why anthropology works

There are currently labour strikes in various Western Cape townships. 

This means that men who work on construction sites are harassed if they are found to be going or have gone to work. When they come home in the evening they are asked where they have been. If a branded vehicle arrives to pick up men, the vehicle and its occupants are placed in immediate danger.

Why anthropology works:
Someone is trained in the nuances of language, dialogue, understanding and caring.
With the aim of action.
With a status of an elite. (eg. The University of Cape Town).
Policy makers often literally DO NOT KNOW what is happening and want to know how it is that people manage daily tasks in these conditions.
They NEED someone whose sole task it is to listen with the sole aim of UNDERSTANDING.

Anthropology, in terms of its current very important role in our society, is the presence of a sound group of individuals who seek to bridge the gap between those who run the world (for lack of a better word, the man) and those who are most affected by their decisions by working from the ground up. 

It allows one the opportunity to make a change instead of helplessly and hopelessly talking about structural inequalities at the dinner table or on car trips. 
Talk is cheap. 

My pet peeve is a conversation in which people are throwing words around but no one is really saying anything:

anecdochen. a conversation in which everyone is talking but nobody is listening, simply overlaying disconnected words like a game of Scrabble, with each player borrowing bits of other anecdotes as a way to increase their own score, until we all run out of things to say. 

(posted by jkcreative in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/42961208848/anecdoche)

"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else."

-Charles Dickens, novelist (1812-1870)