Women’s Softball and the Collaborative Spirit of Magic

All major US sports are high in superstitions because motivation to win is high and the game outcome is uncertain; athletes purportedly engage in superstitious behavior to reduce anxiety, build individual confidence and cope with uncertainty. Sports is also a male domain, where men traditionally display individual, masculine achievement. We observe magic rituals practiced in a women’s college softball team not as a means to overcome anxiety or display individual prowess, but as a way to blend creative individuality into the unity of the social whole, which manifests as a social narrative of the team. We analyze individual and team magic in two forms –institutionalized magic and individual superstitions – which build idiosyncratic behavior into a collective team dynamic. As such, this essay shows how women use magical power collaboratively. Women on a college softball team partake in practical work and magic, such that participating in magic through empathy and sensing one another creates team identity, allowing the reimagination of forms and outcomes

How Anthropologists Can Succeed in Business: Mediating Multiple Worlds of Inquiry

Marketing research and advertising strategic planning offer viable and financially attractive career options for anthropologists because many businesses seek deep understandings of consumer lifestyles and brand use. As professionally trained anthropologists operating in the corporate world, we see a bright future for anthropologists, but we believe that there are merits in broadening the typical anthropological approach to incorporate additional theory and methods from other social and behavioral sciences, particularly psychology. The embrace of other perspectives by anthropologists in marketing and advertising is essential because executives in these businesses use principally psychological models of human agency that view consumers as operating on individualistic levels. Although marketing and advertising executives are generally aware of the interaction of culture, behavior, and attitudes, they are often indifferent to this process. This can stoke contentious debates between anthropologists and their clients. We suggest that business anthropologists must learn the language and culture of their corporate clients, as they would learn the language and culture of their informants in the field. In the process, they will better connect with clients’ ways of thinking and improve their own chances of business success

Anthropologist in Advertising Agencies: Mediating Structures of Power and Knowledge Capital by Managing Relationships

This essay discusses how working from within an advertising agency as an anthropologist yields particular advantages in terms of presenting anthropological insights and gaining access to information that one would not have been privy to, compared to a study of advertising from the outside. Working from within an agency affords access not only to forms of objective data and consumer research documents that are less accessible from the outside, but also to forming critical relationships and subjective associations with clients that produce knowledge practices and situate information in authoritative positions of power from within. I draw on fifteen years of experience as a corporate anthropologist working within and among relationships in advertising which define, produce and sustain various structures of power and knowledge capital that orient insights and information in critical ways

Proceedings of the 2019 Global Business Anthropology Summit

The second Global Business Anthropology Summit was held May 28-29, 2019 at Fordham University in New York City. The 2019 Summit brought together 160 industry practitioners and academic scholars to build upon the work of the 2018 Summit. The 2019 Summit was explicitly and emphatically forward thinking and action oriented to advance anthropological ideas in business. Its broad aims were to (1) advance thinking on the value of anthropological perspectives in business; (2) generate ways to spread appreciation of our work to academics, students, industry leaders, and the general public; and (3) build community among scholars and practitioners. The Summit's plenary panels and workshops demonstrated how anthropologists penetrate nearly every domain of business and are most adept at handling issues that are humanistic and complex. Throughout the two days, the Summit acknowledged the need to continue to grow the demand for anthropologists in business

Writing Advertising: the Production of Relationships in Historical Review

This article examines a range of writings on advertising. It shows that advertising has been written about as instrumental to an emerging capitalistic market, touted as a flamboyant lifestyle in autobiographical tales of charismatic advertising leaders, depicted as a coercive tool of manipulation for creating false desires in consumers, and analyzed for its complex social and political relations among its internal divisions and suppliers. I argue that the many ways advertising is written about reveal an ever-changing structural alignment within advertising itself, in what Pierre Bourdieu (1993) calls a field of strategic relations and possibles. In this, advertising, as well as the writing about advertising, is shown from a shifting ‘production of relations’ relative to economic, political, social and self-intended issues. The article concludes with possible future directions that writings on advertising will take

The Senses in Anthropological and Marketing Research: Investigating a Consumer-Brand Ritual Holistically

The study of the senses encompasses a range of approaches from the social sciences and humanities. Anthropology, in particular, turns our attention away from previous considerations of the senses as biologically determined and universally fixed, to more interactive, adaptable and fluid concepts of the senses that are continuously shaped by culture, geography and history. Alternately, business marketers increasingly explore the senses and consumer’s sensory response to brands as a means of eliciting deeper, more personal experiences with products and services. While anthropologists regard the senses as a form of social interaction, marketers seek to maximize consumer-brand relations by targeting specific sensory responses to consumption. This study integrates both views in an ethnographic investigation of a brand ritual. It examines the sensorial dimensions and symbolic associations of a shaving ritual that foster skills and reformulate time, which inform culturally situated notions of self-presentation and identity. This study advances a more holistic sensory approach to brand rituals as a means of enhancing consumer brand relationships and experiential consumption studies

Human Dendritic Cells Activated by TSLP and CD40L Induce Proallergic Cytotoxic T Cells

Human thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) is a novel epithelial cell–derived cytokine, which induces dendritic cell (DC)-mediated CD4+ T cell responses with a proallergic phenotype. Although the participation of CD8+ T cells in allergic inflammation is well documented, their functional properties as well as the pathways leading to their generation remain poorly understood. Here, we show that TSLP-activated CD11c+ DCs potently activate and expand naive CD8+ T cells, and induce their differentiation into interleukin (IL)-5 and IL-13–producing effectors exhibiting poor cytolytic activity. Additional CD40L triggering of TSLP-activated DCs induced CD8+ T cells with potent cytolytic activity, producing large amounts of interferon (IFN)-γ, while retaining their capacity to produce IL-5 and IL-13. These data further support the role of TSLP as initial trigger of allergic T cell responses and suggest that CD40L-expressing cells may act in combination with TSLP to amplify and sustain pro-allergic responses and cause tissue damage by promoting the generation of IFN-γ–producing cytotoxic effectors