Applied and Action Anthropology, and Anthropology’s Relationship with Sociology

Anthropology has never been content to remain a purely academic exercise. As the world around traditional societies began to change rapidly, anthropologists recognised that their knowledge about human communities could, and should, be put to work. This push led to two distinct approaches for using anthropological knowledge in the real world: applied anthropology and action anthropology. At the same time, anthropology’s relationship with its closest intellectual neighbour, sociology, has been one of the most discussed topics in the social sciences. The two disciplines started out studying different kinds of communities using different methods, but over time they have moved so close together that some scholars now see them as nearly inseparable.

From the Classroom to the Field: Why Anthropology Moved Toward Practice

In 1929, Bronislaw Malinowski made an influential call. He argued that anthropology needed “a new branch … the anthropology of the changing native.” His point was simple: traditional societies were not frozen in time. They were being reshaped by colonial encounters, economic shifts, and contact with the wider world. Studying them as though they existed in a timeless bubble was no longer enough.

By 1975, Sol Tax took this observation further. He noted that the problems faced by traditional societies due to changing socio-economic conditions had become “a worldwide syndrome” (a pattern that repeated across the globe, not limited to any single region or people). This recognition pushed the discipline beyond its purely academic boundaries into two practical directions: application and action.

Applied Anthropology: Working FOR Communities

Applied anthropology is the older of the two approaches. According to Beals and Hoijer, the practical use of anthropological knowledge to solve human problems has been recognised since the very beginning of the discipline. This recognition was formalised in 1941 with the establishment of the Society for Applied Anthropology.

At its core, applied anthropology involves an organised interaction between professional anthropologists and policy-making bodies, whether government agencies, NGOs, or private organisations. The anthropologist studies a community, gathers data, and then produces a blueprint for development (a detailed plan based on scientific knowledge). This plan is then handed over to whatever agency will implement it.

The key characteristics of this approach are:

• Information-oriented — The anthropologist’s primary role is to generate and deliver knowledge. The actual decision-making and implementation happen elsewhere.
• Works FOR the community — The anthropologist acts on behalf of the community, but the community itself is not directly involved in shaping the research or the plan.
• Vulnerability to misuse — Once information leaves the anthropologist’s hands, there is no guarantee about how it will be used. Politicians may exploit it to sustain their vote bank. Missionaries may use it to facilitate religious conversion. The information becomes a tool that serves the ends of whoever wields it.

Action Anthropology: Working WITH Communities

Action anthropology came later, coined by Sol Tax in 1951 at the American Anthropological Association meeting in Chicago. It arose as a response to the limitations of the applied model. If applied anthropology risks handing over knowledge to be used by anyone for any purpose, action anthropology keeps the anthropologist in the picture throughout the entire process.

In this approach, the anthropologist does not just collect data and walk away. Instead, they become actively involved in the planning and administration of development policies, working side by side with the community.

The key characteristics are:

• Action-oriented — The goal is not just to produce information but to drive real change on the ground.
• Works WITH the community — The anthropologist participates as a partner, not an outsider handing over a report.
• Community-directed — This follows a principle sometimes called non-directive counseling (guidance where the community’s own needs and decisions take priority over the anthropologist’s professional judgment). If the community sees a different priority than the researcher, the community’s view wins.
• Development as the goal itself — Unlike applied anthropology where information can serve varied ends, in action anthropology the development and well-being of the community is the end in itself. There is no secondary user who might redirect the effort.

Comparing the Two Approaches

Dimension	Applied Anthropology	Action Anthropology
Origin	Recognised since the discipline’s early days; Society for Applied Anthropology founded in 1941	Coined by Sol Tax in 1951 at the AAA meeting in Chicago
Orientation	Information-oriented	Action-oriented
Relationship with community	Works FOR the community	Works WITH the community
Role of the anthropologist	Prepares a scientific blueprint for development; hands it to agencies	Actively participates in planning and administering development
Decision-making	Agencies (government, NGOs, etc.) decide how to use the information	Community needs and decisions may be preferred over the anthropologist’s own judgment (non-directive counseling)
Risk of misuse	Information can be redirected to serve political or missionary agendas	Development of the community is the end goal, reducing the risk of misuse

Despite these differences, both approaches ultimately serve the same larger purpose: they push anthropology beyond the library and the seminar room, making it a force for the development of communities and giving the discipline a more holistic character.

