Public Anthropology in the United States and Indonesia

This paper discusses the development of public anthropology in the United States and Indonesia. Drawing on literature reviews and archive studies, this article argues that public anthropology needs to be considered as a pragmatic strategy to elevate the position of anthropology in the public realm, and make it relevant to society. As a scholarly concept, public anthropology in Indonesia is not as popular as in the United States relative to applied anthropology. However, its individual and institutional practices have been flourishing in the last decade, including collaborative works and community engagement, publishing scholarship beyond conventional academic forms, active involvement in contemporary human problems, and efforts to influence public policies. To foster Indonesian public anthropology, an academic promotion system that gives more appreciation to public scholarship should be encouraged. Academic anthropologists may also take the initiative to include public anthropology in the anthropology curriculum. Moreover, the Indonesian Anthropological Association (AAI) can facilitate and promote public anthropology in broader public debates, and maintain its active role in defending humanity.


INTRODUCTION
Public anthropology has been unrecognized in Indonesian anthropological debates for a long time despite the extensive roles of Indonesian anthropologists in the public arena.However, this is not the case for applied anthropology, which has received more attention from Indonesian anthropologists.Many believe that applied anthropology is the answer to the pragmatic and moral needs of anthropology.On the one hand, applied anthropology reinforces the relevance of anthropological knowledge produced and reproduced through ethnographic research.On the other hand, it provides opportunities to increase the role of anthropology in understanding and solving human conundrums.In his inaugural professorial address, Marzali (2002) remarks that applied anthropology is the "promising future of anthropology" that will kill two birds with one stone.He claims applied anthropology can fill two needs with one deed: the need to participate in national development, and to build a career path for a better personal life.
In the same vein, Kasniyah (2005) suggests that applied anthropology with its theoretical and methodical advantages can contribute to national development such as social intervention on development projects, explaining socio-cultural changes in society and their ramifications.However, the anthropological contribution to development is still far from satisfactory both disciplinary and institutionally, although several individual anthropologists have gained public recognition and appreciation for their works.A similar concern is also raised by Shahab (2006) who maintains that Indonesian anthropologists have not yet been at the forefront of public debate about ethnic diversity and multiculturalism.She highlights the absence of anthropologists in the public debates on many crucial issues about which anthropologists are knowledgeable.Many argue that anthropological explanation that tends to be complicated, jargony, thoughtful, and multilayered will cause public misunderstanding when it is communicated to non-scholarly audiences.Moreover, it is not easy for anthropologists to negotiate with popular media, which have different priorities and purposes, to deliver the key messages of their arguments.In many cases, when anthropologists' presentations are published in popular media, the contents do not reflect their original messages.
Therefore, rather than participating in public discourse, anthropologists often seem more comfortable staying within their discipline.The risk in this approach is that the absence of anthropologists from public debates on human subjects will undermine not only their discipline, but also cultural perspectives required to understand human problems.The arguments and explanations that dominate public debates are often based on more prejudices, stereotypes of other people and false assumption of human nature that legitimate the status quo rather than critical and comprehensive, innovative, and enlightening forms of understanding.Those who take the public stage are not judged on their "detailed knowledge on the subject at hand," but on their "ability to appear knowledgeable and be entertaining" (Besteman & Gusterson, 2005, p. 3).To address these problems, Abdullah (2018) encourages anthropological research findings and interpretations to be brought to a broader public in such a way that anthropologists engage in "lengthy debates about the humanitarian issues" (p.87).Translating anthropological ideas and concepts for general audiences will make anthropology relevant to their lives.In addition, bringing public issues to anthropological debates will advance the discipline of anthropology theoretically and methodologically.Through this dialectical process, anthropologists will not only become "researchers," but also "public intellectuals" (Tsing, 2005) or "thinkers" as Abdullah (2018) demonstrates in his assessment on three leading figures of Indonesian anthropologists: Koentjaraningrat, Masri Singarimbun, and Parsudi Suparlan.
