Markedness and The Human Index
We have all experienced a moment where someone came along, glanced at a longstanding problem for a moment, and offered a solution so horrifyingly obvious once it was said out loud that we feel blindsided. We all have had that one friend who subverts every social convention, and with a single comment, a funny face at just the wrong time, or some oddball gesture or movement, can crack a room full of people into laughter. The field of anthropology, or the holistic and scientific study of humanity, might suggest that these are actually related phenomena. Let’s explore how.
Both instances relate to something called markedness. When something is unmarked, it’s part of life’s background, sometimes perceived but more often passing below the level of conscious awareness. These are the things we take for granted, like the general willingness of people to stand in the back of a line once it has started forming. It’s just something that is done.
A marked phenomena or condition, on the other hand, is a deviation from the norm, like an adult ignoring the line and pushing their way right up to counter despite it. These are things which rise instantly to the level of conscious awareness because they stand out from the background. Cross-culturally, things like language, facial expressions, and level of comfort with physical closeness might all be markedly different from our own norms. Within our own culture(s), many facets of our daily life go unmarked, from the quotidian like “appropriate” small talk, to the grand scale like who people picture when thinking of the “average” person.
In our first example, the solution was unmarked until an outside observer, for whom the answer was apparent, communicated it and brought it to conscious attention. In the second, an individual’s strange and entertaining behavior, so different from the group’s expectations, results in laughter. By understanding the expectations, they mark themselves in a humorous way.
Development anthropology is a subfield within the discipline that uses the tools of fieldwork to design interventions. Rather than modeling a culture, fieldwork is used to ask that group how best to construct a project or program. It is predicated on the idea that the members of the end-user group likely have the most expertise about their locale and local norms, as well as the resources, strengths, and weaknesses of their own community.
These tools have been deployed successfully in international development projects but are rarely brought home to the United States. Anthropology has an unfortunate history of being used to talk about “them”, with less focus on “us”. The tools of participant observation are externally focused, meaning part of the conundrum of the anthropological lens is that it is not particularly adapted for introspection. This is reasonable, as a member of a culture will have great difficulty in seeing the unmarked conditions and phenomena that prevail.
Tim Kreider, in an oft-parodied essay for the New York Times from 2013 states: “If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” While the phrase itself became an internet meme, part of its popularity must be derived from the ring of truth it carries. To understand ourselves completely, whether individually, culturally, or
Ian Carmichael, Author, Process Consultant
organizationally, we have to recognize that there are many features of our world which are unmarked, and without an outside observer bringing those features to our attention, we may never know the full scope of things.
One of the great utilities of bringing outside contractors into an organization or a project is that they will see things those inside and close to the effort cannot. How those elements are communicated to the client and the feedback garnered improves the contractor’s methods as well. When delivered with compassion and genuine investment in the outcomes being sought, these exchanges of perspective are immensely valuable for both parties and help to produce meaningful change in all involved.
Markedness as a concept has immense utility. It invites us to ask ourselves, what do we see? And more importantly, what can we not yet see? Through those questions, given and taken with grace, the world gets a little better and a little kinder, and that’s the essence of The Human Index.
