Ethnography and the Corporate Encounter

Melissa Cefkin is a cultural anthropologist with experience in research, management, teaching, and consulting for business and government. Currently based at IBM Research in the area of services research, she earned her PhD from Rice University and remains dedicated to pursuing a critical understanding of the intersections of anthropological practice within business and organizational settings.

“This book will, I am sure, be regarded as a vital contribution to the process of ongoing re-orientation by academia towards a not-so-new breed of practitioners within corporations. But it will also help inform the practice of corporate ethnographers already plying their trade in corporate jungles.” · Anthropology in Action“For anyone interested in ethnography and its corporate application…Highly recommended.” · Choice“It is amazing to see how and what anthropologists see when they look at the complex, broadly cast problems (and opportunities) of such mammoth organizations… Cefkin’s work is a delightful contribution to the field of ethnography for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, it is a scholarly work that bridges the field of applied anthropology and the business sector, demonstrating the theoretical and practical connections between them. Second, with contributions from anthropologists and business practitioners, Cefkin persuades the reader that corporate ethnography is a legitimate form of ethnography for unearthing and answering complex business problems. In turn, these answers can be used in the process of building and advancing business theory.” · The Qualitative Report“This is a deeply thoughtful and nuanced account of the most celebrated and contested of our contemporary field sites. The authors touch all of the relevant bases - the articulation of theory and practice, the ethical dimension of methodological commitment, the role demands of researchers in a commercial context - that a cultural construal of ethnographic work requires. The volume appeals to readers of ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ persuasions alike, and offers timely insight into ethnography as a vocation.” · John F. Sherry, Jr, University of Notre Dame“In an increasingly vibrant arena of corporate anthropology - or the anthropology of corporations - this is the first volume that successfully closes the gap between practicing/applied anthropologists working as consultants, corporate employees, or within applied programs, and anthropologists working within university departments, who increasingly define their research in the same corporate domains. Each essay offers conceptual resources that will define terms for active collaborations among all ethnographers who enter this arena.”  · George Marcus, University of California-Irvine

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionChapter 1. Business, anthropology and the growth of corporate ethnographyMelissa CefkinEncounters with corporate epistemologies Chapter 2. “My customers are different!” identity, difference and the political economy of designDonna K. FlynnDoing anthropology in organizational contextsChapter 3. Participatory ethnography at work: Practicing in the puzzle palaces of a large, complex healthcare organizationChris Darrouzet, Helga Wild and Susann WilkinsonChapter 4. Working in corporate jungles: Reflections on ethnographic praxis in industryBrigitte Jordan with Monique LambertRefractions of anthropological ways of being and knowingChapter 5. Writing on walls: The materiality of social memory in corporate researchDawn Nafus and Ken AndersonChapter 6. The anthropologist as ontological choreographerFrancoise Brun-CottanEpistemologies, Part Two: Culture and the corporate encounterChapter 7. Emergent culture, slippery culture – conflicting conceptualizations of culture in commercial ethnographyMartin OrtliebAnother look: commentaries from the academy and corporate researchChapter 8. Insider trading: Engaging and valuing corporate ethnographyJeanette BlombergChapter 9. Emergent forms of life in corporate arenasMichael M. J. FischerNotes on contributorsBibliographyIndex