Public Interest Anthropology at Penn

Peggy R. Sanday views anthropology as a force for enlightenment and an agent for change in a world beset by conflicting interests which can lead to psychological, social, and physical devastation to humans and the environment. Sanday first applied the notion of "public interest" to the goals of social science research in her 1976 edited book Anthropology and the Public Interest. Her subsequent books communicated to a broad audience the results of her research on female power cross-culturally, the socio-cultural context of rape, and the meaning of cannibalism.

In addition to her public interest fieldwork in the U.S., Sanday has conducted long term fieldwork with the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, Indonesia. She chose the Minangkabau for study because they self identify as a matriarchy and are known to anthropologists as the largest matrilineal society in the world today (some four million in the province of West Sumatra, the Minangkabau homeland.) Her research focused on the meaning of matriarchy for the Minangkabau in contrast to its definition in the West. Almost every year from 1981 to 1999, she spent summers and sabbaticals in West Sumatra. The result of this work is displayed in a virtual exhibition of ethnographic photographs and in her newest book Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy Cornell University Press (2002.)

In the Fall of 2001 Sanday taught Public Interest Anthropology in St. Petersburg, Russia. In St. Petersburg she embarked on a collaborative public interest project with Russian anthropologists and social scientists. The overall goal of this project is to assess the state of civil society in N.W. Russia. This project is currently under development.