Practicing anthropology primarily refers to anthropological work performed outside academia to address issues in areas such as community development, agriculture, health care, environment, resource management, housing, criminal justice, marketing, and technology. Although a majority of practicing anthropologists work in urban or other local settings, some work on international projects, especially in development and health. Practicing anthropologists can be employed by a university, but most hold positions in public and private sectors where they study community-related problems, help develop programs and policies, and implement solutions. 

Historical Context and differences vis-a-vis applied anthropology: 

In 1941, Margaret Mead, Eliot Chapple, and others founded the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) in response to the growth of applied anthropology, which the SfAA defines as the application of anthropological perspectives through interdisciplinary scientific investigation of human relationships for solving practical problems. Originally a part of American Anthropological Association (AAA), SfAA became a separate entity to avoid traditional anthropology’s undercurrent of bias against applied or practicing anthropology. By the 1950s, applied anthropology was generally regarded as an academic, research-based subfield of cultural anthropology intended to inform policy, program administration, intervention, and development. Practicing anthropology, conversely, did not burgeon until the 1970s, spurred by an extreme shortage in academic positions in the United States, and by recognition of the potential for anthropologists beyond basic research in applying anthropological knowledge to help solve humans’ critical problems as practitioners of anthropology.

The actual term practicing anthropologist was not in common use until the appearance of the SfAA’s journal Practicing Anthropology (PA) in 1978, a publication originally intended for individuals with nonacademic employment. Eventually PA sought to establish practicing as part of the anthropology discipline and to bridge the gap between practicing in nonacademic and academic settings. 

• It is still debatable as to whether there is a difference between applied and practicing anthropology, since both employ anthropological means to study societal, organizational, or programmatic issues, and to help facilitate change by influencing policy and practice.
   
• Shirley Fiske considers practicing as virtually interchangeable with applied in that both serve as testing grounds for theory of traditional anthropology subfields. Others contend that practicing is broader than applied because it incorporates all nonacademic anthropological work, not only the policy research of applied significance

• Still others make a distinction between the two by describing the applied work of those employed in business and agencies as practicing and similar work of academically employed as applied. 
   
• If the discipline itself were to make a distinction, it would probably be that applied work is primarily concerned with producing knowledge that will be useful to others, while practicing work directly involves anthropologists’ intervening beyond social scientific inquiry, making their knowledge and skills useful and easily accessible.

SCOPE OF WORK: 

• agricultural development
• environmental policy and regulation, 
• product design and program management in business and industry, 
• human factors engineering in information technology, 
• cultural resource management, 
• curatorial activities in museums, 
• forensics in law enforcement
• nonprofit and social service work, including management and policy implementation and grant writing. 
• Typical Roles Practicing anthropologists often play multiple roles. The most common include researcher, research analyst, evaluator, impact assessor, needs assessor, planner, change agent, advocate, culture broker, information specialist, administrator, and manager. Therapist and expert witness roles are rare but have also been a part of practicing anthropology. Other roles include educator and consultant: anthropologists have long been involved in personnel training (for example, the cross-cultural training of administrators, managers, or other social scientists in anthropological techniques such as social impact assessment) and have frequently performed long- and short-term consulting