Notwithstanding the advantages of engaging anthropology in the public sphere, Indonesian anthropology faces challenges that may hinder it from achieving its desired goals.These challenges lie not only in the conceptual framework and at the paradigmatic level, but also pertain to a pragmatic dimension that gets little attention from most anthropologists.The pragmatic endeavor is necessary for the change of the paradigmatic dimension, which will advance anthropological interests, to come into being.In this article, I propose that public anthropology needs to be considered as a pragmatic strategy to elevate the position of anthropology in the public realm and make it relevant for society both within and outside academic communities.Public anthropology seeks, borrowing Peacock's phrase, "a flourishing redirection of our field into a prominent position in society" (Peacock, 1997, p. 9)

THEORIZING PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY
The term "public anthropology" was coined by Robert Borofsky and Renato Rosaldo to describe an effort to build a close and mutual relationship in the form conversation, involvement, collaboration, and engagement between anthropology as an academic discipline and the public (Borofsky, 2011).Public anthropology can be conceptualized as an anthropological position, knowledge, or practice (research, publication, and event) that involves public audiences and is accessible for common understanding, not limited to academic anthropological communities.The concept of the public refers to two possible notions: first, the academic community outside anthropology, and second, the people or communities who work with anthropologists in the field.Anthropological research that treats the research subjects as partners in conducting collaborative researches, and emphasizes accountability to them in the publication of results, is also popularly called engaged anthropology (Beck & Maida, 2013).Different from engaged anthropology that focuses on the communities who work with anthropologists, public anthropology emphasizes the broad non-academic discourses and community (Eriksen, 2013).
Public anthropology primarily orients its practices deliberately to non-anthropologists and nonacademic audiences, as it chiefly aims at "promoting anthropological knowledge in public arenas and heightening anthropology's public image" (Besteman, 2013).Promoting anthropological works in the public arena is necessary for achieving the goal of anthropology and fulfilling its moral obligation and ethical responsibility.As a science of humanity, anthropology attempts to translate belief, emotion, sensibility, knowledge, and traditions of different communities, in order to produce new understandings that enhance and advance the anthropological body of knowledge.At the same time, anthropologists have a moral responsibility to bring their knowledge to the public to improve the human condition.The paramount advantage of anthropology is that it provides us "tools to touch the heartbeat of humanity" (Nordstrom, 2017, p. 1).These two dimensions indicate that anthropology is "the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities" (Wolf, 1964, p. 88).Through dialogues, conversations and collaborative works, anthropology can contribute broadly "to human thought and human imagination" (Barth, 2017, p. 1).Here, anthropologists can work as "modern-day mythmakers" (Besteman & Gusterson, 2005) or "mythtellers" (Richardson, 1975) that narrate human struggle and survival, defeat and victory, friendship and enmity, love and hatred, joy and misery.Anthropologists can help society to understand the complexity of the world and overcome the contradiction of realities.
However, according to Borofsky (2000), public anthropology does not consider only public audiences who are "beyond today's self-imposed disciplinary boundaries," but also public issues.The focus of public anthropology is "on conversations with broad audiences about broad concerns" (p.9).Thus, public anthropology must take the messages besides the spectators of anthropological enterprises into account.Public concerns and public audiences are two essential elements that constitute public anthropology.Public concerns are not to be confused with contemporary issues.While the former depends on social construction and interpretation, the latter relates to the present moment.The public concerns may be contemporary issues, but contemporary issues do not necessarily become public concerns.Contemporary issues will become a public concern if it is a matter for oppressed people.Anthropologists are doing public anthropology when they can construct and represent contemporary issues to be public concerns.
Some critics say that public anthropology is not different from applied anthropology: that it is only a different name for the same thing, as both focuse on nonacademic audiences.Proponents of applied anthropology argue that applied anthropology may lack public recognition, but this does not mean they do not engage in public issues.Rather than questioning the public roles of applied anthropology, the real question that can likely be raised is why many anthropologists are unaware of a wide variety of public services and contributions offered by applied anthropologists.Just because we do not hear of it does not mean it does not exist.Thus it is not an epistemological problem, but a political one.The problem is not how we know the existence of public anthropology, but how we recognize the existence of public anthropology.However, even though we may find common qualities between public and applied anthropology that may overlap with each other, both have different fundamental characteristics (Benson, 2014).First, while applied anthropology emphasizes a pragmatic dimension of anthropology in solving practical problems (Van Willigen, 2002), the focus of public anthropology is bringing anthropological perspectives on public issues to broader audiences.The focus of applied anthropology is the practical application of anthropological theories and knowledge.Applied anthropologists often work for non-academic communities, such as governments, militaries, international donor agencies, non-government organizations, and corporations.However, some of them tend to conceal their works from the public's eyes in order to protect their clients' interests and confidentiality.Public anthropology, by contrast, encourages public accountability for anthropological works (Borofsky, 2011).It aims at involving various perspectives from the public that may contribute to understand and address the complex issues.Moreover, the disclosure of the anthropological works will also democratize knowledge production, and guard against the political control of knowledge.
