Ep. 117 - Cultural Anthropology: Careers, Misconceptions, and Meaning-Making

Ever wondered how cultural anthropology helps us make sense of the world—and our place in it? In this episode of the CSUSB Advising Podcast, hosts Matt Markin and Aurora Shiva Prasad sit down with Dr. Hareem Khan, Associate Professor of Anthropology, to explore the fascinating world of cultural anthropology.

From her own winding journey through college majors to her discovery of anthropology as a powerful tool for asking big questions, Dr. Khan shares insights on meaning-making, relationships, and why anthropology is much more than “just learning about other cultures.” She also tackles common misconceptions, highlights exciting career paths for anthropology majors, and points students to courses and clubs that bring the discipline to life.

✨ If you’ve ever asked, “Where do I fit in the world?” this episode might just give you a new lens to see the answer.

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Transcript

Matt Markin  
Hello and welcome to the CSUSB Advising Podcast. This is Matt Markin from the ASUA Academic Advising Office, and today I get to cohost this episode with...

Aurora Shiva Prasad  
Aurora. I'm also an academic advisor, and I'm excited to be here to kind of have a conversation with you, Matt and our guest today. 

Matt Markin  
How are you doing today? 

Aurora Shiva Prasad  
I'm doing well, I'm excited. I think we're going to talk about a lot of interesting topics and hopefully dive a little bit deeper into the study of anthropology.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, absolutely. And that's a good segue, because, in a way, we've kind of been doing an anthropology series already. We've had recent episodes about the anthropology museum. We've learned about the Master's Degree in Applied Archaeology, but you know, we want to continue to dive more into anthropology as a subject. So great segue, because today's episode revolves around the subfield of cultural anthropology, and to help us learn more about that, let's welcome to the podcast, and that is Dr. Hareem Khan, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology. Dr. Khan, welcome.

Dr. Hareem Khan  
Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here and speak with both of you.

Matt Markin  
Thank you so much again for joining us and taking time out of your busy day and busy fall semester to be here with us today. So before we talk more about cultural anthropology, we like to kind of get to know you a little bit better. Can you tell us about your journey and path in higher ed So in essence, what's your origin story? 

Dr. Hareem Khan  
Of course. Ooh, my origin story. I mean, anthropologists love this question, but when we have to answer it ourselves, it's like, where do I begin? Yeah, so I, you know, I'm a child of diaspora. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago in a very immigrant community. And I, you know, was really shaped by experience of, you know, growing and live, living among South Asian immigrants and South Asian immigrants from all over South Asia and so that really, you know, shaped my lived experience of what it means to be a racialized person in this country at a very young age. And then when I went to college, I was, you know, I come from, like a working, middle class background. And when I went to college, I was, all of a sudden in this surrounded by people in a very different class bracket, right? So I really struggled with sort of finding my place, because now all of a sudden, I'm around other South Asians too, but had who had very different access to capital, access to a different kind of community. And so I was always sort of struggling internally with with that. And so I had all these questions that I didn't really know where to put them. And, you know, if we're tying it to anthropology, I remember I was always I was one of those students who just hopped around from major to major. I started out in biomedical engineering. I don't even know what that is, you know, like, I couldn't tell you anything about biomedical engineering, but that's where I was like, let's start here. And then I jumped from that to, like, economics and I think sociology. And then I took this class that was a GE requirement. It was like, a, it was a an option for a GE requirement, and it was titled something like, peoples of the world. And I looked at that and I was like, This is so silly and sounds so easy. Let me just take this. Because what does this even mean? Little did I know that that was actually the survey course. It was like an introduction to cultural anthropology course, just with a different title to kind of for students like me to be like, What is this? So I took that class. It was a giant lecture, hundreds of students, and I was blown away. And, you know, partially the instructor was was incredible. Partially I was in this place where I was really like fitting in and not fitting in, and confused about my place on this campus, but then what does this mean for my place in the world? Like I had all these sort of tensions, and this class offered a way to ask questions that I just didn't have exposure to before. And that was really the catalyst, I think, for this new trajectory, was like this, like, you know, this door that I didn't even see at all, that just not only now existed, but was open, you know, and that became the sort of entry point into, I wouldn't say, a perfect path to where I am today, but Certainly a new path, and something that was guided by so many amazing mentors and just brought a lot of interesting opportunities for me. So I ended up majoring in cultural anthropology, and I was so nervous with you know what, how this would land with my parents? I still was like, you know, I'm gonna try medicine, and I'm still gonna, you know, do the thing you want me to do. And I even registered for the MCAT, the, you know, medical school entry exam. And right before the exam, I was like, I can't do this. And so I just didn't take it, and I worked for a couple years in higher education reform in Chicago, and then I started graduate school in cultural anthropology, and then I, you know, ended up here on this campus, and started in 2019.

