"Studying Up" in Anthropology: Flipping Perspective on its Head

The term "studying up" was coined by Laura Nader, an American anthropologist and professor at UC Berkeley, who wrote extensively regarding the importance of studying the systems of power and responsibility through an opposing viewpoint to historical ethnography, which has been primarily concerned with a classist top-down perspective, where "the people with power study those without it."¹

Laura Nader, Professor at UC Berkely

What Nader suggests in her essay is that anthropologists should focus their eyes upwards, to also examine people who wield power — corporations, the government, the wealthy, scientists, the police, etc. These studies would contribute to a more well-rounded anthropology and provide instructive challenges for ethnographic methods. When reversing this research method, problems arise that one may not have considered before. While studying up, you turn your area of study on its head and realize that many standard elements of fieldwork seem strange when taken out of their original environment.





This theory goes hand in hand with studying the Lakoff and Johnson arcticle in the book, Metaphors We Live By, where meaning is derived from the order in which it is spoken and the social/cultural context in which it is used. Turning a metaphor on its head requires an in depth analysis of the social and cultural factors that caused its formation in the first place, which then becomes an anthropological and ethnographic study into the origins and evolution of the connotation/denotation. Turning something upside down allows us to "study up," analyzing the seemingly invisible forces that culture and history play on the way we communicate with and about our world.

Still from "Upside Down," (2012) a film that addresses classist issues using the visual metaphor of privilege 

¹Seaver, Nick. "Studying Up: The Ethnography of Technologists." Ethnography Matters. N.p., 10 Mar. 2014. Web. 16 Feb. 2016.