Description

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In recent years announcements of the birth of business anthropology have ricocheted around the globe. The first major reference work on this field, the Handbook of Anthropology in Business is a creative production of more than 60 international scholar-practitioners working in universities and corporate settings from high tech to health care. Offering broad coverage of theory and practice around the world, chapters demonstrate the vibrant tensions and innovation that emerge in intersections between anthropology and business and between corporate worlds and the lives of individual scholar-practitioners. Breaking from standard attempts to define scholarly fields as products of fixed consensus, the authors reveal an evolving mosaic of engagement and innovation, offering a paradigm for understanding anthropology in business for years to come.

About the Author

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Patricia Sunderland, PhD, and Rita Denny, PhD, are anthropologists and founding partners of Practica Group, LLC, a consumer research and strategic consultancy based in New York City and Chicago. Internationally recognized as among the pioneers to bring ethnographic research and anthropological, cultural analysis to the contemporary commercial sphere, their insights have helped shape products and brands for many Fortune 500 clients, including Pernod Ricard, SC Johnson, Target, Whirlpool, Samsung, Nissan, PepsiCo, and Darden Restaurants. Traversing boundaries between anthropology as a discipline, its many practices in business, and academic marketing, they are sought after as seminar leaders for training programs and guest speakers at both business and academic venues and conferences. Their writings have spanned the gamut from articles in the trade press (Research Magazine, QRCA Views) to academic journals (Anthropological Quarterly, Consumption Markets and Culture, Ethnos, Journal of Business Research, Human Organization) and book chapters (Contemporary Marketing and Consumer Behavior, Creating Breakthrough Ideas, Advertising Cultures, Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in Marketing, Inside Marketing, Advancing Ethnography in Corporate Environments). Their path-breaking book Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research is widely assigned to undergraduate and graduate students in anthropology, communications and marketing in the US, Europe, and Asia, and is a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book.

Praise For…

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“This indispensable volume highlights the promise of anthropologists' contributions in business. It also shows how work from the business field can be good for anthropology. Denny and Sunderland have pulled together a wide mix of work conducted under the banner of anthropology in business, making this handbook a large-scale achievement.”

—Edward Liebow, Executive Director, American Anthropological Association

“Not only is the coverage of this volume comprehensive in its intended field, justifying the term 'handbook', but as the editors indicate, it allows it to come  into view for the first time, transcending  categories like 'applied' or 'practicing', or even 'business' anthropology. As such it provides many fascinating pathways through which any anthropologist will find connections. This first-rate handbook is an impressive feat.”

—George E. Marcus, Director, Center for Ethnography, University of California Irvine

“What a welcome book! Once upon a time the anthropology of business was a stepchild in academia. This handbook shows how much that has changed. There is an inspiring richness in its many different takes on the field. The critical edge and reflexive tone show that it is not only a question of what anthropology brings to the world of business, but also what academia can learn from the anthropologists who work 'out there'.”

—Orvar Löfgren, Lund University (emeritus)

“With the rapid growth of ethnography and anthropology in a variety of business contexts over the last three decades, it's timely and arguably overdue that a volume with the breadth and depth of the Handbook of Anthropology in Business should come along. For all of us who practice and/or teach in this area, the Handbook is a must-have volume that offers a comprehensive take on not just the history and established practices in the field but our "blurred edges" and future challenges. We all owe Denny and Sunderland a vote of thanks for managing to root out so many excellent thinkers and practitioners, and more importantly for bringing their own depth of experience in navigating (in their words) 'the frame-breaking collisions occurring at the intersections of anthropology and business' to bear on synthesizing this excellent edited collection.”

—Catriona Macaulay, Programme Director MSc Design Ethnography, University of Dundee

“Anthropologists of the 21st Century inescapably study the pervasive role of consumption in people's everyday lives. In an age of Big Data, scanner data, and online analytics, it is such ethnographic research that is providing the most compelling insights into consumption. As the chapters in this handbook demonstrate, some of the very best research on business — including consumption, technology, design, organizational and work practice studies — is being done by business anthropologists.”

—Russell Belk, Schulich School of Business, York University

“The Handbook of Anthropology in Business is as deep as it is broad, approachable by readers new to the field, and informative and insightful for experts. It brings together the most valuable and stimulating writings yet on what challenges, values and solutions anthropologists bring to business today. An essential guide to this flourishing area, it enables practitioners, students, academics, and business leaders to understand core issues in business anthropology, the range of work it encompasses, and future directions for work.”

—Ken Anderson, principal engineer, Intel

“The book deals with theoretical questions (especially in the first section), provides examples of good (and not so successful) practice throughout, offers examples of methodological innovation and is heavily based on people’s experiences even when straddling these two worlds.”

—Gareth Hamilton, University of Latvia