Aurora Shiva Prasad  
I loved hearing about that, because I feel like it's very refreshing and honest and relatable to a lot of our students. And you kind of mentioned how even in your first major, you were asking yourself, well, what is this? I don't even know really what this is in kind of thinking about cultural anthropology, can you kind of provide us with the definition and a breakdown of the concept and the area of study and maybe how it fits in with the broader field of anthropology?

Dr. Hareem Khan  
Absolutely, that's such a good question. And it's a, you know, cultural anthropology is often like, you know, when you see an intro to culture anthropology class, it might say, like, Introduction to culture and society. And in my class the first week, what we're doing is we're really interrogating that, because it means nothing and everything, right? It's like the study of culture and society. And I like to think of cultural anthropology really as the study of relationships and the study of meaning making. Meaning making is a theme that comes up often in cultural anthropology, and I bring those two up to you know, explain that cultural anthropologists are really interested in how people make sense of the world that they live in on their own terms, and that could range from so many different types of experiences. And when I mean relationships, I don't mean relationships necessarily between, you know, one person and another person. I'm often talking about relationships that people have with, for example, the state relationships people have with organizations, religious institutions. And so there's this way in which anthropologists are starting from the stories of people, right? You start from the ground up. You start from how what language people are using, how they're communicating about these issues, how they're making sense of something as far reaching as climate change, but on their own, you know, in their own day to day lives. And then from those stories, we kind of think about, what are these stories tell us about how these big theories or these big ideas work? So how does someone's experience of going to, you know, a campus like ours, shape the ways that they understand their political belonging, right? How does this shape the way they think about what issues matter to them? How does somebody living in the Inland Empire think about the role of the US, military industrial complex, and what's happening in Palestine, you know? Like there's all these questions that students lived experiences can tell us about something broader, right? And so I'm that's what I mean by relationships. And so cultural anthropology really offers that, that relationship between systems and between people, but centering people first, right, thinking about what is this one individual telling me, right? And so it's a tricky field, because sometimes it's hard to how can you generalize? How can you make these broad statements about, okay, what are these stories telling us about globalization? But also is the only field that I found where any book which an ethnography is a text that is written by cultural anthropologist, anytime you read an ethnography, it usually begins with a very intimate story, like a conversation that someone is having with somebody on some, you know, sunny afternoon or something, and from there, it kind of meanders and gets to this really big question that all of us think about, consciously or subconsciously, Like, what does it mean to belong on this planet, and what does it mean to be here? And so I just was very moved by that as a young person, and it really shaped my politics. And I think it fits into the larger, you know, field of anthropology, in that it comes back to meaning making right. It's about how people, either historically or presently, have thought about what it means to live and what it means to be in community, in society, in these structures that shape us. And so I would say that's how it fits in. But I'm very much like a cultural anthropologist like you could not have me teach an archeology class successfully. So I. Will say that, but my culture anthropology is also very much shaped by my experience in other fields, like ethnic studies. So I will say that that there's like a as interdisciplinary as I can be would be more with other humanities and social sciences, but there is a thread, of course, that connects all of the subfields together.

Matt Markin  
Thank you so much for breaking that down for us. And I'm sure you also get this question from from students a lot, and that's like the career question. You know, we get students a lot of times that we'll meet with that are like, cool. I'm interested in this major. What kind of careers are connected to that. So how do you help students, like, kind of understand career opportunities, potentially, of students that are, maybe they're an anthropology major, and also maybe have that interest in the cultural anthropology?

