Bulletin 8

Prof. Dr Jan Brouwer has been invited by Sietar.org to present a Talk of 20 min on Anthropology for IT, MNC and Architecture in Pune on 18 Feb 2018 entitled:

ME AND MY SHADOW - ANTHROPOLOGY AS A TOOL

for the corporate and educational sectors

 For long Anthropology has been the study of “primitive peoples” and “tribes”. I am trained as an Anthropologist at Leiden University, The Netherlands. At the same university I taught Anthropology and History of India. At the end of the first year I visited India as a tourist. On return I read Sanskrit and Kannada for one year and produced a BA and an MA Anthropological thesis on Indian subjects. My PhD was published as “The Makers of the World” on the Visvakarma artisans of Karnataka. 

My study of the Craft and Mind of artisans helped my understanding of modern manufacturing. My work as translator at ITC majors provided me insight into the functioning of the service sector. Combining the two interests I designed Culture Training modules. 

The Anthropological method may briefly be described as decoding of the mentality component of culture so as to arrive at the concepts on which practices are based. 

People perceive the world unconsciously through a cultural lens. Awareness of the lens through the decoding process answers the question “why do we act as we do”. This awareness leads to understanding and on this basis we arrive at sustainable new forms of communication.

Thus, I extended the method of Anthropology into modern industry and service sectors, architecture and music. The 21^stcentury is indeed the Age of Anthropology.