In today's episode, we're excited to have Dr. Roberto Gonzalez, a cultural anthropologist with an incredible journey that takes him from mechanical engineering to hands-on fieldwork with indigenous communities in Southern Mexico. Dr. Gonzalez’s work spans a wide range of topics, from the everyday practices of subsistence farming to indigenous science and the ethical dilemmas surrounding military tech and algorithmic policing. His research is a cool mix of hard science and social science, giving us a fresh perspective on how technology is changing our world. We’ll also dive into his experience with the Human Terrain System program and his latest thoughts on the tech industry’s growing involvement with defense contracts. This conversation is all about why it’s so important to consider the ethics of AI and other advanced technologies.
00:00:00
Dr. Frank A. Gomez (Host)
Hello. I'm Dr. Frank Gomez, and this is All Things STEM. Today, we speak with Dr. Roberto Gonzalez, professor of anthropology at San Jose State University. His work is wide-ranging and takes him from subsistence farming practices and indigenous science to the ethical implications of military technology and algorithmic policing.
Roberto's research bridges the gap between traditional science disciplines and the social sciences and brings a critical perspective on how technology impacts our society.
Today, we will chat with him about his journey, his groundbreaking research, and the questions he raises about the role of technology in our lives.
00:00:41
Dr. Frank A. Gomez (Host)
Roberto, it's great to have you on today.
00:00:44
Dr. Roberto Gonzalez (Guest)
It's great to be here.
00:00:46
Dr. Frank A. Gomez (Host)
You certainly have an interesting background, and it'd be great to impress upon our listeners a lot of what you do. And it's great to see somebody who's very interdisciplinary, you know, come on the show today. So, I look forward to, to speaking to you.
So, tell us a little bit about your journey, having started as a mechanical engineering student to now being a cultural anthropologist, what motivated you in this, certainly significant shift?
00:01:22
Dr. Roberto Gonzalez (Guest)
Yeah. That's a good question, and I get asked this a lot. I started studying mechanical engineering at the University of Texas, and I did pretty well, for 4 years.
I even worked a few summers as a student engineer at a General Motors assembly plant, and I got a real feel for what an engineering career would be like.
I was trained as a mechanical engineer. And then my senior year, my 5th year, I was taking some general education courses, and one of the courses I took was a course on cultural anthropology.
And I didn't even know what anthropology was before that time, but once I took the course, it really just transformed my entire career path.
And I thought long and hard about it. I spoke with the professor about what possibilities there were for a career in anthropology, and I decided to go ahead and take the plunge.
I had a long conversation with my parents, and explained to them that engineering was something I liked, but not enough to spend the rest of my life doing it.
And so, I went ahead and made the change, and a year later graduated with a cultural anthropology degree and then started graduate school literally 2 weeks after my summer graduation.
I applied immediately to graduate programs and was accepted at UC Berkeley, and I've been in California, studying and working ever since.
00:02:53
Dr. Frank A. Gomez (Host)
That's great. It's always neat to hear stories. You know, we all have a story, but certainly, you know, yours is, is unique like everyone else's. And so how has this engineering background that you had, when you were a lot younger influenced your current work in anthropology and especially, with indigenous farming practices in, in southern Mexico?
00:03:19
Dr. Roberto Gonzalez (Guest)
Well, this is interesting because when I turned away from engineering, I never really thought I was closing a chapter of my life for good. But the fact of the matter is 4 years of training as a mechanical engineer can change your way of thinking.
And so, I really internalized a lot of the training that I had gotten in engineering.
And I realize now looking back on my 30 years as an anthropologist that technology and science is really the common thread that links almost all of the research that I've done from graduate school to the present.
So, you could say that I've never really gotten past my engineering background. Those four years of engineering have kind of been ingrained in me, but they've shaped very much the kind of anthropology that I do. So, I'll just give one example.
You mentioned my work in southern Mexico, and I know we'll talk about that shortly.
But one of the ways that I approached studying subsistence corn farming in southern Mexico was to really take seriously the idea that the farmers themselves are scientists and engineers who do a lot of technical work, and they do a lot of trial and error, research in the farming practices that they do.
And so that engineering background really framed the way that I understood the work of these farmers in in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.
Well, it.
00:04:50
Dr. Frank A. Gomez (Host)
appears that, you still think in part like an engineer or at least use some of the skills and ways of thinking, as an engineer, which, which has given you success in your current, in your current work. So, your work in Ohaka, focus on the subsistence farming practices of the indigenous communities down there.
So, what were some of the most surprising findings from your work, from your field work, that you, you saw and discovered there?
00:05:25
Dr. Roberto Gonzalez (Guest)
Well, I wound up spending about 2 years of my life, mostly in the fields of a mountain village in the mountains of Northern Oaxaca. As you just mentioned, studying, the work of subsistence farmers primarily. And there were a number of things that just really surprised me.
First of all, just the sheer physical coordination and dexterity that's required to carry out that work deeply, deeply impressed me, and I tried to do many of the tasks myself.
I had, a mentor who was a very patient man and tried to teach me how to use all of these tools. They don't have tractors there.
They still use plow agriculture, and that's really what's most suitable for the land. That's what works best in that environment because it is a very rugged environment.
And so that was one of the things that just really surprised me was how their own bodies functioned as, kind of machines in a way very efficient.
They start from an early age, and they are able to coordinate their movements, in a very efficient and effective way.
And it's not until I tried it myself and failed pretty badly at it that I realized just how just how coordinated and just how much skill goes into, the training of the human body to do a lot of this work.
Another thing that surprised me was the fact that the farmers there are carrying on a tradition of corn farming that goes back 1,000 and 1,000 of years.
Maize itself and corn was domesticated in an area not too far from this region. A lot of research indicates that corn was first domesticated near the Puebla Oaxaca border.
And so, the people of this area have a deep, deep respect and appreciation for the crop itself.
And this is, I guess, surprising finding number 3 for me, and doing my research there was that these scientists, as they call them in my book, my first book, is based on my dissertation and the title is Zapotec Science.
These are Zapotec indigenous farmers from the Zapotec, ethnic group. I call them scientists very deliberately in this book because, they do they are so effective at what they do.
They use trial and error experimentation in the work that they do. They try new crop varieties when they have the opportunity to do that.
But they operate from a different set of assumptions, scientific assumptions. And the most surprising one to me was how the farmers generally, saw crops, certain crops like corn, for example, not just as plants, but as plant people, is what I call them in the book.
In other words, living beings that have a will of their own, that have the ability to punish people who disrespect them.
And so, the farmers invest a kind of emotion in the crop itself as a living being, as a real living being.
And I concluded in my dissertation that when you've got a scientist that's treating the subject of their research with that kind of emotion and that kind of, investment of emotion, then they're probably going to do a pretty good job.
And that's what we see in a place like Oaxaca, where there are still many subsistence farmers, in many communities that are able to maintain their families, maintain their communities in this, as I say, millenarian tradition, this tradition that goes back literally 1000 of years.
00:09:14
Dr. Frank A. Gomez (Host)
You mentioned spending a few years there. So, kind of on a sidebar here, living without some of the normal amenities of our daily lives would seem to most people very, very difficult.
So really, how did you manage? And you can provide an example or 2 of a few of the things that we take for granted here in a more socialized world per se that you had to do without or had to make up for.
00:09:45
Dr. Roberto Gonzalez (Guest)
Well, this is one of the things that I think is common to a lot of cultural anthropologists. I mean, we get into this line of work you know not because we want to continue our lives you know as we have lived them.
You know when I was in my 20s as a graduate student part of the attraction to me of cultural anthropology was the opportunity to live a kind of very different life in a different society under very different conditions in which, yes, I might not have very many of the amenities that I, you know, enjoyed, as a person born and raised in the United States.
So, in terms of examples, I'll just give you a couple. The very first change that was difficult for me was adapting to a diet in which meat was eaten maybe twice a week, and that would be typically chicken on weekends, and that was it.
And almost all the rest of the meals when I was there in the 19 nineties revolved around tortillas or corn in some form.
It could be tamales, Typically, there would be beans or some kind of a sauce that goes with it, the salsa. And that was it. You know? Eggs, maybe 3 times a week. So, the diet as, you know, as somebody who was born and raised in Texas, right, where you're accustomed to having beef every day.
That was a big change, you know, to get accustomed to that diet. But, you know, we humans are very resilient as a species. Right? We adapt to all kinds of things, and this is something that we know from anthropology too.
And, you know, I had the good fortune of living with a family, that was also very patient with me and taught me really the benefits of having this kind of a, what they referred to as a as a humble diet, a simple diet.
And so that was one of the beautiful things. And, of course, Oaxaca has an incredible culinary, reputation that's really throughout it's global, and a lot of it's based around this corn based, diet.
Another thing that, you know, was difficult, obviously, you know, since I spent more than a year out of those 2 years literally in the fields.
So, I was not in this village of 2,000 people, but I was literally in a ranch house, with a dirty floor. Essentially, it was a lean too.
And I would stay with, again, my mentor who was at the time, he was in his mid-forties.
And I saw myself, and he saw me as, I suppose, a kind of apprentice.
And so, I asked him a lot of questions, but we would typically spend 2 nights at a time in this ranch house because the ranch house was 2 hours hike from the village.
And so, adapting to that kind of a climate where you're literally slip sleeping on straw mats covered up with wool blankets, and sometimes the weather gets down near the freezing point up in the mountains, you know, easily in the forties during the wintertime, upper thirties.
And so just adapting to that kind of physical it's like, you know, a camping trip, but for a year and several months, if you can imagine that.
So, all of that was challenging, obviously, but at the same time for me, also a lot of fun because it was like it's like every day was also an adventure.
And when I was trying to work out in the fields, you know, I would I'd probably never slept as well as I did, during those nights in the ranch house just because, the physical activity that I had to do to complete my work to do this project, took a lot out of me.
You know? So, one of the beautiful things too about cultural anthropology is that if you want to, you know, you can continue those relationships and those friendships with the people, your interlocutors, in a in a place like this village.
And so just this year, I had the opportunity to go back to Oaxaca for several months, and I still am in contact with people there.
Children that were 7 8 years old when I was there are now in their, late thirties, mid to late thirties.
And so that's been immensely satisfying and interesting to me as well is to see how the village has changed over time and how people that I knew have known for most of their lives have developed and changed and now have families of their own.
To me, that's fascinating and I plan to continue that portion of my research. That connection to Oaxaca is very valuable to me, for that for that reason.
00:14:17
Dr. Frank A. Gomez (Host)
It sounds like it's formed a great foundation for your more recent work, which I found very, very interesting in not only the transition from your work, in southern Mexico, but to how you are incorporating what you know to today. And certainly, it's very apropos given the time set that we live in right now.
So, your research, some of it is in the at the intersection of anthropology and militarization.
What are some of the key ethical dilemmas that you've seen social scientists face when engaging with military projects?
00:15:03
Dr. Roberto Gonzalez (Guest)
Well, let me, let me back up a bit and say that I began teaching in the CSU system at San Jose State in 2001. I was hired in August, and then the attacks of September 11th, happened, you know, within a month after, I began working as a faculty member, at San Jose State.
And, you know, for those people that, those listeners that might remember that time, you'll nobody will forget where they were at the moment they found out about it.
It really changed a lot of lives, not just those who, were killed on September 11th, but also, I think just many working people and many people of conscience.
And for me, the aftermath of September 11th inspired me to focus a great deal more on the role of the United States in world affairs, the role of the United States, in other wars, in other times, in other periods, it was very clear after the September 11th attacks that the United States was going to retaliate in some way.
And in fact, you know, within months, there was the US led invasion of Afghanistan that happened and then later the US invasion, of Iraq.
And those were, you know, in the case of Afghanistan, a 20 year, a 20-year war essentially, at a cost of 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars, and lives.
So, for me that event started to transform the trajectory of my career.
And so, I started to ask questions that I first raised as a graduate student, but in the context of ongoing US wars across the world, I wanted to learn more about how anthropologists had engaged with the US military in different historical periods.
And the US military actually has a long history of attempting to integrate anthropology and recruit anthropologists at different moments, with probably one of the more famous examples coming from the Vietnam War era, when a number of US anthropologists were working for the CIA and the Department of Defense.
