Think anthropologically

Jeremy Spoon, a third-year assistant professor in Portland State’s department of anthropology, will deliver a lecture this Thursday at the Women’s Resource Center as part of the center’s second annual Social Sustainability Month.

Spoon will educate his audience on issues he encountered during his eight years of research in Nepalese Himalaya and his three and a half years in the Spring Mountains National Recreation Area and Desert National Wildlife Refuge in Nevada’s Great Basin.

“I will be introducing some aspects of the ecological knowledge and understanding of people in the Himalayas and the Great Basin,” Spoon said. The lecture will also address environmental, social and economic sustainability issues.

“Sustainability means ‘a world that works for all’,” said sociology major Amanda Leece, chair of the Social Sustainability Planning Committee. “But it is good to remember that social sustainability looks different to many people.”

Spoon hopes to broaden his audience’s awareness of how anthropology works in practice.

“I just want people who are interested in these topics to go to the talk and open up their minds, to think anthropologically, to think about the relevance of research,” he said. “These may be things that are new to people in Portland, but it might broaden their minds.”

Spoon added that his talk will teach people about a new part of the world, and that much of the subject matter will hit home: “The people are different, but the issues are important to everybody.”

“The last time I attended his event, I was so fired up about communities in action,” Leece said. “I felt like I had learned a lot about how important it is for communities to have agency within the research setting and to choose how they are represented.”

Spoon also hopes to help students bridge the gap between education and career, to answer the “so what?” question associated with doing field research.

Leece said the event provides a terrific opportunity for students to understand the interdisciplinary work being done at Portland State, and to form a greater picture of the direction the university is heading.

“I may not be able to take classes outside my major, but I am able to attend this free event and learn a lot about what people are doing around the university,” Leece said.

Having worked in national parks, national forests and military lands, Spoon—wherever his research takes him—seeks to unite the goals of native populations with those of the groups that manage the land.

“People’s perspectives on the environment and their knowledge of it form the entire landscape on an ecological level, how everything is interconnected all the way down to species of plants and animals,” Spoon said. “Also, things we might not consider living but other cultures do, like mountains and rivers and rocks and caves.”

Driven by his love for the indigenous communities he’s worked in and the people who inhabit them, Spoon conducts his research as ethically and collaboratively as possible.

“The people I work with are the best,” Spoon said. “They are my friends and they’re my colleagues. They are collaborators in all of my research.”

As a teenager, Spoon travelled to East Africa to conduct fieldwork with the Moshi people.

“From then on, I knew what I wanted to do,” Spoon said. “I didn’t choose the job; it chose me.”  

Spoon moved to Portland after getting his doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of Hawai’i. He is currently teaching two anthropology classes at Portland State.

“It gives me hope to see how many people with diverse interests and backgrounds are working to make change in their field,” Leece said. “Dr. Spoon is definitely one of them.”

The Women’s Resource Center expressed their excitement to have Spoon give a lecture after his 2010 talk about his work in the Great Basin.

“It was amazing to see Dr. Spoon’s use of applied anthropology for social change last year,” Leece said. “I am excited to find out about his latest research in the Nepalese Himalaya.”