Helen B. Schwartzman

Helen B. Schwartzman is a professor of anthropology at Northwestern University. Her research interests include the study of childhood development and play and the anthropology of work and organizations. She argues that play and work have much more in common than most people think and this has led her to look at the interactional work children must do to construct play worlds for themselves as well as how meetings in workplace settings facilitate "dancing" for participants. Because she does her research in the US she is particularly interested in developing ways to look at ordinary life as if it is extraordinary. Because she is a fan of the work of Lewis Carroll she believes that the social world should be approached backwards in order to see it, and the forms that produce it, in a new way.