The second difference between public and applied anthropology is related to political position.Public anthropology views that applied anthropology is necessary but not sufficient to make anthropological works powerful and prominent in transforming and liberating society.In this view, anthropology can be used as "a means to support and bring about positive change" (Beck & Maida, 2017, p. 3).Leith Mullings (2015), a former President of the American Anthropological Association, remarks in her presidential address in 2013 that the significance of anthropology lies in its "theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches that could uncover relationships of power and structures of inequality" (p.5).It is also doubtless true that thousands of anthropologists have been successfully working in and with host communities.All these anthropological virtues and advantages do not lie in its applicative dimensions, as applied anthropologists suggest, but rather in the politics of knowledge.Anthropologists are inherently observers and participants, and their works are both shaped by disciplinary knowledge and influenced by lay concepts.Anthony Giddens (1976) called this unique position "double hermeneutic," expressing a co-constitutive dual interpretative process of knowledge production.This process is doubly hermeneutic, in that the participants interpret their social world (first hermeneutic) within the lay frames of meaning, and anthropologists then reconstitute these frames with their interpretations using disciplinary concepts (second hermeneutic).The implication of double hermeneutics in anthropological knowledge is to put objectivity "less in the pronouncement of authorities than in the conversations among concerned parties" (Borofsky, 2000, p. 10).
Therefore, anthropological knowledge is always entangled with public discourses that place it in a privileged position to voice public interests and denounce the status quo (Eriksen, 2013).In other words, public anthropology reasserts the politics of anthropology that is overlooked by applied anthropologists.This political position also implies resisting a separation between applied science and academic science that creates a hierarchical system of scientific knowledge, with the latter higher and loftier than the former.Moreover, many are misled about the relationship between theory and practice, presuming that one is the opposite of the another.While practice deals with concrete and actual realities, theory pertains to abstract and general concepts.Public anthropology is built on the unity of theory and practices because both are required in the scientific knowledge production process in which the practice articulates theory and the theory arises from practice.
Bearing in mind this broad definition, we may identify four characteristics of public anthropology.First, like applied anthropology, public anthropology promotes collaborative works with both the communities whom anthropologists study, and people from different disciplines and professions.Community engagement can be a potential site of knowledge production.The more diverse the collaborative teams, the more productive and creative they are likely to be.By bringing different ways of thinking, and voices from different backgrounds, disciplines and professions into anthropological work will improve both the result of the work and the capacity of the people involved.It will loosen the disciplinary borders, reach out to scholars across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, and prevent parochial academic perspectives from taking hold in anthropological enterprises.One example of such a parochial perspective is to assume that the culture of a particular ethnic group is stable, unaltered with clear boundaries, and self-contained.
Second, public anthropology encourages anthropologists to contribute to public debates.Making anthropological works accessible to the public will open the possibility of gaining a wide range of feedback that in turn will advance anthropological knowledge.As a science, according to Geertz (1973), the progress of anthropology is "marked less by a perfection of consensus than by a refinement of debate" (p.29).Another objective of entering the public discourse is to engage in the serious questions of public policy that affect the population.By influencing public policy, anthropological works can contribute to solving intractable human problems.Anthropologists, following Laura Nader (1974), need to pay attention to "studying up" and investigating the power structures and institutions that produce public policies and examining the policy-making processes that affect our daily lives.Surely, anthropologists are not policymakers, but it does not mean they can do nothing for policy changes through their works.Third, public anthropology utilizes mass and popular media to reach broader audiences.Publishing anthropological enterprises in non-academic media is necessary to promote public anthropology.Anthropologists in many countries also take part in political movements as a way of promoting social justice and democracy and this is the fourth characteristic of public anthropology.Defending humanity, and promoting liberation and emancipation are the nature of public anthropology.Anthropological research, in Davis's (2003) phrase, "should always be connected to emancipatory praxis" (p.168).

PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES
As a formal name for a particular anthropological orientation, public anthropology entered the academic debates in the early 1990s (Hedican, 2016).However, as a form of anthropological work directed to public audiences, it has been practiced since the inception of American academic anthropology in the late nineteenth century.The discussion of American public anthropology thus should shed light on the roles and practices of American anthropologists in the public sphere and the way in which the idea of public anthropology has been embodied, adapted, and adopted in the anthropological discourses, especially within the academic pale.As I mentioned earlier, the rise of public anthropology is an internal critique of anthropologists whose works remain disconnected from people's everyday lives.The detachment of anthropology from public issues causes anthropology to fail to confront a wide range of social problems in the modern world.The pervasive opinion that anthropology as an academic subject is no longer relevant to the real world appears partly due to the reluctance of anthropologists to connect their work with the actual human problems and voice loudly their thoughts in the public sphere.
Combining individual and institutional perspectives is the best approach to understand the practices of American public anthropology.Two prominent American anthropologists, Franz Boas, and Margaret Mead, are examples of individual anthropologists doing public anthropology.Boas, as the father of American anthropology, was like Koentjaraningrat for Indonesia.He was not only a dedicated man of science and integrity, but also a public intellectual, in that his thoughts and works always engaged with public concerns.His thoughts on race and culture challenged the dominant narrative that perpetuated racism manifesting in the form of racial discrimination and segregation.In defense of scientific ethics and integrity, Boas sharply criticized his colleagues who exploited anthropological work to cover their espionage operations abroad.The same was true for Margaret Mead, the well known female anthropologist who was Boas's student.Her position as a female anthropologist who defended women's rights and advocated gender equality is formidable.In addition to the individual perspective, the practices of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in engaging and advocating social problems and issues of interest to a broader public is another a vantage point to see American public anthropology institutionally (Engle, 2001;H.M., 1961).
Boas's public intellectual life began two years before his teaching appointment at Columbia University in 1896.As vice president of the anthropology section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Boas delivered a monumental address titled "Human Faculty Determined by Race" that composed his seminal book The Mind of Primitive Man.In this speech, Boas (1894) denounced a widespread assumption that the "white race represents a higher type than all others" (p.3).Rather than supporting the argument of the white race's superiority, Boas argues that the aptitude of the white race is not different from other races.In other words, "achievements of races do not warrant us to assume that one race is more highly gifted than the other" (Boas, 1894, p. 10).In Boas's perspective, Eurocentrism and white supremacy is invalid and has no scientific basis.Time magazine featured Boas on its cover page on 11 May 1936, for his intellectual contribution to defending minority groups oppressed by the white supremacy legitimated by the prevalent pseudoscience of race superiority.His appearance on the cover of Time magazine shows his influences far beyond the disciplinary borders of anthropology (Darnell, 2018).The impact of Boas's thought was boosted by the New Republic, which named The Mind of Primitive Man as one of the twelve books that had "contributed to something new to American thinking" in a series of essays, edited by Malcolm Cowley, titled "Books that Changed Our Minds" on 7 December 1938.
In addition to engaging in racial issues, Boas was also embroiled in debates on nationalism and war.During the Great War, Boas took a firm stance against narrow patriotism and chauvinism.As a cosmopolitan person, Boas embraced universal values of humanity rather than a short-term goal of the nation-state advocated by political leaders.In 1912, Boas published "An Anthropologist's View of War" that was printed as a pamphlet for the American Association for International Conciliation.In this article, he argued that national solidarity among its citizens had no objective grounds.Instead, it was based on "subjective ideals that possess a strong emotional value" (Boas, 1912, p. 95).
The public anthropology exhibited by Boas was continued by his student Margaret Mead, whose role in the public arena was not less impressive than her supervisor, Franz Boas.She was one of a few early anthropologists who pioneered what would later be called public anthropology (Lutkehaus, 2009) through her numerous accounts published in academic and popular media, abundant talks and speeches on television and public events, and frequent debates that drew broader audiences.The bestseller Coming of Age in Samoa, which she wrote in jargon-free and captivating prose, attracted American readers and changed their views on adolescents and sexuality during the social changes of the "Roaring Twenties."By the time of her death in 1978, the book had sold over a million copies and been translated into sixteen languages (Shankman, 2009).In this book, she argued that the premarital sexual permissiveness among Samoa's adolescent girls contributed to less stressful adolescence, which contrasted to the experiences of the American society (Mead, 1928).Her Coming of Age in Samoa, according to Time, "helped many Americans understand the universality of their own experiences for the first time" (Melnick, 2010).She advised that adolescent Americans should be given more choices to reduce traumatic and stressful time through the educational system.Mead's work on Samoa was not free from criticism.Derek Freeman (1997), for example, accused Mead of being misled and mistaken in depicting the sexual lives of teenagers in Samoa.Freeman argued that since Mead was inexperienced in fieldwork she was duped by her adolescent informants.Therefore, rather than representing the realities of Samoa people, her findings were created to support and confirm her academic theory on adolescence that had been established before her fieldwork began.
