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- The Optimistic Anthropologist Volume 26
The Optimistic Anthropologist Volume 26
On Community and Our New Home Base
JANUARY 2020 | VOLUME 26
Dear ,
During my sophomore year of college, I took a required,
focused on how communities have constructed themselves – politically, socially, morally, and religiously - throughout Western history. In my section of the course, led by an iconoclastic young classics professor, we started with Plato and ended with readings on
and
. I often think about the way she summarized the course for us, “For thousands of years, communities were about excluding people. It’s only in the last 100 years or so, that communities have started to allow those same people back in.”
This idea of shaping different communities than what has come before remains profound for me. A goal that I continue to strive for in OA's work relating to
,
, and centering diverse voices in qualitative
processes.
And on the personal level, I see it in how technology can be a great tool to stay connected to clients, friends, and family living far and wide. Technology also makes me keenly aware of and a tool for aiding and expanding the chaos and injustice happening around the globe.
After a few years of intensive travel, recently, I’ve been appreciating how important it is to be in the same physical spaces as other members of my community. And it's even influenced me to make community my personal
for 2020.
It's also why I’m so excited that next week Optimistic Anthropology and I will have a new home base in Washington, DC. We are moving to a house I hope to make a space for community – for co-working and bread breaking (and baking), for joy and catharsis, and for advancing the world closer to the vision of a
where, “poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit…Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.” More details coming soon!
Be well and do good,Alison
P.S. I’d love to hear from you! What does community means to you and your work? What does it look and feel like? Feel free to
or
to our new HQ at 5109 8
St NW, Washington, DC 20011. If you send a postcard, I promise to write you a postcard back!
LATEST
On February 5, Optimistic Anthropology LLC will officially have a new headquarters in the
neighborhood of Washington, DC. We will continue to operate as a location-independent business, but our home base is moving just a mile up the road.
Our new HQ will have room for co-working and community events, and even the ability to host visitors who need a short-term (a week
or even three months) home while working in DC. Stay tuned for more details once we've made the move and caught our breath!
In the meantime, please update your address book to reflect our new mailing address: Optimistic Anthropology LLC, 5109 8th St NW, Washington, DC 20011.
is our monthly round-up of job, consulting, and fully-funded fellowship and accelerator opportunities that people connected to Optimistic Anthropology are recruiting for. It's updated on a rolling basis because we love connecting people who share our values to great resources!
Optimistic Anthropology has the capacity to take on new projects and clients in 2020! If you are part of a team, organization, or cross-sector collaboration which is passionate about making the world a more positive and equitable place, we would love to help you in 2020.
We help clients do this by:
conducting qualitative research (interviews, focus groups, lessons learned, case studies, etc.)
building emergent learning and strategy practices to navigate complexity and ambiguity;
developing a theory of change or learning/evaluation strategy; and/or
shaping cross-sector collaborations and/or community engagement efforts.
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