Dr. Hareem Khan  
Sure, yes. This is a, you know, this is so interesting. I've been, we've been thinking a lot about this as professors, because I remember even when I was in graduate school, and this was in like, the, you know, 20 I started in 2011 and when I was approaching the job market in 2016 or 2017 all of a sudden, I'm like, Okay, what do I do? Like, I knew I wanted to be in graduate school, but I didn't think beyond that. And I remember talking to other professors about my job prospects, and they kind of, you know, they were like a professor, like it was just like, because that's what they know, right? A lot of folks who are in academia, especially like previous generations of academics, like that's they didn't have many different jobs before they got into academia, and I think there wasn't the type of mentorship that opened up the possibilities of what else you could do aside from a career in academia. And so, you know, after that experience, it was like, Okay, if I do go into academia, I want to make sure I don't reproduce those same kinds of, like, sort of a narrow vision or a narrow understanding of what is possible. And I think I've come away from that, you know, with with talking to my students, especially many of my students who won't, don't don't want to go on to graduate school, right? So if a student has a BA in anthropology, what can they do? And that's that's been a really interesting exercise for me, and there are so many possibilities. It's a it's a field that gives you so many specific, transferable skills that can be applied to a range of career opportunities, including, you know, we've had students that are interested in of course, you spoke to Professor human about museums, so going into curation journalism, because we journalists Also think about those relationships between institutions and people, and write in a very different style of writing, but that lens is so sharpened due to anthropology. We also, interestingly, I was speaking to a friend of mine who has no experience in anthropology. He's quote, unquote, tech guy, and so he, he was, I remember he sent me when I was on the job market. He sent me a link to a job at Facebook, okay, and it was the the title of the, I think the job title was ethnographer, okay. And I was, I was so curious about what is it? Why would an anthropologist do work in tech? And then through that conversation, I met other people in various industries. I had a friend who worked at Beats by Dre. You know, now it's bought by Apple, but they actually had people who were doing anthropological work within their you know, on their teams, they weren't trained anthropologists, which is why they were trying to market their jobs to anthropologists. And the reason being is that, for example, at the time I was talking to this friend, Beats by Dre was launching this new product, and this product was essentially like a built in stereo system or something in cars. I don't know the details. And what they wanted to figure out was, how do people who buy this type of car, how do they engage with music? How do they listen to music? How do they When do they listen to music? Who do they listen to music with? Are they driving around with their families? Are they're driving around solo? Are they going on long trips? And so they had this person who was leading this team go and basically do ethnographic or anthropological interviews with these consumers to get a sense of like. Okay, how is, how can we, of course. Now, some anthropologists would critique this, but the idea was like, how do we maximize profit, right on this product, through understanding what people want? And so that's like a, you know, another example, because the reality is that many of our students like they they want jobs and they want to be secure, and they want to make money, and it's a real thing. And so I offer all of these like sort of examples to showcase that it's really about the lens that we're sharpening in these classes, which can then be applied to a range of fields that do that kind of critical examination of of the stories that people are telling us. So you can naturally see why that would be such a good fit, and like marketing, right? But I hope that you can also see that it's such a powerful fit if students also go on to organizing. You know, I have a student who's also interested in more activism and organizing related work. And of course, that lens is there because you need to talk to people, and you have to understand people, and often we don't agree with everybody we meet. And so how do we sort of like work through that? So, you know, I have students who've gone into organizing spaces, who've gone into more tech related work, more public media, social media, type of positions, and then, of course, graduate school, like there's still a big, big group of students that are interested in furthering this inquiry in deeper study.

Aurora Shiva Prasad  
I feel like when you're talking about even just you asking those questions about what to do, and they're telling you, you know, continuing your education and possibly becoming a professor as the only option. That misconception that they might have held, it's definitely something that we sometimes see echoed by students, not specifically with cultural anthropology, but just in general, them having certain misconceptions coming into a program. Are there certain misconceptions that you feel students might enter a class with that maybe by the end they leave that class kind of dispelling that you speak to?