And in the early 2000, I was very concerned that similar kinds of things might be happening, and indeed the Human Terrain System which began in 2006, basically indicated to me that that those concerns had come to pass.
The Human Terrain System was a US army program that was created to recruit anthropologists in particular and social scientists in general into combat or into military brigades on the ground in Afghanistan, and Iraq.
And so, the program lasted for more than 5 years, and they didn't have the program didn't have a whole lot of success in recruiting anthropologists, but there were other social scientists that did, step in and a number of anthropologists as well.
I became one of a number of very vocal critics within the anthropology discipline. I came out on the radio a number of times.
I wrote several articles and eventually a book, critiquing the human terrain system program. And for me, the problem with the program is that I thought there were really serious ethical problems that that the program would introduce into anthropology.
So let me just give 2 examples here. 1st, in anthropology, like many other disciplines, we have a code of ethics.
So here in the United States, we have a big professional association called the American Anthropological Association with more than 10,000 members, and it has what's called the principles of professional ethics or, you know, sometimes just called the code of ethics.
And that code of ethics historically has made very clear that the primary obligation of an anthropologist is to the people that the anthropologist studies.
So just to give an example in Oaxaca, we've talked a few moments a few moments ago about my work in Oaxaca.
When it comes to ethics, the people that I put first are the people that hosted me there.
The villagers, the family that I stayed with, you know, all the networks of informants that I built up over that time. That is my primary obligation.
Not to my country, not to my university. That is those might be on the list as well, but the primary obligation, the ethical obligation that an anthropologist has is to the people, who he or she has worked with.
And so that I think is different from lots of different disciplines, but it also explains why the American Anthropological Association's executive board by 2,007 or 2,008, came out with a strong statement condemning the human terrain system program.
So, by no means was my criticism sort of outside of the anthropology mainstream. In fact, the biggest association of anthropologists also had ethical issues with the Human Terrain program and its goals.
To the ethical dilemma, just to give you a hypothetical case here, let's say that there's an anthropologist who is embedded with a human terrain team in Afghanistan and starts doing research, ethnographic research, interviewing people, Afghans there on the ground, and then starts to turn over that information to a brigade commander.
That's putting the person that shared the information and their knowledge with you, that's putting their interests secondary to the interests of the military commander that you're reporting to.
So, there's a very obvious and very clear, kind of ethical breach there. And, that's why I think for the vast majority of anthropologists, the human terrain system program, there was just no way a program like that with the design to be to provide embedded anthropologists to combat brigades could be ethically feasible.
And so that's just one example. There were many other critiques that came out as well.
For example, what happens if anthropologists start embedding with combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan? What does that do to future generations of anthropologists? What kind of risk does that place graduate students in in the future? And so there's a whole bunch of questions about how this might make the work of future generations of anthropologists more insecure or more dangerous if, if anthropology in general has the reputation of being a discipline that essentially consists of spies or, you know, people that are going to, to, to basically provide intelligence information to military commanders or intelligence agencies or what have you.
And these, you know, these concerns, they're not these are not hypothetical concerns. Again, if we go back to the Vietnam, war era, these are the kinds of things that were going on where anthropologists were doing this kind of work covertly, secretly.
And this is really what generated a lot of soul searching on the part of anthropologists in the late sixties’ early seventies.
And again, with the human terrain system, you know, 40 years later or so. Yeah.
00:23:01
Dr. Frank A. Gomez (Host)
I mean, it sounds like you're there to serve the people that you are working with. And, I can see a multitude of ethical dilemmas, going forward, and it doesn't put in in light, you know, certainly the people you're working with and what their true objectives are in bringing, you know, anthropologists, into, the battlefield, need for better words.
We can transition a little bit here. You've focused on a lot of the involvement of tech companies like Google, Amazon, etcetera, in defense contracts.
This, been around for decades, the military establishment and how it's related to the government.
What are the potential risks and benefits of this ever-growing relationship now between Silicon Valley? It's not a lot it's not all about making Macs and PCs anymore, or maybe it never was, and his relationship with the military.
00:24:12
Dr. Roberto Gonzalez (Guest)
Right. Well, before we get to that, let me just make very clear something that I think a lot of people are unaware of, which is the fact that Silicon Valley would never have grown as a region, and as a as an industry had it not been for vast, investments by the Pentagon, by the Defense Department going back to the 19 fifties.
And a lot of people latch on to this mythology of Silicon Valley that really the Valley and in the tech, industry was built up thanks to the efforts of heroic engineers that in their garages built, you know, these wonderful computers that have now transformed our lives.
That's mythology, but that's not the reality. The reality is that there were large outlays of cash investment by the Pentagon to build up an industry that, essentially could, could help it win the cold war.
And I'll just give one example of this. The Internet itself, the origins of the Internet came out of the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the precursor to the Internet was called the ARPANET.
And this has been very well documented. I'm not the first person too to have discovered this by any means.
It's open for anybody that wants to do a little bit of research. You can find out the details on that.
And so, the notion that somehow in the past Silicon Valley hasn't been involved with military work or military contracting simply falls.
My recent work is looking at how what Dwight former president Dwight Eisenhower called the military industrial complex, how it has been gradually shifting away from traditional or legacy defense firms like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, and Boeing and so on.
From those companies to the tech industry so that now you're having multibillion dollar contracts, billion with a b, now being awarded to the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, even Google.
And then also lots of investments, lots of Pentagon money also going to much smaller start-up firms, some of which may have just a few dozen employees, but that are creating technologies, that the Pentagon is really interested in seeing, move to production at some point.
And those start-up firms are generally funded by venture capital, which there's also a huge concentration of venture capital, money in Silicon Valley.
So as someone who works at a university in the heart of Silicon Valley, of course, these questions are interesting to me just for the geography alone.
And I do, in my recent work, focus on this in geographical terms because the legacy defense contractors, the big Lockheed Martins and Raytheons of the world, tend to be focused on the center of gravity of that military-industrial complex is slowly shifting from the East Coast to the West Coast, here in Silicon Valley in particular.
And so, what are the risks of this kind of growing relationship? Well, a couple of things that I think are important to think about here is that when we talk about a company like Microsoft, Amazon, or Google, these are some of the most powerful companies, not only in the United States but in the world.
If you look at the net worth of these companies, what they are and what their value is.
And so, one concern that I have is as a US citizen, what happens to our democracy which is already extremely powerful and very influential in terms of, of their influence over government, when we give them even more power through these contracts.
And of course, the Pentagon gets huge amounts of money, an annual budget of some close to $900,000,000,000 a year is what the Pentagon budget is far, far greater than, any other department of government.
So, given that context, what does that do for our democracy? And so, what I've done in my recent work is to actually look back at Eisenhower and the concerns that Dwight Eisenhower had about the impact of the military industrial complex and how these large firms, when they're connected, with Pentagon contracts, can influence government itself.
One of the things that I've long been concerned about are privacy issues and the lack of regulation over data privacy here in the United States.
It's a very different situation in the European Union where there are quite strict data privacy laws on the books.
But here in the United States, there is not in part because of the great influence of the tech industry over government, over the Congress, over both houses in in Congress.
So, one of the concerns that I have, I think one of the risks is that when the big companies like Google and Amazon are made that much stronger through defense contracts and the money, the billions that come from that, what does that do to our democracy? Another concern that a number of people have articulated that I also mentioned in my recent work, is that there is the possibility that the Pentagon will become so reliant on companies like SpaceX or Amazon or Google, that the executives of those companies, the leaders of those companies, people like Elon Musk, people like Jeff Bezos, there may be a situation where, you know, essentially, they can influence what the military, is allowed to use.
So, there's that question as well of, that that arises. And then finally, another concern is that there is, as the tech industry gets closer and closer to the Pentagon, there is the issue of what is called a revolving door.
So now and this has also been very well documented. You have high officials in the Pentagon who upon retirement are going to work for the tech industry as consultants.
And so, there is a kind of cozy relationship between the Pentagon, the top brass, and then the companies, the big companies like, Amazon or Microsoft, and the venture capital firms as well.
So, it's a somewhat complicated picture, but a lot of this is still unknown because a lot of the defense contracts are classified, so we don't know the details.
But the general patterns and trends are clear. And one organization who produced really terrific data that I've used for some of my recent publications is the organization Tech Inquiry.
And I would encourage any listener that's interested in this, to, to check out that resource.
00:32:04
Dr. Frank A. Gomez (Host)
Great. Thank you, Roberto. Let's get, you know, a little bit back to, you know, our research focus here. You emphasized the importance of making academic research accessible to a broad audience. And certainly, that's something that we espouse here in the CSU and higher academia.
What strategies do you use to achieve this, and why is it so important?
00:32:29
Dr. Roberto Gonzalez (Guest)
Right. For me this is really important because as I've said, in the past, what we anthropologists have to say, and I think this can be extended to any academic field, whether it's environmental studies or engineering, what we have to say, I think, is too important to be withheld from the general public, to just be, something that's of concern to others in our own field.
So, one of the ways that I've tried to do this in my own research, in my own work, I should say, is to publicize it through any venue that I possibly can.
So, I'll just give an example. I've written, dozens of op ed pieces for different newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, and other outlets as well.
I've also, reached out to different radio programs here in the Bay Area when, you know, when I've got a new book out, to try to get my research out into the public.
And I think that's just a really important thing to do, not only because it helps raise the profile of our disciplines and wakes people up to what we can contribute, to current debates going on in society and contemporary problems.
But it also gives us the chance, gives me the chance as a scholar to get feedback from non-academics to get their points of view and their perspectives.
And to me that's really important because it opens up opportunities for me to see these questions from a different point of view.
Another thing that I've done is to appear on podcast like this one. Anytime I get invited to do a podcast, I do.
And then also just with my books, I've really taken a different direction in my writing, my academic writing.
So that although my last two books have been published through an academic publisher, University of California Press, I have written them in a way that is accessible to people that are not academics.
And so that means I can take I take out the jargon. That means I get rid of the in in text citations and instead use end notes.
These are these tools that we have that allow us to make our work more appealing and accessible and also forces me to rethink my writing.
People love stories, and so I've learned how to do some storytelling, as I talk about my anthropology research. Sometimes by profiling individual people and creating kind of character sketches.
But to me that's just the technique of writing has taken up more and more of my time and effort because I'm committed to really getting my work out there to public audiences beyond the academy.
I think that's very important to do.
00:35:24
Dr. Frank A. Gomez (Host)
Yeah. Certainly. Certainly very, very important where we don't want to just be those, people in our, IV covered walls. Although, I've not really seen many institutions that actually have IV clamoring up their walls.
But, certainly, it's important to get our word out in, in a, in a language that appeals to people and that they can understand.
You know, your range of interest is diverse, certainly from your mechanical engineering, earlier days to what you study now and the different areas of what you study now.
How do you achieve a balance in this, and how do you integrate these different facets of your life history into your professional life?
00:36:16
Dr. Roberto Gonzalez (Guest)
Well, one of the reasons I was drawn to anthropology is because it is a very, very wide discipline. I mean I only specialize in cultural anthropology. There are other sub disciplines within my field like archaeology and physical anthropology, biological anthropology, linguistics.
For me, a person with many, many different interests, a person who has always had a wide range of interests, anthropology seemed like the perfect fit.
For me, how do I balance these or integrate them? I am not so sure I integrate them so much as rely on these different and diverse interests to kind of balance each other out. So, I'll give an example.
If I'm doing work on militarization or, you know, the integration, the recruitment of social scientists into combat brigades, or if I'm writing, an article on, you know, the effects of drone warfare on local populations.
That subject matter can get pretty dark if you do it for a while. And so, for me, there are times when I just kind of have to shut that off for a for a for a moment.
And those are the times when I will start reading up on Oaxaca again or maybe pick up a manuscript that I've been working on that has nothing to do with the military or militarization.
And so, I try to be very sensitive about how effective I'm being in me in what I'm doing at the moment and if I need to step away from that and refocus on some other project for a while.
So, anthropology fortunately for me is a field that is broad enough for us to be able to do that.
And I am sure there are other fields too where, you know, a scholar, a scientist may have 2 or 3 or 4 different projects going on at the same time.
But I think it's really important for us to ask how well we are doing. Do we need to step away for a bit and give maybe priority to something else? Just so that we can keep a balance.
00:38:22
Dr. Frank A. Gomez (Host)
That being said, what do you see are some of the future challenges in your field of cultural anthropology? And save let's focus a bit more here on, on technological advances.
00:38:35
Dr. Roberto Gonzalez (Guest)
Sure. Well, I think the challenges right now for a field like anthropology are that like many social sciences and anthropology, some say, is kind of a mix between the social sciences and the humanities, to some degree.
I think the challenge is that, for many people, they don't understand the value of what anthropology can bring, what the benefits are, or what insights can come from a field like anthropology.
And so, you know, at different times, you find that, people will make, sometimes offhand comments about how anthropology is not really a useful degree or what are you going to do with that degree anyway.
And I think that that challenges us because sometimes it means our majors, for example, aren't as there aren't as many students as we would like to see enrolled in our courses or taking our courses or majoring in our discipline.
I think that's been an ongoing challenge for anthropology, but I think we're doing a lot better at this. And here's where I'll talk about rapid technological advancements.
A lot of the exciting work being done right now in anthropology intersects with technology.
So, a lot of the graduates right now from our own department wind up with jobs in the tech industry, interestingly enough.
There's a hunger in that industry in particular for people that are not scientists and engineers, but who understand people, because there is such a thing called user experience and user interface.
And to really take on that work, which the tech companies are heavily reliant on, you need someone who understands how humans interact with the technologies.
And cultural anthropologists are well trained to do that because we're trained in interview skills, we're trained in participant observation, and these kinds of techniques that can really help do a job like user experience, user interface research really well.
So, we're happy to see our undergraduates, and our graduate students. We have a master's program in applied anthropology, really succeed.
00:40:42
Dr. Frank A. Gomez (Host)
So, here's the tough one of us of our interview with you today. What is the most important lesson you've learned in your career so far? And how has it influenced your way of living, your balance between work and life?
00:40:59
Dr. Roberto Gonzalez (Guest)
The most important lesson I've learned in my career so far, I think, is an important anthropological lesson. And I'll see if I can articulate it here for you in a succinct way.
Sometimes the most creative solutions to really, really big problems come from very unexpected and out of the way places.
If you think about some of the issues that that we're confronting right now as a society here in the US but also globally, things like climate change, the prospect of or the problem of epidemic disease, the problem of political instability or political extremism.
It's interesting in anthropology how you can find different societies in different historical periods that have had to grapple with very similar kinds of problems.
The question is, are we open to learning about how other societies have figured out how to navigate their way through these problems? This is one of the things that made life in Oaxaca so meaningful to me and so influential in the way I live my life.
You know, I spent much of my time with farmers that had maybe 4 or 5 years of formal education, yet they were brilliant at tending the earth, at, at, at producing food, at being good stewards of the earth for generations, generation upon generation.
And there is an important lesson, about sustainable agriculture, about environmental stewardship, that can be learned from that small scale society.
This same village, by the way, 20 years later, created its own self cell phone network, mobile phones.
When the major technology, telecom companies from Mexico refused to give service, they said those villages are too high up in the mountains. It's not profitable for us.
And so, what did the villagers do? They reached out. They found a non-profit organization that would work with them to make it happen.
And sure enough, in 2013, they built their own cell phone network. So, the creativity of people outside of Silicon Valley throughout the world, oftentimes in small scale communities, is astonishing and inspiring.
And I think that's really one of the biggest lessons that my discipline can share, with, with everyone.
00:43:36
Dr. Frank A. Gomez (Host)
And that concludes today's episode of All Things STEM. A huge thank you to doctor Alberto Gonzalez for sharing his fascinating insights and groundbreaking research with us. Be sure to join us again for more captivating and thought-provoking discussions. Stay connected with us at calstate.edu/allthingsstempodcast, and don't forget to subscribe on Simplecast, Spotify, Itunes, or your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, stay curious and keep exploring.