Action research

Action research is a reflective process of progressive problem solving led by individuals

working with others in teams or as part of a "community of practice" to improve the way
they address issues and solve problems. Action research can also be undertaken by larger
organizations or institutions, assisted or guided by professional researchers, with the aim
of improving their strategies, practices, and knowledge of the environments within which
they practice. As designers and stakeholders, researchers work with others to propose a
new course of action to help their community improve its work practices (Center for
Collaborative Action Research). Kurt Lewin, then a professor at MIT, first coined the
term “action research” in about 1944, and it appears in his 1946 paper “Action Research
and Minority Problems”. In that paper, he described action research as “a comparative
research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research
leading to social action” that uses “a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle
of planning, action, and fact-finding about the result of the action”.

applied anthropology
refers to the application of method and theory in anthropology to the analysis and
solution of practical problems. Inasmuch as anthropology traditionally entails four sub-
disciplines--biological (a.k.a. physical), cultural, linguistic, and archaeological
anthropology--the practical application of any of these sub-disciplines may properly be
designated "applied anthropology". Indeed, some practical problems may invoke all sub-
disciplines. For example, a Native American community development program may
involve archaeological research to determine legitimacy of water rights claims,
ethnography to assess the current and historical cultural characteristics of the community,
linguistics to restore language competence among inhabitants, and biological or medical
anthropology to determine the causality of dietary deficiency diseases, et al.[1]
Applied anthropologists often work for nonacademic clients such as governments,
development agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), tribal and ethnic
associations, interest groups, social-service and educational agencies, and businesses.
Ethnography and participant observation are the applied anthropologist's primary
research tools. They also use textual analysis, survey research and other empirical
methods to inform policy or to market products.
This stands in contrast to the purely academic realm of sociocultural anthropology, which
may be more concerned with creating theoretical models which correspond to its units of
analysis, e.g. social inequality, performance, exchange, relative ethic value, and so forth.
Sometimes research that falls within the "applied" field is differentiated from such
research, which is thereby termed "basic" anthropology.
Development anthropology

Development anthropology refers to the application of anthropological perspectives to

the multidisciplinary branch of development studies. It takes international development
and international aid as primary objects. In this branch of anthropology, the term
development refers to the social action made voluntary by different agents (institutions,
business, enterprise, states, independent volunteers) who are trying to modify the
economic, technical, political or/and social life of a given place in the world, especially in
developing nations.
For development anthropology, development is neither a goal, an ideal nor a failure. It is
an object of study. (Reader's note: many development anthropologists would reject this
idea, citing an explicit commitment to simultaneously critique and contribute to
development. While some theorists distinguish between the 'anthropology of
development' (in which development is the object of study) and development
anthropology (as an applied practice), this distinction is increasingly thought of as
obsolete (see Escobar, 1997, in Edelman and Haugerud, 2005:40). With researches on the
field, the anthropologist can describe, analyze and understand the different actions of
development that took and take place in a given place. The various impacts on the local
population, environment, social and economic life are to be examined.