Growing up, my father felt it was important for my brother and me to know about our roots as dirt farmers and coal miners. My mother and father were raised in the coal mining regions on the tri-state border of Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia. It was a cultural conflict for them. On the one hand, they wanted us to learn about our Appalachian heritage, on the other they never wanted us to emulate or be around people that lacked in education or standing to a certain degree.…
Author: mark
Welcome new Blogger, Cynthia Van Gilder
Ethnography.com Welcomes a new anthropology blogger, Cynthia Van Gilder to the ranks. Cindy is the chair of the anthropology department at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California. Check out her first post, “Kennewick Man Sighted Buying Groceries in Virginia.”
Welcome!
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Have I mentioned how much I like Anthony Bourdain and his show “No Reservations”?
Yes I have indeed mentioned it before. I like it so much because he starts at a place that anthropologists are trained to not go: the sheer love of the unexpected. We are trained to avoid being Indiana Jones, we are not just globe-trotting dilettantes, we are scientists! Well, that really takes the fun out of it doesn’t it? Boursain makes no claim to be anything more than a chef and writer that really digs food, people and instructional misadventures.…
Have you ever seen a product category in the throes of Bundle Death?
Making recommendations to clients about what to do next is an important part of the job of the team the anthropologist is working in. In addition to understanding people, anthropologists need to understand markets. What’s up, what’s down, it’s hard to really take part in ideation if you don’t know what is already in the market.
Retail audits or retail surveys are a great way to quickly learn about market place trends.…
Ways to make order of the chaos of ethnographic data
Jono is a former colleague of mine at Jump Associates. In a recent e-mail to me I noticed a blog link I had not seen before. The first thing I saw was a nice little post called “Recording ethnographic observations: Five useful frameworks”. It compares different ways people use to chunk out the things they learned in the field, such as activities, environments, artifacts, etc . They are ways to start organizing the chaos of data.…
Psychology, Design and Economics of Slot-Machines
I found this great link in a Slashdot post that points to a Stanford class on design taught by Michael Shanks. It is by two students, William Choi and Antoine Sindhu, on the design, psychology, economics and social impact of the slot machine.
How to prepare yourself for a job in anthropology outside of academia when you get out of school
1. Purge any elitist tendencies from your soul. It blinds you to the opportunities and people around you. Remember that, statistically speaking, scoring in the 95th percentile on the SAT or GRE proves without doubt there are a few million people out there that are still smarter than you are. No one cares if you can quote Foucault or Goffman, the measure outside of the academic world is what you can actually do, how you contribute and how well you can communicate your insights to everyone.…
Why isn’t ethnography.com more focused on ethnography? Um, ‘cause I don’t feel like it.
A friend asked me how many people regularly read this blog. Well, not a lot. There is a good reason for this. I have owned the domain ethnography.com for about a decade, as well as several other anthropology related domains. On the other hand, while I am an ethnographer, my professional life is focused on the strategy and innovation, of which ethnography is just one of the tools in my toolbox.…
A quick guide to business case studies for social scientists
“Project X Challengers” is a series from Digital Manga Publishing that shows the history of the development of different breakthrough products in the distinctive manga style from Japan. Currently, there are three books in the series: “Nissin Cup Noodle”, “7-11 bring the convenience market to Japan” and “Datsun Fairlady Z (Project X 240Z Challengers)”.
You have to get used to the back to front, right to left reading convention but after that they are a wealth of information.…
CEO’s Arent Anthropologists!
I read a lot of blogs, but I usually find myself responding to the Business Week Blogs more than others. Today is no exception. Bruce Nussbaum recently gave a speech at the Royal College of Art stating that CEOs Must Be Designers, Not Just Hire Them. Think Steve Jobs And iPhone.
My Response:
So Bruce, I have to disagree: CEO’s should be CEO’s, but a good CEO knows how to spot talent.…
Business Travel is a magical experience.
If you have spent any time in an airport at all you have seen my co-workers and I. When I say co-workers, I don’t mean the people I work with at Jump. I mean every poor bugger that has to fly across three time zones countless times a year. Even if we are not all working for the same company, we are co-workers in spirit. We are the people moving at a brisk pace down the concourse with a jacket slung over one arm, pulling a piece of luggage with another arm, a cell phone is attached to our heads with duct tape, and we are cramming a $12 slice of $1 pizza into our chattering mouths with a third arm.…
Two Design Anthropology Phrases of Doom
In general, companies hire an anthropologist to conduct an internal or external ethnographic study for a simple reason: to uncover new ways to achieve competitive advantage. This usually like research to understanding new opportunities for products or services, or internally focused to change organizational issues, among other things. Unfortunately, our clients often have no idea what to do with the research. That’s the fault of anthropologists by the way.
Over the years, clients have told me about experiences they have had with social scientists of different stripes.…