Why anthropology: a primer for [aspiring] sketchnoters and others

[hint: because it’s wonder-ful!]

Why should a sketchnoter [or an ever aspiring sketchnoter] even bother with anthropology? Don’t you have more serious things to do? And shouldn’t I, as a reader, have more fun things to get to?

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So first things first, I think there is a wide and bright rainbow spectrum between exciting and serious! Personally, as an aspiring sketchnoter, I am interested in anthropology as… the science of wonder! (Yes, for real).

What brought me to anthropology, I believe, is exactly what brought me to sketchnoting. Both share two essential qualities that can make the world just a little better:

• bounciness: the ability to get creative on the spot and,

• curiosity: an endless openness to wonder about everything and everyone.

Anthropology: if there ever was a science on how to become a better being it would be just that! (I might be slightly biased though… I have been a professional anthropologist for 20 years and I have been teaching it for 10 so… I kind of like it very very much).

Granted, anthropology does not teach you how to fly, travel in time, read others’ minds so it’s really not a plan to become a superhero.

Anthropology also does not teach you the morals of what “better” actually means and what a “good being” looks like. But it would definitely give you the tools to do research among a wide range of people if you were interested in that. Ultimately, while anthropology does study what human (and other) beings are and what they aspire to, it doesn’t settle once and for all on a proper etiquette, or even a manual to follow.

BUT what anthropology does teach us is how to observe others, join them in life (in all its good and bad), converse with them, and understand the worlds they inhabit and make. And none of that can be done, really, without true empathy. That doesn’t mean agreeing on everything with everyone, or even turning the full sympathy mode on at all times, no-one can really do that: it’s about perspective, a you-do-you reciprocal approach, but one where you do a more welcoming, generous you. And this is what cannot be done well without getting close, without letting yourself go a bit, and letting others in a lot.

Never ask an anthropologist why anthropology is a true wonder, because, well… it just is! But if you were to ask me: it’s exactly the science of constantly finding wonder in and with the world.

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