Organisational Anthropology

For more than a hundred years, anthropologists have excelled in making the exotic familiar and the familiar exotic. This excellent and timely book shows that the anthropological gaze continues to shed light on all things human in surprising ways, as well as providing a much needed alternative analytical perspective on bureaucracies and other formal organisations. -- Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo Christina Garsten and Anette Nyqvist have put together baker's dozen of fresh and lively first-hand accounts of carrying out ethnographic fieldwork in contemporary organizational settings - from convenience stores to high tech firms, from think tanks to advertising companies. That classical anthropological interests and means are highly relevant in such settings - although strained and stretched in various ways - is a point brought home vividly across the selections. This is a work that will appeal not only to anthropologists but also to all those with a scholarly or practical interest in culture and organization. -- John Van Maanen, Erwin Schell Professor of Organization Studies at MIT, author of Tales of the Field The engagement between organization studies and anthropology is both longstanding and rapidly developing. In this fascinating volume some of the leading exponents of organizational anthropology reflect on its history and future directions; its potentials and pitfalls. The book is an invaluable resource for all those who research organizations or are simply interested in the nature, both extraordinary and mundane, of organizational life as disclosed by anthropological study. -- Christopher Grey, Professor of Organization Studies, Royal Holloway, University of London.