Action as Method: Ethnographic approaches for impact

Anthropologists have persuasively made a case for critical ethnographic engagement with elites in recent years. The most significant risk of such an approach is that it may appear meaningless to powerful actors who claim they want to ‘do good’, such as impact investors and philanthropists. This article suggests that producing intermediary outputs targeted at these powerful actors first would generate the potential for solving contemporary problems, which, in turn, would help develop theory.