Dr. Hareem Khan  
Yes, absolutely. This is actually how we begin the class. We begin the class with misconceptions. I love to sort of get a read on what students think anthropology is, because I was in that same position. I didn't really know. And, you know, I was like, oh, it's the study of it's not sociology, but it's like, ish, you know. And so I remember, like in my classes, when I bring up that question. Students kind of think of it as a very like dei approach to cultures. Like, let's just hop in and out of different cultural groups and learn about, you know, their kinship structures or whatever. And I'm not saying that wasn't anthropology, like might still be in some some classrooms, but the anthropology of today that I really like to expose students to is that, you know, anthropology is a politicized discipline. It's a discipline where you have to take a position, and you have to sort of hold your position in relation to experiences of people that maybe you don't fully agree with, or maybe you're trying to understand, or maybe, you know, in order to make sense of something. And so students often think of it as like, apolitical, as like, we'll eat foods from around the world, or something, you know. And I try to say that there's room for that. There's room for that kind of exposure. But it's really about asking these tough questions. It's really about, you know, looking critically at things like that. It's looking critically at, for example, we did a whole segment in our class about even programming on our campus. What does this programming tell us about? You know, we're celebrating X, Y and Z thing. But what's actually happening in that country, right? How are people actually mobilizing in that country against some of these ideas around, like celebration and, you know, that dominate in our campus spaces that promote, like, heritage months and things like that. So it's a real critical field, and that's what I try to get students to understand. It's not just about this sort of exotifying lens where we just, like, look and watch and observe. It's really a critical examination of the world we live in. And therefore, it requires your voice. It requires you to, you know, have a way to articulate your opinions, it calls for action, right? So it's a very that's how I teach culture anthropology. And so I've even had a friend who we've like, bickered over this, where he kind of sees anthropology more as like National Geographic issue, right? Have you seen those? Magazines, right? Like National Geographic, it's like they're beautiful visual pictures, right, of like, different cultures around the world. And I don't think that's anthropology today. I think the anthropology of today, and there's actually an anthropologist who studies those magazines to criticize them, to say the stuff that's missing is what anthropologists are interested in, right? Like, what brought that person to the photo? What is the context of war that is missing from that photo that we, you know, do not see as people who are perusing this magazine? It's all those hidden questions that I think anthropologists are actually interested in, and so I hope that that responded to the question, but that's really where we begin. Like it's not just culture, the sort of flat understanding of culture. It's really expecting you to to build a lens that allows you to see things beyond the surface.

Matt Markin  
Now let's say a students listen to this and they're like, this all sounds fascinating. I'm super interested. If a student wanted to take a deeper dive into cultural anthropology, is there, like an intro course, or something you can recommend to a student?

Dr. Hareem Khan  
Absolutely. So I actually teach the intro to cultural anthropology class on our campus. It's titled Anth 1002, Understanding Cultural Diversity. And it's really, you know exactly what we just talked about. It's, it's, it's, it's bringing in the history of culture anthropology, which has a really unique history, complicated history. So we don't shy away from that. We dive into that historical context, and then kind of bring in every week there's a different topic or issue that we relate to the work of cultural anthropologists. So we'll, you know, go from gender, race, class, we'll talk about migration, we'll talk about environmental racism or climate change, and we'll kind of go through these various topics, but asking questions through an anthropological lens, like, what is the question that anthropologists would be asking here, and why is that different from perhaps other approaches to the same issue? So it's kind of like a it's a survey course, but it's more designed around themes, rather than like specific like anthropological keywords or vocabulary. So that's the structure of the class, but it's a big class. It's hybrid right now, and we'll probably go into fully in person mode, but it's usually about 60 to 70 students. It's super fun, and we try to make it really relevant. And so we'll bring in guest speakers. If there's an event happening on campus, we try to align it with that. And so yeah, that's, that's, that's the class I would recommend as an entry point. And then, of course, there are amazing upper division courses as well.

Aurora Shiva Prasad  
Thank you, Dr. Khan, for sharing all of that. I think a lot of students are going to find what you shared today really wise and helpful for them if they're looking for a major, and even for students who are already locked into a major, I think that it sounds like if they take one of the courses that you mentioned, or any other cultural anthropology course, that they can gain those skills to sharpen their lens and gain those interview skills. So we really appreciate you sharing today.

Dr. Hareem Khan  
Yes, absolutely. And one final thing, we do have an anthropology club, and that's such an interdisciplinary space, and our students are from all various subfield they represent all the subfields. And you know, if a student is interested, they can all also, if they feel intimidated going to a faculty member, we have, you know, amazing students who can really speak the truth about what anthropology feel like, what it means to major in anthropology on our campus. So I refer students also to ALPACA, our sweet anthropology club.

Matt Markin  
Thank you again. So much for being on the podcast with us today.

Dr. Hareem Khan  
Yes, thank you so much for having me, and I look forward to listening to the series as well.

Aurora Shiva Prasad  
Thank you.