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Eight anthropology careers: Life outside the university

Published on May 14, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, design anthropology

Where do anthropologists work outside the university? And how do you get a relevant job? Andreas Lloyd has been at the annual Career day at his old anthropology department (University of Copenhagen) and gives ut a great summary of eight presentations and eight ways to make an anthropology career.

He writes about both old and new careers. Inger Merete Hansen for example is now close to 60, has combined her anthropology degree with primary school teaching:

Anthropology gave her both a method and outlook which proved vital to her work, especially in order to work against the heavy-handed and indirectly racist school bureaucracy and work towards new ways of integrating immigrant children into the Danish society.

Kirsten Becker works to build relationships between the department and the “real world” outside. She told about the growing popularity of our discipline. Anthropology is being hyped at all of the conferences on innovation these days:

“Before, nobody really paid attention when I spoke at conferences, but now everybody shushes and listens to every word. Being an anthropologist is like being a shaman – the industry thinks we have some secret magic they need. My job is to maintain that impression.” Another grin.

Anne Weber is working as a recruiter. She argued that anthropology is just as much a way of personal development as it is an academic discipline. This is because anthropologists invest themselves so much in their work, learning new ways of being present, of observing and of being surprised. Thus, for an anthropologist, it is much more a matter of personality that it is about grades and recommendations when applying for jobs in the real world.

The most repeated and probably most important refrain was, Lloyd writes, mot offer up some easy and shrinkwrapped solution, but saying “I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know how to find out.”

>> read the whole text “Anthropology Careers” on Andreas Lloyd’s blog

Capitalism and the problems of “High speed ethnographies”

Published on January 18, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, design anthropology, fieldwork / methods, technology

“If armchair anthropology was a product of colonialism, then design ethnography is a product of capitalism”, writes Anne Galloway, inspired by Jan Chipchase’s post on Tour Bus Ethnography:

Looking at my travel schedule for the next few months I’m left wondering what can I expect to learn from the relatively short amounts of time spent the field in different countries? At what point does spending a few days in a culture become nothing more than tour bus ethnography?

Galloway comments:

When I read posts like the one above, I remember being taught how the discipline of anthropology really only emerged when we gave up the colonial past-time of “armchair” anthropology and actually got out in the field ourselves.

But spending too much time analysing data outside the field might have some other implications:

When scholars were tasked with making sense of all the data brought back from the colonies, they had plenty of time to reflect on it. (In fact, I’ve always suspected that the sheer amount of “down” time and distance from the people studied actually encouraged anthropologists to come up with those complex hierarchies of cultural traits that became so instrumental in the administration of the colonies and the oppression of so many people. You know, idle hands and all…)

>> read her whole post “Design ethnography and the crisis of time”

Jan Chipchase (seems in fact to be his real name) reveals some of his field technics >> read his post “Tour Bus Ethnography”

"If armchair anthropology was a product of colonialism, then design ethnography is a product of capitalism", writes Anne Galloway, inspired by Jan Chipchase's post on Tour Bus Ethnography:

Looking at my travel schedule for the next few months I'm left wondering…

An anthropologist at an architecture firm

Published on January 15, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, design anthropology

(via Putting People First) Peter Merholz at Peterme.com writes about an “enjoyable dinner brought together by local members of the anthrodesign mailing list“. He was particularly excited talking to an anthropologist who’s started working for an architecture firm (MKThink), “because he’s getting MKThink to move beyond standard architectural practice and consider ethnography as a method toward constructing better built environments”.

>> continue

(via Putting People First) Peter Merholz at Peterme.com writes about an "enjoyable dinner brought together by local members of the anthrodesign mailing list". He was particularly excited talking to an anthropologist who's started working for an architecture firm (MKThink), "because…

INTEL and Microsoft conference "a coming-out party" for ethnography

Published on November 17, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, design anthropology, technology

(LINKS UPDATED 5.2.2021) It’s no longer news that high-tech companies are employing ethnographers and anthropologists. The first-ever Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC), organized by ethnographers at Intel and Microsoft was held at Microsoft’s campus on November 14-15, as TechnologyReview reports:

One talk examined an ongoing effort by ethnographers to root out organizational problems slowing down a software company’s development process. Another examined how bi-lingual, multinational teams could be formed more effectively, while yet another examined how technology affects, and is affected by, the trend toward “great rooms” in private U.S. homes. (…) It was an ethnographer who figured out that Japanese people don’t use instant messaging on their PCs, because interruptions are considered impolite.

The conference was “a coming-out party” for ethnography, said Marietta L. Baba, an ethnographer at Michigan State University.

>> read the whole story

Dina Mehta has blogged extensively about the conference. Read her summaries and thoughts here.

All conference papers are available online! (pdf)

(LINKS UPDATED 5.2.2021) It's no longer news that high-tech companies are employing ethnographers and anthropologists. The first-ever Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC), organized by ethnographers at Intel and Microsoft was held at Microsoft's campus on November 14-15, as TechnologyReview…

Tagging and Folksonomies: Xerox Scientists Apply Insights From Ethnography

Published on October 7, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, corporate & business anthropology, design anthropology, technology

An older story from last summer: In a (cryptic) press release, Xerox writes that they have used insights from ethnography in product development:

Employing the same ethnographic methods used to observe the social order on a Polynesian atoll or document the culture of natives in southern Siberia, Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) scientists have injected more human know-how into text mining, the practice of using computer analysis of documents to extract new information. The result is better categorization, with higher-quality, customized results.

>> read the whole press release

In their article Tag it as you see it, Computerworld explains us (in a more understandable way), what Xerox actually has found out: They go for using tags for organizing content – as on flickr and del.icio.us:

The best systems allow a combination of predetermined categories with the ability for the end user to create new tags on the fly and organize them in a way that has meaning to the individual as well as to the organization. Recent research at Xerox Corp. shows how this approach can achieve bottom-line results

>> read the whole story: Tag as you like it

SEE ALSO
The practice of classification by tags is also called Folksonomy. See Wikipedia article on folksonomy and article by Kerim Friedman on How folksonomy websites can be used by anthropologists

An older story from last summer: In a (cryptic) press release, Xerox writes that they have used insights from ethnography in product development:

Employing the same ethnographic methods used to observe the social order on a Polynesian atoll or document the…