Commercial/corporate anthropology

Starting work on one of our projects for 2007, I notice that I could see myself as a corporate/commercial anthropologist. This is a jolt.

The book will be about The Economist’s Project Red Stripe – a 6-month, 6-person project to "develop and bring to market a web-based idea" for the magazine group. In fact, it's more than an idea that they're hoping to develop - it's a workable template which can be replicated many times as the group develops a whole new shape for The Economist's Internet presence.

I’ll be observing the project team at work over the six months and recording my impressions. I expect to be writing about ‘the process’ more than about the technology or the end product, and one of my immediate interests is in the very public way that the project is being conducted. There’s a public website about the project and the project team members will be writing a regular blog. The site has already attracted considerable attention from other bloggers.

Having concluded that my role is that of anthropologist, I’ve been trying to learn a little more about the subject of commercial/corporate anthropology. An interesting article in the Financial Times, where I learn that, almost inevitably, there’s a debate running amongst academic anthropologists about whether it’s valid for anthropologists to use their skills to serve giant corporations and governments. In my experience, anthropologists are endlessly agonising about what role they can properly play.

At a recent lecture I heard anthropologist Tim Ingold say that anthropology had "lost confidence in itself" to such a point that it had ceased to be a "net exporter" of ideas to other disciplines (like psychology, sociology and history) and had become a net importer of ideas. As Gillian Tett says in her FT piece:

"Some have become so obsessed with the moral interaction between the "observer" and "observed" that their research seems more akin to introspective travel writing. Others have tried to give the discipline a harder scientific edge by moving into realms similar to psychology or linguistics. And a few seem to commit intellectual suicide, by writing essays that essentially declare there is little moral justification to studying other ‘cultures’ at all."

I also learn from this piece and from a collection of related articles that much of what corporate anthropologists are doing is related to technology and product development (observing how consumers live and use existing products, like mobile phones or breakfast cereals) and then developing better ones. To this extent, they are filling a gap between the focus group and office-based market research.

As I research this field more, I’d be grateful for any thoughts or comments from anyone with an interest in this field.