Three years ago, for a variety of reasons I won't bore you with, I found myself on the faculty of a department that prides itself on being the first ("and still the best!") to specialize in Applied Anthropology. Never having thought of myself in any way as an applied researcher, I admit to feeling a certain sense of superiority about the prosaic, untheorized work I assumed to characterize the field. As a British expatriate, I was quite well-enculturated into that country's traditional disdain for applied work, a disdain that is shared by many anthropologists here.

Three years later, I'm still somewhat on the margins of the department's core interests, a place I'm likely to inhabit indefinitely, in part because of my rather unwholesome interest in the suspect field of Cultural Studies. However, I have begun to develop a new respect for and interest in the way that anthropological concerns can be applied -- that is, taken outside the academy and used to understand, affect, even change the wider society. The applied focus of the department is reflected most clearly in the graduate program, at both the masters and doctoral levels, as students are compelled to develop a project that will, in one way or another, be "relevant." Usually that involves developing a project through an internship with some institution -- a social services agency, museum, school, government office -- that involves, or is followed by, a period of intensive fieldwork.

The search for relevance can be intimidating and limiting. I think of the various research projects that I have done over the years, and most of them have been chosen because they interested me. I hope they interested others too, and perhaps added something to our understanding of popular culture, but I have rarely thought too much about whether they had any more direct impact. Nor do I believe that all projects should be evaluated by those criteria.

Yet as I have become more involved with the projects of students and faculty in my department, or as I browse through the abstracts of past theses and dissertations, I see the potential of applied cultural work. For instance, I am currently reading the dissertation of a student, a former nurse who has studied the personal narratives of women who have suffered sexual abuse or assault while in the military. Her dissertation is thoroughly anthropological, including an analysis of the culture and ideology of the military, and incorporating nuanced discussions of gender and power. The centerpiece of the work is interpretation of detailed and sensitive ethnographic interviews and life histories. What makes the project striking, however, is that it was carried out under the auspices of a Veterans Administration fellowship, and part of her commitment is to produce a report and guidelines to the VA that will make recommendations about how to change military culture to reduce the problems of sexual abuse.

Of course one can be cynical about this, and wonder how much impact her work will actually have. Will it be filed away in a VA archive somewhere, and cited merely as proof that something was done? Maybe. Did her VA sponsorship cause her to white-wash or otherwise downplay the problem? I honestly don't think so. In fact it excited me to think that work like this may find its way outside the academy, and may in some small way contribute to genuine cultural change. The same could be said for many other departmental theses and dissertations. Recent efforts include: A study on the cultural constructions of midwifery, contrasting British and U.S. models, and suggesting ways that cultural factors should be incorporated in training programs; an ethnographic study of the culture of homeless men in Tampa, showing how standard city policing practices cannot possibly help, since they do not address the cultural motivations of the homeless; an ethnographic analysis of a "high crime" neighbourhood in Tampa, showing again that the reasons for crime are far more complex than is assumed by people assigned to "manage" this situation. In most cases, students produce work that is planned with, and then passed on to people and institutions who are actively involved in the issues.

There are, of course, a host of potential problems with this kind of study, and colleagues and students constantly wrestle with the potentially Faustian contracts they enter into with funding sources and sponsoring agencies. Nevertheless, the more I see of this applied anthropology, the more I wonder if we shouldn't be doing more to develop an Applied Cultural Studies. In many ways, cultural studies is like anthropology, most centrally, of course, in its focus on culture, and its concern for social justice and change. So what might an Applied Cultural Studies project look like? Here are some brief suggestions; maybe others can develop more:

