Business Anthropology

This essay outlines the overall scope and location of business anthropology within the overall field of the discipline. It outlines its foundations as an applied form of anthropology in early developments in the United States (in particular, in Western Electric’s Hawthorne Project and the Human Relations School at Harvard University), as well as in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, before turning to five areas of research and practice: academic ethnographies of business practices, regional studies, case studies developed by practitioners, theoretical applications, and methods. The essay then asks what a future program for business anthropology might look like and suggests four areas for theoretical development against a background of education, engagement, and comparative work. These are an examination of structures of power in, between, and dependent on business organizations of all kinds; cross-cultural comparison of work cultures; attention to the materials, technologies, and goods with which business people engage and which afford their organizational forms; and explicit attention to cutting-edge fieldwork methods.