Her great roles in the public domain lead her to become an American icon (Lutkehaus, 2008) who represented the modern woman.She challenged the gender and sexuality conventions that pervaded society.Borrowing Goodell's term, Mead was a visible scientist, well known by the general public (Goodell, 1977).Mead sought to influence people and policy on anthropological-related issues through new modes of public communications, especially electronic media.The survey of the Time magazine placed her as one of the twenty-five most powerful women of the 20 th century, along with other respected figures such as Corazon Aquino, Indira Gandhi, Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel, Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher, and Virginia Woolf.However, different from the previous generations of anthropologists, Mead took part in war work together with other scientists and government agencies that sparked controversy.She wrote articles, published books and conducted researches that focus on the American character that might support and raise American morale to win the Second World War (Hazard, 2014).
The tradition of American anthropologists to engage the public concerns continues today.The rapid development of the internet, technology, and social media drives anthropologists to take kinds of different strategies and forms of communication to reach out to the public.American anthropologists create anthropological writing and video blogs, films, and share anthropological perspectives through TV appearances, radio interviews, and op-ed columns.Young anthropologists collaborate to develop various blogs such as Savageminds (moved to Anthrodendum), Zero Anthropology, SAPIENS, and Living Anthropologically.A Standford anthropologist Tanya Marie Luhrmann wrote regular op-ed articles for The New York Times.The short, non-academic articles have also been penned by Paul Stoller, Professor of Anthropology at West Chester University, for the Huffington Post since 2011.Outside academia, there is Al Jazeera columnist Sarah Kendzior whose pieces on politics, human rights, higher education, and internet media often go viral.
Apart from individual anthropologists, the AAA also contributes to the development of American public anthropology.Established in 1902, the AAA is the largest anthropological association around the world, with more than 10,000 members.As a scientific and professional organization, the AAA attempts to support its members in advancing anthropological knowledge and to take part in solving human problems.Three main activities that become the focus of the AAA consists of public engagement and public presence, publishing, and internal and external relations.The American Anthropologist published by the AAA has Public Anthropology Reviews (now Public Anthropologies) section in its publication since 2009.It seeks to "highlight and promote the anthropological scholarship of interest to a broad audience and, especially, work that engages with issues of social significance" (Benton & Bonilla, 2017).
Concerning public engagement and outreach activities, the AAA advocates on issues that become concern its members.In 2017, the AAA launched 40 advocacy efforts on humanitarian problems, including "harmful and draconian state policies and practices, violations of human rights, academic freedom, and indigenous rights, and the systemic and structural violence of racialization" (Waterston, 2017).For example, the AAA demanded that the Trump administration withdraw the Executive Order banning immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries to enter American territory.The AAA also called for academic freedom in Thailand after a leading Thai anthropologist Dr. Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, and four other researchers received a summons from the Thai military regime due to their alleged political activities.In response to the Israeli colonization and military occupation in Palestine, the AAA held membership votes on a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions between 15 April and 31 May 2016.Some leading anthropologists supported the Boycott, such as James Ferguson, Ann Stoler, Talal Asad, Jean and John Comaroff, Thomas Blom Hansen, Lila Abu-Lughod, Engseng Ho, and Michael Taussig, while others rejected it for the reason that this action would threaten academic freedom.

THE FLOURISHING OF INDONESIAN PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY
The development of Indonesian public anthropology is closely related to socio-political circumstances in the country.There is a dearth of scholarly articles and debates on public anthropology in Indonesia relative to applied anthropology.However, in the last decades, there are increasing concerns among anthropologists to bring anthropological works into broader audiences through multiple modalities.The practice of public anthropology has been flourishing through diverse collaborative works.Anthropologists are no longer reluctant to engage with the press and media by providing information, perspectives, and opinions about their anthropological scholarship.However, even though we may find practices of public anthropology in Indonesia, efforts to promote it within academic and non-academic discourses receive less interest than those for applied anthropology.
