Coming of age as an anthropologist: Lorraine Nencel

In this series, we invite anthropologists to share stories of growth, change, and discovery throughout their careers. By reflecting on the life choices that shaped them, the unexpected moments in the field that shifted their perspectives, and the happy mistakes that led to new directions, we hope to shed light on the many ways an anthropological journey can unfold. These are not polished success stories but honest accounts of becoming—moments of doubt, wonder, transformation, and resilience.

Through these reflections, we aim to inspire others who are finding their way in the discipline. Whether you are just beginning or already well along the path, we hope these stories will bring encouragement, laughter, or a tear and a reminder that every career is a process of coming of age.

The gift of the anthropological eye

If I had stayed in New York, I most likely would have studied archaeology. But I did not stay. In the USA, anthropology is three-tiered: cultural and physical anthropology and archaeology. I loved interpreting and making sense of the ancient cultures through the remains that were found.  Upon coming to the Netherlands, where I continued my studies, I found out that archaeology was a discipline in the humanities, and it was the social science dimension that made it exciting for me. So I continued my path in cultural anthropology, and I never regretted it.

I don’t know when I decided to become an anthropologist, but I never questioned my decision and started majoring in anthropology immediately in college, which is not common, and it is not necessary to choose your major in the first year of American university.  From the start, I was determined to become an anthropologist. It was not as if I was collecting cultural titbits of things I encountered or that I knew that “someday I would become an anthropologist,” but I remember the excitement when I stumbled upon things about a culture that was not my own. It awoke my curiosity, and I wanted to know more. And over the years, I can earnestly say that becoming an anthropologist made me into the person I am today, yesterday, and tomorrow.

It influences how you think, your life vision, and the essence of who you are. It is not a 9-5 job, a way of thinking that you switch on at work and off when you come home.  From the moment you sit in the lecture hall, you become aware of the importance of cultural relativism in understanding the world from the perspective of those who live there. Accordingly, this made me less judgmental and more willing to understand different ways of thinking.

Secondly, my research focuses to a great extent on sex work; this demanded that I was reflexive about my ideas of gender and sexuality.  Conceptualizing sex work as work means that sex workers provide sexual services to their clients for money. If you are willing to accept this, then you cannot look at the client, for example, in a heterosexual sex worker encounter as a “dirty old man.” And this, in turn, has consequences for how you think about sexuality. And in turn, you no longer can accept, for example, that monogamous relationships are the norm, but that there are many ways to enjoy sexual pleasure. For clarity’s sake, I am not giving you a peek into my own personal experiences of sexuality, but rather how researching sex work demanded that I let go of morally grounded notions of sexuality and gender (feminist or others). Studying sex work inspired me to think in terms of inclusiveness, not only in our society but beyond.

Finally, doing fieldwork is one of the greatest rewards of being an anthropologist. In my methodology classes, I always remind students of this privilege. You enter into intimate relationships with people you would never have met otherwise. Fieldwork gives the anthropologist firsthand knowledge into a slice of life that is generally nothing like their own. For those working in the Global South, it more often than not makes you understand the complexity of marginalization, stigmatization, and vulnerability. That being in such positions is not a characteristic of the person but a position constructed in society. And this insight is eye-opening, and very often with little effort, you begin to see the contours of the agency, resistance, and strength those individuals enjoy in their daily lives alongside the challenges. I cannot put into words how these fieldwork experiences influenced my worldview, but they definitely did.

If I could do it all again, there is one thing I might do differently. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no regrets, but I might have chosen another path. I started my career as what they call a “Latin Americanist”; I had done my MA, my PhD, and a postdoc, all in Lima. Like many other anthropologists who dedicate their working careers to one geographical location or region, I planned to work in Peru. Doing research in one country gives the possibility to address issues important for those organizations you work with and build strong relationships, which can also facilitate your research, and your research can eventually contribute to small but significant transformations; it can make a difference.

But after my post-doc in 2005, the possibility of receiving grant money to work in Peru disappeared because the government linked money to do research in “developing countries” to countries of priority in Dutch international cooperation. Peru was not one of them.  So I faced a dilemma: do I continue to do research in Peru, scraping money together, or do I expand my geographical orientation to continue receiving grant money for sex work research, but include other countries? I chose the latter and became a nomadic anthropologist; I have done research on sex work in Peru, the Netherlands, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Bangladesh, and I have gotten to know people and worked together with organizations that have enriched my life both personally and professionally.  I am extremely grateful for these experiences.  Yet, I cannot help but wonder what would have happened if I would have stayed put. Working in so many different contexts also made it very clear that if there is one universal assertion that is certain about sex work, and mind you, anthropologists generally do not believe in universalities, it is that sex workers are stigmatized globally. With that said, what stigma looks like and how it is experienced is context-dependent, and that is one of the jobs of the anthropologist to discover.

I think I can say with certainty that once an anthropologist, always an anthropologist. This not only brings pleasure, but unfortunately, the gift of sensitivity it gives can lead to frustration and anger. Nowadays, I feel the growth of intolerance and hate around me. I see how so-called common sense and cultural essentialism are used to justify discrimination, violence, and racism, and how that is silencing the nuanced ways of understanding global and local complexities. This makes me pose the question, how different would the world be today if everyone had a bit of an anthropologist in them?

Lorraine Nencel recently retired as Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology of the VU.