Part one: Watch the film and answer these questions:

Link: Film: The Anthropologist (2015) (Links to an external site.)

"The Anthropologist" examines climate change like no other film before. The fate of the planet is considered from the perspective of American teenager Katie Crate. Over the course of five years, she travels alongside her mother Susie, an anthropologist studying the impact of climate change on indigenous communities. Their journey parallels that of renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead, who for decades sought to understand how global change affects remote cultures.

Choose at least 3 of the following questions to answer (150 word min):

• Why do you think the filmmakers choose to focus on climate change from the perspective of 14 year-old Katie Crate?
• Describe at least three effects of climate change on the people, the landscape, and the communities in places like Siberia (Russia), the islands of Kiribati (Papua New Guinea), the US south, and the mountains of Peru?
• What role do anthropologists like Susie Crate play in understanding climate change? Why does Susie Crate believe that anthropologists make natural activists? How do the methods of anthropology lend themselves to understanding people's relationship to the environment?
• What are some of the ways various peoples around the world explain the changes they are seeing and how are they responding? Are there lessons we can learn from others?
• Mary Catherine Bateson (the daughter of Margaret Mead) says that "stability requires constant adjustment." What do you think she means by this and how does it apply to climate change?

part two: #1) Listen to the following Podcast. HERE IS THE TRANSCRIPT: E9_The_River_is_a_Goddess_-_Environmental_Anthropo_transcript.pdf

#2) Answer the following questions (200 word min).

• Discuss the idea that anthropologists are interested in a "dialectical" relationship between humans and the environment. Apply this idea to Dr. Georgina Drew's research on the Indian Ganga river. What is the religious, economic, and environment relationship between people and the river? How do the practical needs of people who use the river water conflict with their spiritual needs?
• What does it mean to say "the water is a living entity"? In what ways might the river be an "actor" (an entity that can affect the world and people's experiences) in people's lives? How is this view point different from seeing the environment as an object that is passive and only acted upon by humans? Does this change your perspective about nature or the environment in any way?
• Describe at least one of the political, economic, and religious conflicts that have arisen over the use of the river water in the past several decades. How have these impacted or changed the way people relate to the river?

Anthropologist on the Street

E9 - Environmental Anthropology with Dr. Georgina Drew

The Ganga River in India is a goddess – but does that mean she provides for her followers, or her followers need to protect her? Environmental Anthropologist Dr. Georgina Drew explains how a river is many things to its surrounding inhabitants, and how taking an ethnographic approach means viewing the partnership between the environment and culture, as well as how each impacts the other.