In the past, the little attention Indonesian anthropologists paid to public anthropology had a close relationship with the rise of an Indonesian anthropological tradition that tended to engage with the state projects, both in the colonial and the post-independence era.Indonesian anthropology, as Koentjaraningrat (1987) observes, began with the studies of the main languages and cultures of the people in the East Indies, called Indologie, sponsored by the colonial administration.These studies were aimed to equip colonial officials and military officers with an extensive knowledge of the East Indies people.Knowledge production and colonial power went hand-in-hand: the former legitimated the continuous operation of the latter, while the latter supported the production of the former.Indologie lost its scientific glory together with the collapse of the colonial power after Indonesia's independence.However, anthropology remained eager to demonstrate its significance "for the study of national integration, which was a priority problem during the first decade after Indonesia's independence" (Koentjaraningrat, 1987, p. 223).
The engagement of anthropology in statesponsored projects gained its significance when the New Order state adopted developmentalism as the operational state ideology to achieve its goals.Applied anthropology provided practical insights that contributed to national development through policy-making.Therefore, it was not coincidental that applied anthropology was often likened to the anthropology of development.It provided a practical advantage to agents of state development by supplying a cultural understanding of the people who were the target and object of that development.In this way, cultural understanding was not intended to empower communities, but rather to control them according to the state's interests.As illustrations, Margaret Mead (1942) conducted a study of the American character to boost American morale to win the war, and Koentjaraningrat (1988) investigated the Indonesian mentality that might support national development.Social science, including anthropology, as Hadiz and Dhakidae put it, was dominated by a developmentalist framework that supported and justified the New Order's broader development agenda (Hadiz & Dhakidae, 2005, p. 9).Conversely, public anthropology had a narrow space to articulate the public concerns to broader audiences during the New Order era because the public issues were mainly controlled and defined by the state discourses and institutions.Anthropologists eager to practice public anthropology usually worked with Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) that embraced critical positions toward the government.
Public anthropology gained momentum in the post-Soeharto era marked by the democratization of public life, especially in politics.The subsequent political and academic freedom has allowed anthropologists to speak clearly about their critical stances in advocating for the people, and to help them to overcome the problems of everyday life.Their public scholarship covers a wide range of issues such as climate change, human rights, land reform, gender equality, and poverty.Yunita T. Winarto and her colleagues in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Indonesia, for instance, established Science Field Shops (SFSs) or Warung Ilmiah Lapangan (WIL) that attempted to empower and improve the readiness and strategies of local farmers in Gunungkidul, Indramayu, Lombok Timur, and Sumedang to anticipate the impact of climate change on the agricultural sector.
Their work has proven successful not only in bringing scientific thinking and knowledge to local people who had their own "ethnoscience', but also in managing risk and uncertainty in farming (Winarto, Stigter, & Wicaksono, 2017).Moreover, Winarto has demonstrated that anthropology offers new critical perspectives that challenge the prevalent conceptual approach and methodology besides offering practical solutions.To boost the impact of their works, they invited media to launch the website of SFSs that are accessable to public.
The SFSs also open an opportunity to deploy their pratices in other places.Another example of public anthropology was the 2018 Sumba Festival organized by the Anthropology Laboratories for Research and Action (LAURA) at Gadjah Mada University.As Winarto did in the SFSs, Paschalis Maria Laksono and his team at LAURA endeavored to bring ideas, knowledge, and perspectives on the economic and cultural life of the Sumba people from different actors and disciplines to the public.The nine-day festival, consisting of a symposium, discussion, film festival, photo exhibition, and collaborative art performance, was an effective mode to raise public awareness of the cultural forces and problems of the Sumba people (Virgolilius, 2018).This awareness is expected to drive policymakers and other parties to address the problems of humanity in Sumba Island as the representation of one of the outermost and least developed regions of the country (Marwati, 2018).Laksono was also one of a few anthropologists who offered advice on the legislative process of the Law of the Advancement of Culture (Pemajuan Kebudayaan).He was invited to be a panel expert who assisted parliament members in the Committee of Culture to draft the bill.At the time, the regulation of culture stirred up heated debates among anthropologists who saw it as a form of political control of the state over the cultural life of the people.Despite this, the bill was eventually passed by the House of Representatives on 27 April 2017.To some extent, Laksono was able to translate an anthropological perspective of culture into policy and provide critical views on regulating the strategy of the national culture.
