Collaborative Anthropologies

In the spring of 2017 a student came into my (Shear's) office to discuss coursework for the coming semester as well as life after college. As we talked a bit about how they were thinking about their future plans, their usually easy conversational flow sputtered and stiffened. They became visibly uncomfortable, hesitating and shifting in their seat. I asked if they were okay, and asked if they wanted to stop our conversation. I reassured them that it would be fine if they wanted to reschedule their appointment. Through tears, they said no, and that they wanted to talk. They took a moment to gather themselves and, over the next half hour or so, they described the enormous weight, anxiety, and uncertainty that they were feeling in relation to what can be viewed as three interlinked, existential issues.

First, they were worried about supporting themselves after graduation. How were they going to get a job? Would it pay them enough to pay back their student loans? Would it even pay them enough simply to live a decent life and pay for rent, food, and health care? Transition to life after college has always presented challenges, but increasing inequalities, growing costs and concomitant debt of higher education, the normalization of a flexible labor market and "gig"-based economy, and predictions of a fully automated future have turned a time of apprehension to one of deep anxiety and despair for many students.

Second, they were terrified not just about their own individual survival but the very existence of humanity and, indeed, life as they knew it. [End Page 1] They recounted a recent discussion in one of their classes that promised an increasingly apocalyptic world in the coming decades, driven by catastrophic weather events, cascading species loss, rising temperatures, and the possibility of increased violence as basic resources become scarcer and more unpredictable. This is a student who was not new to these issues. They had been involved in campus organizing and campus climate activism. "It's not like I wasn't aware [of these conditions]—they are already happening—but sometimes it's just too overwhelming," they said.

Third, they were unsure why they were even in school. Given impending planetary catastrophe, how was anything they were doing making sense? Why were they taking classes, why were they worried about trying to get a job? How should they think about themselves and their identity? How could they align their individual needs and wants, as well as their political commitments, toward social equality and environmental sustainability within a world that was so dangerous, unpredictable, and unknowable? How were they supposed to navigate the world around them? "I just want to make the right choices, but how do I know what to do?" they asked.

For us, interactions such as this one have become increasingly frequent in recent years. Students email or stop by our offices and discuss the angst or crisis they or a friend or a family member experience. On a certain level, some students know that the well-meaning advice they are often given toward making themselves marketable makes little sense, but they are unsure about what does make sense. How could or should they act? How should, and how could, they be in the world?

In addition to the economic and ecological insecurities they face, many young people also feel their places of learning to be unsafe and insecure. Seventeen people were killed at a school in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine's Day in 2018. In the weeks following, I had many difficult and emotional conversations about it with our undergraduate and graduate students as they talked about their own fears and concerns and analyses of why it happened. What was maddening was that not one of them expressed shock or surprise that it had occurred. Just a few years after Sandy Hook, mass school shootings had seemingly become accepted as a normal part of life.

As a school board member with two teenage children, I (Lyon-Callo) was moved to see so many teachers and parents at the board meeting the week after the shooting. Nearly...