Anthropology and Sociology: Two Disciplines, One Family

If applied and action anthropology represent anthropology’s relationship with the real world, the relationship between anthropology and sociology represents its closest bond within the academic world. Both disciplines belong to the social sciences, and both study human behaviour and culture within their societies. Yet they grew up with distinct identities.

Sociology, as defined by Ginsberg, is the “study of human interactions, inter-relations, conditions and consequences.” Anthropology, as Herskovitz put it, is the “study of man and his actions.” Both definitions point toward the same broad territory: understanding how human beings live, interact, and organise themselves. But historically, the two disciplines carved out different spaces within that territory.

Where They Traditionally Differed

Four key differences marked the early separation between the two disciplines:

• Subject matter by origin — Anthropology emerged as the “study of other cultures.” Its roots lay in the colonial era, where European scholars went out to document non-Western peoples, often carrying an ethnocentric bias (the tendency to judge other cultures by the standards of one’s own). Sociology, by contrast, developed as a tool for examining one’s own society. The gaze was turned inward rather than outward.

• Approach to theory — In its early days, anthropological writing was heavily descriptive. Researchers produced detailed accounts of customs, rituals, and social structures, but these writings often lacked a strong conceptual or theoretical framework. They were later termed colonial ethnographies (detailed records made during the colonial period, often shaped by the biases of that era). Sociology, on the other hand, placed greater emphasis on analysing data and drawing conclusions within theoretical frameworks from the start.

• Communities studied — Traditionally, anthropologists focused on tribal communities, which were small-scale, often geographically remote, and had limited contact with industrialised societies. Sociologists, meanwhile, worked with rural and urban communities that were part of larger national and global networks.

• Fieldwork methods — Anthropologists developed their own distinctive method: participant observation (living within the community being studied and observing daily life from the inside). Sociologists relied more on secondary techniques such as schedules, questionnaires, and formal interviews.

How the Two Disciplines Have Converged

Despite these historical differences, anthropology and sociology have been moving steadily closer together. The boundaries that once separated them have blurred to the point where some scholars question whether any meaningful difference remains.

Kroeber captured this closeness perfectly by calling the two disciplines “twin sisters”, born from the same intellectual concerns, developing along parallel lines, and increasingly indistinguishable in their adult forms.

Several forces have driven this convergence:

• Shared subject matter — Both disciplines now engage in the comparative study of social structures. Anthropologists have widened their research to include rural and urban communities, while sociologists have developed a keen interest in tribal societies. The result is that there is no longer any significant difference in the populations they study.

• Evans-Pritchard’s view — The overlap became so pronounced that Evans-Pritchard wrote: “Social anthropology can be regarded as a branch of sociological studies, that is, the branch which devotes itself to primitive societies.” This was not a demotion of anthropology but a recognition that the two fields share the same intellectual ground.

• The label of Comparative Sociology — Some anthropologists have come so close to sociological work that they prefer to call anthropology “Comparative Sociology”, a name that foregrounds the discipline’s interest in comparing social structures across different societies.

• Borrowing of methods — The methodological wall has also fallen. Sociologists now routinely adopt participant observation, the technique that was once anthropology’s signature. Anthropologists, in turn, increasingly use questionnaires, surveys, and formal interviews, the tools that sociologists pioneered.

• Intellectual cross-pollination — Sociology has borrowed the concepts of cultural apparatus and cultural field from social anthropology and built on them. In the other direction, the ideas of Emile Durkheim, the French sociologist, had a profound influence on anthropologists like Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. Durkheim’s theories about social solidarity, collective consciousness, and the function of institutions shaped major strands of anthropological thinking.

• Disproving racism — Anthropology made a contribution that sociologists openly valued: it used scientific evidence from diverse human populations to disprove ideas of racism. MacLaren and other sociologists attached great importance to this work, recognising that anthropology had provided the empirical foundation for rejecting racial hierarchies.

Two Sides of One Coin

The picture that emerges is of two disciplines that started from different corners of the same room but have walked steadily toward each other. Anthropology brought deep immersion in small-scale, non-Western societies and a commitment to holistic understanding. Sociology brought theoretical rigour, large-scale data analysis, and a focus on modern industrial societies. Today, they share methods, theories, and communities of study. As the world becomes more interdisciplinary, the line between them grows thinner, and both disciplines are richer for the exchange.