At the institutional level, the Indonesian Anthropological Association (AAI) applies public anthropology to various issues.Regarding the implementation of Law No 5 of 2017 on the Advancement of Culture, the AAI works together with the central and local government to formulate the national cultural strategy and the broad outline of regional culture.The AAI was one academic and professional association that stood at the front to defend the cultural diversity that unites the nation.The AAI and hundreds of anthropologists such as Suraya Afiff, Yando Zakaria, PM Laksono, Kartini Sjahrir, Pawennari Hijjang, Dian Rosdiana, for example, formed the Anthropologist Movement for Diverse and Inclusive Indonesia (Gerakan Antropolog untuk Indonesia Bhineka dan Inklusif or AUI) on 16 December 2016.This movement was a response to the social and political dynamic dealing with the exploitation of identity politics in the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election.The incumbent Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (popularly known as Ahok), a Christian and ethnic Chinese, was accused of blasphemy; this stirred up a series of mass protests and aroused political tensions.The impact of this political tension was to increase intolerance and violence toward others who have different political and cultural identities.If no immediate action had been taken by the government, the diverse and inclusive Indonesia would have been in peril.Therefore, the AUI urged the government to safeguard Indonesianness continuously by taking firm action against those who used violence to erode the values of Indonesian diversity (Saroh, 2016).
From the examples of public anthropology illustrated in the earlier paragraphs, we can identify four characteristics of public anthropology in Indonesia that may be similar to what American anthropologists do in the United States.First, Indonesian public anthropology promotes collaborative works with other scholars and practitioners from different disciplines and fields.Winarto works closely with agrometeorologists in developing the SFSs to understand the knowledge of local farmers pertaining to weather and climate that affects their behavior and strategy in farming activities.A cross-disciplinary approach allows various perspectives, conceptual frameworks and methodologies to enrich one another in solving problems comprehensively.Moreover, anthropology will gain recognition from other disciplines for its significance.Second, working across disciplines is intended to advance the contribution of anthropology to public interests.Therefore, public anthropology must engage in the community and the public in general.Without engaging community, anthropology remains to be misrepresented as a field studying exotic tribes and primitive people or isolated societies.Ethnographic research carried out by anthropologists does not end at the gate of the university in the form of academic reports and peer-reviewed articles.Instead, it has to move into actions, as Laksono and the LAURA demonstrated in the 2018 Sumba Festival.Bringing ethnographic research into the public will gain two benefits: knowledge advancement as a result of public accountability, and raising public awareness that will change their perspectives and disposition on the issues that matter to them.
Third, engaging the public requires media relations to promote and highlight anthropological scholarship of interest to a broader audience.Public anthropologists seem more aware of the essential role of media in disseminating their works effectively.The AUI demonstrated this by responding to the increasing intolerance that threatens Indonesian diversity.They made press releases, held press conferences, and met with President Jokowi to make their voice heard.Their media strategy was proven successful to reach out to the public when their statement was amplified by #antropologiuntukindonesia on social media: Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.Their press releases also appeared on major national media outlets such as Kompas, Republika, The Jakarta Post, Koran Tempo, Media Indonesia, Detikcom, and Metro TV.The last feature is a critical stance that becomes an integral part of public anthropology.A major goal of anthropology is to defend humanity from unjust power arrangements.It does not matter whether anthropologists work outside or within the structures of power; what matters most is how they respond to individual and structural threats to humanity.Some anthropologists may work for the government to advise on human affairs without abandoning their critical views, while others may choose to work outside of the government.However, both parties have in common defending humanity and seeking the truth.

CONCLUSION
Although Indonesian anthropology is newer than American anthropology in the sense of its academic tradition, the development of its public anthropology in the last decade has been auspicious.Public anthropology can be approached in two ways.First, it can be understood as a body of knowledge, including theory, methodology, and practical strategy that attempts to translate anthropological works into the public awareness.Second, public anthropology denotes a political position that endeavors to bring critical perspectives and stances related to the problems of humanity.These two elements make public anthropology distinct from applied anthropology.Both in the United States and Indonesia, public anthropology has been common practice among anthropologists.However, as a scholarly concept, the term public anthropology is unpopular in Indonesia.Only a few Indonesian anthropologists pay attention to this subject relative to applied anthropology.The development of public anthropology may be driven by two factors.First, the lofty vision of anthropology is to address the problems of humanity and to advance human diversity.To achieve these missions, anthropologists have to go public.Going public is more than just doing ethnographic research in or with the community.It entails bringing anthropological work to non-academic audiences to achieve a greater impact.Second, the increasing awareness of anthropologists to counter the misrepresentation of anthropology, which pervades the common-sense of the people.The misrepresentation of anthropology that has "a chronic tendency to 'ethnicize' the groups under study" (Ortner, 1991, pp. 166-7) confines the discipline from more significant roles, which lead to less public recognition.
