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This chapter is a reflective essay that explores the contextual influences upon the naming and non‐naming of applied anthropology in different nations and regions of the world. Using a historical and comparative method, the chapter is deliberately designed to present a perspective that does not originate from or end up in the United States. By comparing diverse contexts chronologically, the chapter suggests alternative ways of understanding the reasons why applied and practicing anthropology have evolved so distinctively in different places. The chapter suggests that applied and practicing anthropology, indeed all of anthropology, is inextricably bound to its historical and cultural contexts, meaning that there are important differences in the way the discipline is understood and practiced across different nations and regions. Moreover, historical shifts in context have resulted in important changes in the way the discipline is practiced over time. The chapter also argues that if processes of globalization are indeed transforming the nature of connectedness and boundaries across nations, then there are consequences for the distinctive forms of applied and practicing anthropology observed across nations, with an emphasis on those in the United States. The authors postulate that some of the differences observed between applied and practicing anthropology in the United States and elsewhere are beginning to blur, and that the unique model of applied anthropology that developed in the United States during the last quarter of the 20th century is destined to be transformed into one that is more integrated into the mainstream of the discipline and, indeed, into all of global anthropology.

This article argues for the utility of cognitive decision modeling in assessing regional patterns of health behavior and, when combined with the explanatory modeling approach, in describing and analyzing more effectively sources of intracultural variation in choice within a region. A decision model developed in two intensively studied communities in rural Costa Rica was used to predict treatment choice in a third one representative of the rapid social change occurring in the region. A subsequent analysis of the errors made in prediction pinpointed patterns of intracultural variation that were then investigated from the explanatory model perspective. The incorporation of these more qualitative data into the original decision model made it more sensitive to both the complexities of the decision context and the specifics of the individual illness experience while also enabling greater accuracy in the prediction of regional patterns of treatment choice.