a family, or to navigate doing both simultaneously. This study provides the opportunity for social scientists to turn the gaze inwards. In this study we investigate the challenges associated with managing a fieldwork-oriented career path and parenting responsibilities or family planning. In anthropology, fieldwork is frequently conceptualized as a pursuit conducted by socially and financially unencumbered individuals. However, this idealized narrative of the “lone researcher” reflects few anthropologists’ experience and excludes individuals with dependent offspring, who would like to stay home and care for children or take them into the field, and other social and financial obligations. We will investigate professional and graduate student attitudes associated with parenthood in anthropology. We will examine how professionals negotiate academia to accommodate or plan parenthood and determine how cultural models of parenthood and fieldwork have shifted over time. We will use a survey to measure experiences and attitudes related to parenthood, graduate education, and conducting fieldwork. In addition, we will investigate the psychological, cultural models, and priorities utilized by participants while navigating fieldwork-oriented disciplines, an academic career, and parenthood.
Publications
2013 EE Cooper, CD Lynn, M Wolfgram. Teaching Technologies for Research, Collaboration, and Dissemination. Anthropology News 54(5). http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2013/02/06/teaching-technologies-for-research-collaboration-and-dissemination/
2014 CD Lynn, MJ Stein, APC Bishop. Engaging Undergraduates through Neuroanthropological Research. Anthropology Now 6(1):92-103.
2015 CD Lynn. Biocultural Systematics: Cheap Thrills and Elementary Anthropology. Anthropology News 56(9-10, September/October):29, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1556-3502.2015.560905_s.x/epdf/.
2015 CD Lynn. Biocultural Systematics: Family Diversity. Anthropology News Online, November http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1556-3502.2015.561002.x/epdf/.
Presentations
2012 CD Lynn. Compromising on Compromise: Engaging Undergraduates through Neuroanthropological Research. Talk at 111th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, CA, November 14-18.
2014 CD Lynn and B Brinkman. “Rap Guide to Evolution” Influences on Knowledge, Attitudes, and Emotions. Presented at the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, October 17-18.
2014 B Brinkman and C Lynn. Quantifying Impacts of Peer-Reviewed Rap. Presented at Eighth Annual Conference of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society, New Paltz, NY, April 10-13.
2015 CD Lynn and M Howells. Anthropologists, Kids, and Careers: When Family is Strange and the Field Familiar. Presented at the 114th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Denver, CO, November 18-22.
2016 M Howells and C Lynn. Anthropologists under Pressure: Perceptions of Stress, Conflict, and Support in the Pursuit of Career-Family Balance. Presented at the 85th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, Atlanta, GA, April 13-16.
2014 CD Lynn and B Brinkman. “Rap Guide to Evolution” Influences on Knowledge, Attitudes, and Emotions. Presented at the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, October 17-18.
2014 B Brinkman and C Lynn. Quantifying Impacts of Peer-Reviewed Rap. Presented at Eighth Annual Conference of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society, New Paltz, NY, April 10-13.
2015 CD Lynn and M Howells. Anthropologists, Kids, and Careers: When Family is Strange and the Field Familiar. Presented at the 114th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Denver, CO, November 18-22.
2016 M Howells and C Lynn. Anthropologists under Pressure: Perceptions of Stress, Conflict, and Support in the Pursuit of Career-Family Balance. Presented at the 85th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, Atlanta, GA, April 13-16.