Four avenues of public anthropology may be identified both in the United States and in Indonesia.First, collaborations that get anthropologists, scholars from other disciplines, policy makers, and the public community to work together.These collaborative works encourage a transdisciplinary approach and community engagement in their scholarship.Public engagement should be one of the primary objectives of public anthropology, not a secondary one.It means public anthropology needs "to reach beyond the discipline at the very start of any research project" (Horton, 2018).Second, publishing anthropological works in accessible public forms, and in a non-academic style.Third, responding to the current issues that appeal to the public and threaten humanity.American and Indonesian anthropologists should connect and update themselves with events in their countries and abroad, dealing especially with the socio-political dynamic.A meaningful public presence of anthropology lies in its commitment to voicing and defending humanity in order to create a better world.Fourth, actions to influence public policies are strategic for public anthropology.They can be achieved both within and outside the state institutions.In a democratic country like Indonesia, all citizens, including anthropologists, have opportunities to shape public policies that will change the life of the people.Indonesian anthropologists working with the state in development projects were able to maintain "the integrity of their research" and "uncompromising and unwilling to be controlled" (Abdullah, 2018) so that they gained public trust that is essential in developing public anthropology.
In the light of American public anthropology, three things can be learned for the advancement of Indonesian public anthropology.First, Indonesian anthropologists need to be encouraged to publish their work outside traditional academic journals and appear in electronic media or radio and television programs.Today, when Indonesia's public space is overwhelmed with hatred, distrust, suspicion, and misinformation caused by destructive political competition, the presence of anthropologists is necessary to remind the people of how precious Indonesia's unity in diversity is.The more people are exposed to anthropological scholarship, the more beneficial effects anthropology may have on human beings.In the digital age, anthropological publications are not limited to traditional media such as books, photography, printed magazines and newspapers.Various digital media platforms such as blogs, video blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and films also play essential roles in shaping public opinion that needs anthropological insight.Writing and publishing in nonacademic forms has become more popular in academia.However, these forms of publication have not been considered as important as publishing in indexed and high-impact-factor journals for the purposes of promotion and academic recognition.Some anthropologists also still underestimate colleagues who write popular accounts that are perceived as having a less intellectual style.Therefore, an academic promotion system that gives more appreciation to public scholarship should be encouraged and promoted.
Second, strengthening the roles of the AAI in facilitating and promoting public anthropology, which is currently at the margin of the discipline, is the immediate next agenda.Many invisible and unheard-of works of public scholarship have been carried out by anthropologists.The AAI may connect them to other scholars who have the same interests, and help them to improve their skills of media outreach, especially in social media.Showcasing public anthropology is one possible project to gather and network public anthropologists.Third, anthropology departments and faculty members can initiate to include Indonesian public anthropology in the curriculum of anthropology program in university or college.The many examples of Indonesian public anthropology are precious resources for developing public anthropology courses.Offering public anthropology to college students is a strategic way of institutionalizing public anthropology.If Indonesian anthropologists question the future of anthropology, public anthropology may be one of the answers.Public anthropology will help anthropologists make anthropology more relevent for society.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Indonesia Presidential Scholarship-Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education (BPRI-LPDP) that fully funds my doctoral study in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington.My grateful thanks are extended to Celia Lowe for her constructive perspectives, valuable experiences and insightful discussions on public anthropology that help immensely to improve this paper.I am also very grateful to Joss Whittaker and Tom Bolling who were willing to read the paper draft and share their thoughts on the manuscript.
. I will address three questions that will guide the discussion in this article.First, what is public anthropology and what makes it different from applied anthropology?Second, what are the practices of public anthropology in the United States compared with Indonesia?Third, how can Indonesian anthropologists advance public anthropology?Drawing on literature reviews and archival studies, this paper attempts to present a comparative analysis of the development of public anthropology in the United States and Indonesia.