Anthropologize

1. There are two ways of looking at “Marketing the Anthropological Lens” and they depend on the presence or absence of mid-title punctuation. Both are salient topics of discussion for both applied and academic anthropologists (and hybrids).

a) Marketing the Anthropological Lens (no punctuation).
Application- applied anthropology continues to create career paths and job opportunities for anthropologists.
Academics-  anthropologists continue to TALK about how we need more public intellectuals, but no one seems to be DOING anything- other than, in my humble and biased opinion, David Graeber. Read his book on debt yet? I bet you’ve heard of it.

b) Marketing: The Anthropological Lens
Application:  Working in client service industries and corporate departments, whether in research, management consulting, strategy (political, governmental, economic), advertising, or what have you, how we market our unique skills as anthropologists is crucial to the survival of our careers.
Academics: The creative and productive processes that marketers (planners, copywriters, strategists, account managers, etc) develop and execute are intellectually interesting in and of themselves. In other words, not only are the products anthropological (media, artifacts, etc), but the process (with it’s meaning-making, politics, kindships, beliefs and economies) is anthropologically interesting as well.

2. Anthropological research (in a consumer setting) is about a cultural realm, not an individual realm. Food for thought when faced with clients “spec sheets” for participant recruitment.

3. Anthropological research for brand strategy purposes is not INTENDED for an academic paper- but to help a team to generate a Good Idea. The criticism of “marketing ethnography” as not “real ethnography” may be meaningless when considered in context.

4. In some place/cultures/nations, clay pots can get married. (In the USA…) Rules sometimes tell us more about the rule-makers than about the rule-breakers.

5. Marilyn Strathern only has good ideas. Her latest: In terms of kinship and discussions on closeness, we are restricted by the “English language’s propensity to endow the word relation with a tenor of positive connection.”

6. When indoors, you should take off your jacket, so that when you go outside, in the snow, you will feel the benefit of putting it back on.

7. I miss my anthropologists more than I thought I did.

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