• Cultural studies scholars have often had an interest in sub-cultures and marginalized groups. Perhaps we could take some of these studies further, developing suggestions for better communication with or facilities for sub-cultures of ethnicity, disability, or age, and finding ways to bring our findings to those who can make a difference.
• A relatively recent movement in anthropology has been toward projects that work to help people take control over their own representation. These might be oral history projects, where the results are not only stored or mined for scholarly articles, but presented back to the people in museums, videos, and cultural displays, along with historical and contemporary photographs. Key to this is the active involvement of the people, both in collecting material and presenting it. Cultural studies scholars could do similar things; many have audio-visual or interview/journalistic skills that would be valuable.
• Analyses of media representation abound in cultural studies, and some scholars, like Sut Jhally or Jean Kilbourne, have produced videos and writings that are most definitely "applied," bringing the insights of cultural studies to wider audiences. Could we do more of that -- working with local schools or community groups to demonstrate and fight media enculturation, perhaps even seeing if TV stations would be interested in sponsoring research that would evaluate them in terms of issues like racial representation?
• The list has debated the merits of cultural studies scholars speaking with the media as "experts," and we've agonized with each other about the way we are misquoted and misrepresented. Yet this too can be "applied cultural studies," where we try (and even sometimes succeed) in offering a critical dimension to stories in the media. When I used to do this, I could count on merciless lampooning from colleagues when they noticed the contorted things I apparently said to the media. In my new, "applied-friendly" atmosphere, colleagues still laugh at me, but there is also an understanding that, unrewarding as it may be, reaching out to the media and the public is something we need to do.
• Similarly, perhaps we could be more proactive in our work with the media. In an opinion piece, you have more control over the message, and the results can be rewarding. Years ago, when I worked in Iowa, I published several opinion pieces in a state newspaper that elicited a far greater response (much of it derogatory) than any scholarly article I have ever written. They were also rather harder to write, requiring greater attention to clarity and brevity than I like, and necessarily entailing some over-simplification and lack of nuance. But I think they were worth the effort. And since I wasn't on tenure track, I wasn't concerned about what these "popular" efforts would do to my academic credibility -- a fear that reared its head later in my career, and which is something that we must combat in our own institutions if we feel it's important to make our voices heard outside the academy.
• Finally, is it feasible to think about more specifically applied projects for our graduate students and ourselves to do? Could we do cultural studies of organizations and institutions, such as schools and businesses, not as surreptitious ethnographers, but as scholars sponsored by those same agencies? Could our insights make a difference? Or would this inevitably destroy cultural studies' critical "edge" and interest in dissidence and resistance?

Now, my argument here is not that cultural studies should become primarily an applied field, any more than anthropology has. The question "what is the practical application of this work?" comes up in my department constantly, and it can have a negative effect on creativity and long-term, theoretical thinking. I sit on several graduate student committees in other departments, and it is often a relief to focus only on the intellectual merits of the work, and to consider questions like "how does this advance our thinking on . . . ?" My department has produced its share of poorly-done projects that seem to have been pulled together at the demand of a sponsoring agency, with very little regard for anthropological theory and methodology.

Nevertheless, I believe as cultural studies scholars we should think about practical applications if and when they're appropriate. If a student says she is interested in, say, media imagery, but wants to do something different from a standard thesis, we might come up with alternatives. Could she prepare a unit that could be presented in schools? Equally important, can she actually work with a school and get it done? Another student is interested in the role of cellular phones in teenage culture. Is there a way he could actually work with a cell phone company, and produce recommendations about improvements in the technology? Maybe not -- few of us want to find ways of helping big companies feed the consumer culture even more efficiently. But at a time when more and more of our students are asking "what's the point of all this?" perhaps we need to think about these questions a little more than we do.

I am convinced that cultural studies has important and interesting things to say about the cultures we live every day. I haven't forgotten that one of the most significant "applied" things we do is to teach, helping our students see things in new ways, and asking difficult questions about cultural authority, power, and reality. Not everything has to have an immediate "effect," and I don't mean to minimize the basic research and writing we all do all the time. But occasionally it would be nice to see the possibility of a more direct impact. When I worked in Minnesota, I began a project related to the representation on American Indians in popular media. Working with mostly Ojibwa people, I talked with them about such representations in focus groups and other situations. Some of them became quite excited about what we might do with this research -- a question I hadn't even thought of before, other than in terms of presentation and publication. We developed rather grandiose schemes for sending delegations to Hollywood, armed with indisputable research that would force "them" (whoever they were) to rethink their limited stereotypes of Native people. Then circumstances intervened, and I left Minnesota. I continued to research issues of representation, and I'm pleased with the work I've done, but I never pursued the harder project of bringing those seemingly unrealistic ideas to fruition. Now and again, I wish I'd tried.