RAI RESEARCH WEBINAR AND BOOK LAUNCH
A VIRTUAL SEMINAR SERIES BY THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE
Tuesday 22 June 2021 at 4.00 – 5.30pm (BST)
Anthro-Vision:
How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life
Dr Gillian Tett (Financial Times)
with Dr James G. Carrier (Max Planck Institute) as discussant.
This webinar will be held on Zoom, to register go here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__IgpsB1QTc-HIZCRK_MxRA
For over a century, anthropologists have immersed themselves in unfamiliar cultures, uncovering the hidden rituals that govern how people act. Now, a new generation of anthropologists are using these methods in a different context – to illuminate the behaviour of businesses and consumers around the globe.
In Anthro-Vision, Gillian Tett – bestselling author, Financial Times journalist, and anthropology PhD – reveals how anthropology can make sense of the corporate world. She outlines how anthropology helps explain consumer behaviour – revealing the ‘webs of meaning’ that underpin our shopping habits, and unpicking the subtle cultural shifts driving the rise of green business. She explores how anthropology can shed light on the workplace, identifying the hidden tribes within the office, and pinpointing which rituals are binding together a team. And she shows how we can all use anthropology in our own lives, too: helping us make better decisions, navigate risk – even work out what our peers are really thinking.
Along the way, Tett draws on stories from Tajik villages and Amazon warehouses, Japanese classrooms and Wall Street trading floors, all to reveal the power of anthropology in action.
The result is a wholly new way to understand human behaviour. In a short-sighted world, we can all learn to see clearly – using the power of Anthro-Vision.
Anthro-Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life is published by Penguin Random House
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1119365/anthro-vision/9781847942876.html
Biography
Gillian Tett is the chairman of the editorial board and editor-at-large, US, at the Financial Times. Perhaps best known for predicting the 2007-8 financial crisis, Tett’s bestselling book Fool’s Gold was one of the definitive books on the crash. Tett holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge, where she studied marriage rituals in Tajikistan. Her work for the FT has taken her around the world – from Brussels to Tokyo to Moscow to New York – and won her numerous awards, including Columnist, Journalist and Business Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards.