Ethnographic Research On Modern Business Corporations

AN42CH09-Urban ARI 18 September 2013 15:12
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Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104;
Access provided by Helsinki University on 10/05/20. For personal use only.
email: gurban@sas.upenn.edu
2
Semiosis Research Center, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul 130-791, Republic of
Korea; email: knkoh@hufs.ac.kr
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2013. 42:139–58 Keywords

First published online as a Review in Advance on culture, economy, epistemology, ethnography, organizations, research
July 24, 2013
ethics
The Annual Review of Anthropology is online at
anthro.annualreviews.org Abstract
This article’s doi: Ethnographers have approached the modern business corporation (con-
10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155506
strued as cultural formation) from two directions: (a) the effects of
Copyright c 2013 by Annual Reviews. corporations—on workers, communities, consumers, and the broader envi-
All rights reserved
ronment; and (b) the inner workings of corporations as small-scale (or even
large-scale) societies. Although academically based ethnographic research
inside corporations has grown only modestly since the 1980s, the number of
anthropologists working for corporations has mushroomed. Coupled with
the expansion of research on various corporate effects over the past three
decades, this development, we argue, positions the discipline to make in-
tellectual advances in theorizing the corporation (synthesizing the internal
social group view with the external effects-producing agentive view), as well
as practical contributions not only in monitoring harmful impacts but also
in suggesting directions to enhance societal benefits. At the same time, we
note that questions of access to corporate inner workings pose both practical
and ethical challenges.
139
INTRODUCTION
Ethnographic research approaches modern business corporations from two directions: from the
inside, as if corporations were analogous to the small-scale societies anthropologists traditionally
studied; and from the outside, as actors affecting and transforming the world. From the former
perspective, corporations have distinctive internal cultures consisting of values, beliefs, stories, rit-
uals, etc. From the latter, they are powerful agents, impacting the lives of those who work for them
(or invest in them), the local communities in which they operate, and the broader environment.
The central contention of this article is that the two perspectives—the views from outside
(effects of ) and inside (inner workings of ) the corporation—need to be brought into dialogue
with one another and that anthropological research is well positioned to do this. Ethnography
inside corporations reveals the rich diversity of the corporate form, and of its beliefs, values, and
motivations, thereby challenging or adding nuance to some of the presuppositions about inner
workings associated with corporate-effects research. Correspondingly, the study of effects brings
the corporation into focus as a singular kind of social entity, one constituted around a dominant
goal—the pursuit of profit—but at the same time highlights the variability in effects attributable
to culture, thereby tempering views of corporations as having the same impact everywhere.
After a brief consideration of what the modern business corporation is, we take up first the large
body of effects research, to which only partial justice can be done here, and then consider research
inside corporations. In the latter context, it is useful to distinguish research in corporations done by
academic anthropologists from research for corporations done by practicing anthropologists; the
number of anthropologists working for companies has grown tremendously in the past two decades.
The distinction is far from clear, however, both because of movement back and forth between
academia and business and because contemporary anthropological research necessitates “giving
back”; few corporations are eager to allow access to those whose research does not contribute
to the corporation’s goals. Consequently, we end with a section on the ethical issues involved in
doing ethnographic research inside modern business corporations.1
WHAT IS A BUSINESS CORPORATION?

Some anthropologists might be surprised to discover that, for economic theory, dealing as it does
with markets and exchange, the question of why business corporations exist had to be answered.
Social groups were not a given because theory dealt with market exchange and individuals, not
with collectivities. Business corporations operated internally on nonmarket principles. Why? The
generally accepted answer has been Coase’s (1991 [1937]) formulation that firms exist to improve
efficiency. It is more efficient to have nonmarket conditions inside the corporation in order to
enable the firm to compete in the market. The contemporary refraction of that idea is the simulta-
neously economic and legal notion that firms are a “nexus of contracts” ( Jensen & Meckling 1976).
Although she does not use the phrase “nexus of contracts,” Ho’s (2009) recent ethnography of
Wall Street investment bankers demonstrates that Wall Street bankers use the idea prescriptively in
1
Moeran & Garsten (2012, p. 9) also consider the hesitance of anthropologists to go beyond the divide between pure and
applied anthropology, thereby inhibiting development of anthropological knowledge of businesses. The dichotomy between
academic and nonacademic research has also been described as a “schismatic dualism” (Baba 2009, p. 383), and the applied
counterpart has been described as the discipline’s “evil twin” (Ferguson 1997). In this article, we recognize a boundary
between pure and applied (see our distinction between for- and in-corporation research), but our main concern is with the
epistemological stances of ethnographers—whether they study the corporation from the outside or inside, the latter including
from the perspective of management. Much ethnographic research on workers addresses effects and, accordingly, we consider
most such research in the Effects on Workers section below.
140 Urban · Koh

fomenting the breakup of corporations to improve their “efficiency,” while simultaneously making
money for themselves. The bankers effectively deny the existence of corporations as enduring social
groups and act so as to make that denial into a reality. The nexus concept, however, in its economic
though perhaps not legal version, purports to be descriptive, claiming that a corporation is (as well
ought to be) a nexus of contracts.
Ethnographic research inside corporations, in contrast, provides evidence that corporations
are social groups. They operate like small-scale and in some cases large-scale societies, with their
own internal myths, rituals, beliefs, norms, and practices.2 Just to take the example of myths
and stories, Ho (2009) herself writes, “Wall Street cultural legitimacy and shareholder value are
naturalized through ‘origin myths’, particular interpretations of neoclassical economic thought,
and investment banking histories of shareholder rights” (p. 27). Davis-Floyd (1998) describes
the role of an English professor who, as a consultant, helped the Shell Oil Company to develop
myths about the future. As the consultant states, “they’d spend the next year disseminating [the
stories] around the world, so that what you got was a common culture . . .” (p. 149). In a study
of a major Japanese advertising firm, Moeran (2006, p. 40; 2007) notes the role of “tales of the
past,” and Kasmir (2001, p. 9) discusses the role of risk taking in the “deep structure of Saturn
Corporation’s ‘origin myth.’” Given the accumulation of such ethnographic evidence, modern-
day business corporations are undoubtedly social groupings, characterized by many of the kinds
of cultural elements anthropologists have documented for diverse societies around the world.
At the same time, the business corporation is a distinctive kind of social grouping insofar as it
is oriented to and elevates above other goals the making of financial profit. Profit is pursued, more
specifically, through putatively rational calculation. The role of accounting, and especially of
double-entry bookkeeping, in the rise of the early modern business firm in Europe was long ago
recognized by Weber (1968 [1925], p. 92), who stressed the importance of capital accounting—
including the separation of domestic accounts from business accounts—in relation to “rational”
calculation. The corporation-internal use of accounting in the pursuit of profit, however, has not
been the focus of sustained ethnographic investigation during the recent period (but see Perin
1998). But such corporation-internal calculation of profit led to the possibility of employing ratio-
nal criteria in deciding on the allocation of investments in different corporations and is linked to
the larger field of finance, an area that has received considerable recent ethnographic investigation.
Ethnographic research on finance has tended to focus on financial institutions and practices, as
in Ho’s work on Wall Street banks (2005, 2009), Ouroussoff ’s (2010) on financial rating agencies,
Zaloom’s (2006) on commodities trading in Chicago and London, Holmes’s (2009) on discourse
emanating from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, and Miyazaki’s (2003) on Japanese derivatives
traders at a major Japanese securities firm. The upshot of this research is that rational calculation
appears, through the lens of anthropological analysis, to be thoroughly suffused with culture,
calling into question the objective character of the global capitalist system (Ho 2005) and giving
credence to the idea put forth by LiPuma & Lee (2004) that we are dealing with a spreading
“culture of financial circulation” (p. 141). This body of research gives rise to an understanding
of special subtypes of the corporation—investment banks and hedge funds—that are, in some
ways, meta-corporations, which strive to profit from buying and selling and reorganizing other
corporations and are, in important respects, reflexively about other corporations on analogy to
the way metalanguage is reflexively about language.
2
The concept of the corporation, along with the general idea of corporateness, has a long history in anthropology, going
back to Maine’s Ancient Law (1917 [1861]). The concept was used for clans and other social groupings, with considerations
of juristic personhood and collective property ownership. We cannot discuss this long history here (see Brown et al. 1974,
Cochrane 1971), our concern being rather the modern for-profit business corporation.
www.annualreviews.org • Ethnography of Corporations 141

To sum up, contemporary ethnographic research on modern business corporations has tended
to view them as social groupings, characterized by myths and other circulating narratives, rit-
uals, practices, beliefs, and worldviews, but as distinguished from those other groupings by the
dominant and overriding goal of profit making, systematically pursued. At the same time, recent
research suggests that corporations are also shaped by the culturally constituted meanings through
which they are apprehended. These meanings—like the legal and economic notions of a “nexus
of contracts”—are human creations. They are contested. They can be changed.
CORPORATE-EFFECTS RESEARCH
Prior to the 1970s, much of cultural anthropology stressed the documentation of pristine societies
in the Fourth World—groups as they were before the great expansion of European civilization
that began in the fifteenth century. Correspondingly, ethnographies tended to factor out the
influence of colonization, Europe-derived national states, and multinational business enterprises.

The ethnographies often tried to recapture life before such contamination. The result was a
tendency to maximize differences between Fourth- or even Third-World societies and the West,
with a corresponding notion of cultural relativity. Some researchers were actively interested in
preserving the conditions of life that existed prior to the spread of European institutions.
During the 1970s and 1980s, political activist movements arose within anthropology in defense
of these Fourth-World populations, with organizations such as Cultural Survival and Survival In-
ternational, as well as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), appearing on the scene (Wright
1988). Wright (1988) mentions specifically a discussion of “Transnational Corporations and In-
digenous Peoples at the 1981 United Nations NGO Conference on Indigenous Peoples and the
Land” (p. 380). Davis (1977) had earlier documented Brazilian government efforts to develop
the Amazonian region and the damaging consequences of agribusiness and lumber extraction for
Amerindians living there.3
Marxist notions of capitalism, in which the extraction of surplus value through the exploita-
tion of labor is central, also supply a backdrop to corporate-effects research. Roseberry (1988),
in his review of Marxism in anthropology, quotes Firth’s earlier characterization of American
anthropologists as “gut Marxists,” concerned with “problems created by Western economic and
political dominance of lesser developed societies, of the significance of migratory labor for a
colonial regime, of the genesis of proletarian consciousness, of class identity and struggle, of the
political role of a peasantry” (p. 161). Such issues have carried over into present-day concerns with
corporate effects.
Corporations, from this perspective, are seen as tools of a capitalist class and accordingly stand
in opposition to the working class. Ethnographic research documents ways in which corporations
have abused their power in relation to employees (Christian 2003), to labor unions (Channell
2011), and to the local communities in which they operate (Austin 2006; Shever 2008, 2010). The
ethnography of corporate effects is not limited to effects on those who work for corporations; it
includes as well collateral damages—in the neutral economics terminology “externalities”—such
as the displacement of people and disruption of social life due to corporate expansion (Aiyer 2007,
Fortun 2001, Hayden 2007, Nash 2007) and consumer damages attributable to the products sold
by corporations (Benson 2010, Vedwan 2007).
3
A more recent International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) Briefing Note claims that “innumerable studies,
as well as Indigenous Peoples’ testimonies, have documented serious human rights violations resulting from the activities of
corporations on Indigenous Peoples’ lands” (2012, pp. 1–2).
142 Urban · Koh

Ethnographies do not focus exclusively on the harms by corporations, significant as these are.
Bury’s (2008) study of transnational corporate activities and local ecological change in the Peruvian
Andes is an attempt to further theoretical and empirical understandings through ethnographic
analysis of corporate activities in relation to society. Aneesh’s (2006) research of Indian computer
programmers who work transnationally for American software companies, along with other studies
of global labor flows and transnational corporations or alliances (Applbaum 1999), documents
changes in the corporate form. Parry (2009) actually challenges assumptions that peasant life
was superior to factory labor. On the basis of interviews in an Indian steel company, he finds
preindustrial peasant labor to have been far less idyllic (the “satanic fields”) and factory work more
agreeable (the “pleasant mills”) than received wisdom suggests. Furthermore, with due respect
to the view of historian E.P. Thompson concerning the early industrial English factory, Parry
concludes that “large-scale machine production does not necessarily impose a new and more
exacting work discipline, or require new attitudes toward time” (p. 79).
Effects on Local Communities

During the 1970s and 1980s, as suggested earlier, anthropologists began to document the harmful
impact transnational corporations were having on local communities. Companies with which
indigenous communities in Latin America, Africa, New Guinea, and Australia were coming into
contact were typically operating in the extractive or agribusiness sector: mining and petroleum,
ranching and mechanized farming. Here native populations were not regularly (or at least not
always) sources of labor, although we discuss some of the studies of laboring for mining companies
in the next section; instead, they were occupants of land the extractive companies wanted to
develop.
A good example of recent work on impacts of the extractive industries is Coumans’s (2011)
account of the Porgera Joint Venture gold mine in Papua New Guinea. She finds that the local
community’s struggles with the mining venture can be complicated by the involvement of an-
thropologists, development organizations, and socially responsible investment companies, with
the result that practices detrimental to the community persist (see also Welker 2009). In other
New Guinea work, Ernst (1999) examines the Kutubu Petroleum Development Project headed by
Chevron Niugini Pty Ltd.; the project is inducing changes in the discourse practices of neighbor-
ing peoples, who are “entifying” clans and other groups to assert claims over potential petroleum
reserves. Weiner’s (1994) examination of two myths of the origin of petroleum reveals “reactions
to economic neocolonialism in its early days” by the Foi people of Papua New Guinea (p. 46).
For native South America, Sawyer (2004) provides an account of the Ecuadorian indigenous
movement’s struggles against a US oil company. Elsewhere in Latin America, Shever (2010)
examines the effects of a Royal Dutch Shell plant on an Argentine shantytown. In her work on
the neoliberal transformation that broke up Argentina’s state-owned petroleum company, YFP,
Shever (2008) crosses over to corporate inner-workings research by exploring the worldviews of
the small companies spawned by the breakup.
If effects research on corporations tends to ignore ethnographic studies inside corporations,
such a stance has been, until recently (Duarte 2010, Welker 2009), especially true for mineral
extraction. According to Ballard & Banks (2003), “one of the principal reasons for the enduring
opacity of [mining] corporations is their notorious reluctance to expose themselves directly to
ethnographic scrutiny” (p. 290). They note that this condition is “exacerbated by a corresponding
willingness to monitor and enforce corporate security” (Ballard & Banks 2003, p. 290).
Corporate-effects ethnography is by no means confined to the Fourth or even Third World.
Austin (2006), for example, in her study of the impact of petroleum extraction on the Louisiana

coast, stresses the benefits the local population saw in the employment opportunities provided
by oil companies, at the same time as they experienced disruption of their traditional sources of
livelihood due to environmental degradation processes resulting from petroleum extraction.
In sum, ethnographic research has documented the effects of transnational (mainly extractive)
corporations on local Fourth- and Third-World populations. Some of the research has pointed to
political responses by local communities, endeavoring to preserve land rights, to receive redress for
harms, or to share in the profits of the extraction. Other research points to cultural effects of varying
sorts, such as the development of myths or the entification of clans. We also see some evidence of re-
search beginning to bridge the gap between internal and external perspectives on the corporation.
Effects on Workers
Ideas inspired, in greater or lesser measure, by Marxist thought are most evident in the case of
studies of the effects of working for corporations.4 An example from the 1980s is the ethnographic
work by Ong (1987) on women employed in multinational factories in Malaysia. Ong documents
the impact of monotonous and tedious factory labor on women, placing her ethnographic present
of the 1980s in a longer historical context, reshaped especially by the initiation of a free-trade
zone in 1972 and the rise of labor outsourcing by multinational corporations. Through interviews
with female workers, she found that the workers responded, at least in part, to the tedium and
strain of assembly line work in a culturally specific way: through outbreaks of hysteria and “spirit
possession.” Ong (1987) concluded that such possession outbreaks represented the “unconscious
beginnings of an idiom of protest against labor discipline and male control in the modern industrial
situation” (p. 213). Ong criticizes Burawoy (1979b), who concluded that the response of workers
is part of the “inherent logic” of capitalist relations. Ong’s ethnography effectively demonstrates
that cultural factors play a role in how workers react.
Labor in the context of outsourcing by multinational firms to Asia and Latin America continued
to be a major focus of research on the effects of corporations through the reorganization of work
activities. The analog to Ong’s Malay research in Latin America is the work on “maquiladoras”—
“factories that specialize in the finishing stages of the production of diverse merchandise, such
as garments and electronic parts,” which are “often labor intensive and require low level training
and skills” (Goldı́n 2001, p. 30; see also Peña 1997). Especially prominent in effects research con-
cerned with outsourcing has been the role of gender. The topic has received two general reviews
(Mills 2003, Ong 1991), which each concluded that the experience of workers can be conceived
as “cultural struggles” (Ong 1991, p. 304) and that ethnography can bring to light the “heteroge-
neous character of globalizing labor practices” (Mills 2003, p. 55). The literature on outsourcing
discusses not only responses to the activity of laboring within multinational corporations, but
also collateral effects. Studies show that outsourcing can lead in some instances to changes in
traditional family patterns (Ong 1991), which in turn accompany changes in mobility patterns
(Mills 2003).
Nash’s (1979) work on Bolivian tin mines makes evident that Europeans were originally at-
tracted to this part of the world by minerals rather than cheap labor. Local labor sources were
employed just because they happened to be there. Although multinational mining companies have
been attracted to different locales, as in Rio Tinto Zinc’s and Texasgulf ’s interests in copper
in Panama (Gjording 1991), Nash’s study makes evident the interests of states in guarding the
4
We make no pretense of considering the huge literature on work in general (see The Anthropology of Work Review, among
other publications) but instead consider only some exemplary studies that shed light on the corporation as seen through its
effects.
144 Urban · Koh

resources within their territories. Following the 1952 revolution, Bolivia nationalized its min-
ing industry; mining operations became run by a state-owned corporation (Corporacı́on Minera
Bolivia). Whereas states may view multinational corporations as providing work for their popula-
tions, where they do permit multinationals to engage in extraction, they are more often looking
for the revenues from multinational operations.
In Zambia, Ferguson (1999, p. 270) notes that, prior to Zambian independence in 1964, the
mines in its great “copperbelt” were owned and operated by two private corporations. Follow-
ing independence, these corporations were nationalized, with 51% ownership by the state. The
tendency for states to nationalize mining and petroleum, along with the origins of present-day
large-scale mining operations in colonial extractive activities, suggests that the logic of corpora-
tions, in these instances, might more closely resemble a colonization effort than the outsourcing
of industries. This explanation could account for Ferguson’s (2005) observations regarding the
tendency in Africa of oil companies to set up operations in less stable rather than more stable
countries. Such corporations bear traces of the origin of the modern corporate form in the joint
stock companies such as the Virginia Company and the Massachusetts Bay Company chartered
by England to colonize the New World.

Perhaps the major contribution made by ethnographic studies of the workplace effects of cor-
porations is the documentation of the corporation’s interaction with and impact on culture outside
itself. Ethnographies that focus on effects on workers have revealed that reconfiguration of gen-
der attitudes is frequent in maquiladora-type outsourcing of assembly work and that traditional
afflictions such as spirit possession can occur in response to conditions to which workers are
subjected. Other examples include the documentation of how “cosmopolitan style” (versus local-
ist style) develops as a form of “performative competence” among urban mine-working men in
Zambia (Ferguson 1999, p. 96), how young women workers’ “dress as a manifestation of cor-
porate discipline becomes interwoven with the pervasive and conservative Barbadian ethic that
places great emphasis on grooming and deportment” (Freeman 1993, p. 179), or how Chinese
white-collar identities are “born out of global capitalism but deeply intertwined with national and
local contexts” (Duthie 2005, p. 9).
Effects on Consumers
Modern business corporations produce effects on local communities aside from employing people,
displacing residents, terminating employment opportunities, or polluting the environment. They
also have impact through the products and services they produce, which people around the globe
purchase. A substantial anthropological literature exists on commodities, commodification, and
brands (Manning 2010, Miller 1995). We do not deal with the literature surrounding these topics in
general, but focus instead on some exemplary ethnographies concerned with specific corporations
and the effects of their products and services, especially the role those products and services play
in disseminating and reshaping culture and, in turn, getting reshaped by local culture.
Foster’s (2008) book is an excellent example of the role of corporations in globalizing culture.
Although the ethnography is not of the Coca-Cola Company per se, Foster conducted research
among those who advertise and market Coke in Atlanta, New York, and Sydney, along with
consumers in these places, while also doing research in New Guinea; he endeavored to grasp the
motivations coming out of corporate headquarters. In fact, in trying to understand the “meaning of
soft drinks” and Coca-Cola, Foster provides insight into how the corporation’s product, as a vehicle
of cultural circulation, has become an agent of globalization, creating linkages across disparate
cultural traditions, without simultaneously producing cultural homogenization. Nor does Foster
avoid discussion of the accusations of human rights violations at the company’s bottling plant

in Colombia (Gill 2009). Other studies on Coca-Cola include Ghosh’s (2010) analysis of the
anti-Coca-Cola struggle in South India, Nash’s (2007) work exposing corporate expropriations
of water systems in Mesoamerican communities, and discussions about the Coca-Cola brand
(Vedwan 2007).
The comparative work on McDonald’s Corporation in East Asia assembled by Watson (1997;
see also Watson & Caldwell 2005) highlights country-by-country variations in the nature of these
establishments as well as the ways in which they are used. Roseberry’s (1996) ruminations on the
rise of specialty coffees and corporations such as Starbucks also reveal corporate effects on local con-
sumption but do so with a focus on the concentration and centralization of capital. Unlike the case
of McDonald’s, which shows cultural variations, he sees in this development the reflection of a capi-
talist phase in which “apparent variety and quality are standardized” (p. 774). In other consumption
studies, Kaplan’s (2007) work on Fiji Water demonstrates how global commodities become sites
of cultural politics and create locally particularized modes of consumption. In her analyses of
marketing strategies of Egyptian transnational corporations, Kehrer (2006) finds that corpora-
tions have been moving away from using a standardized marketing strategy so that their corporate
communications messages appeal to the cultural and political contexts of commodity consumption.
In sum, as with research addressing the effects of corporations on local communities and
workers, a major finding of ethnographic studies of the impact on consumers reveals the role
of cultural variability. Just as corporations do not give rise to a uniform and undifferentiated
working class in which all laborers everywhere respond in the same way to corporate work, so
too do the effects of the goods and services produced by corporations vary. At the same time,
amply documented in the existing literature is also local resistance to the commodities produced
by corporations.
CORPORATE INNER-WORKINGS RESEARCH

Ethnographic research has long been carried out inside corporations, at least since W. Lloyd
Warner’s involvement with Elton Mayo’s project at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric
company during the 1930s (Schwartzman 1993), recounted in several overviews (Baba 1986,
Burawoy 1979a, Holzberg & Giovannini 1981) as the starting point—or as a mythic starting
point (Moeran & Garsten 2012)—for modern anthropological research on corporations. Warner
went on to study a strike at a shoe factory in New England in 1933 (Warner & Low 1947); his
student, Gardner (1946), and others concerned with human relations published subsequent work.
The pace of anthropological research inside corporations picked up with studies of organiza-
tional culture (Hamada 1991, Jordan 1990) and then significantly, in the mid-1990s and 2000s,
with many anthropologists working for as well as on corporations, as reflected in a number of
edited volumes and other books (Cefkin 2009, Moeran 2006, Squires & Byrne 2002, Sunderland
& Denny 2007, Wright 1994). Indeed, the burst of anthropological research inside corporations
during the 1990s and 2000s was due mainly to the hiring of ethnographers by corporations such
as Intel, Microsoft, and General Motors.
We refer to ethnography done by employees of corporations as part of their jobs as for-
corporations ethnographic research. For-corporation research—which has given rise to spin-off
academic publications—can be distinguished from in-corporations research, which includes as
well work done by anthropologists based in academic institutions and think tanks but conducted
under the auspices of the corporation.
In what follows, we treat for-corporations research in its own subsection to highlight its
unique characteristics and contributions. We then discuss ethnographies conducted in (but not
for) corporations—including the spin-offs of for-corporation research—as they discuss variations
146 Urban · Koh

in the corporate form, corporate-internal narratives and practices, and cultural reflexivity and
change. In-corporation research, then, when combined with research on corporate effects (or
outside-corporation research), constitutes the broader category we call ethnographic research on
modern business corporations.
For-Corporations Research
In her overview of recent ethnographic research by employees of corporations, Cefkin (2009)
distinguishes two principal branches of for-corporation ethnography: workplace studies and con-
sumer research. The distinction parallels the categorization we note above for corporate effects–
focused research; the difference is that this body of research takes the point of view of the corpo-
ration and involves attempts to solve workplace problems (for example, to improve productivity
or to ascertain consumer needs and wants).
To take one example of for-corporation workplace ethnographic research, Jordan & Lambert
(2009) describe field studies at Intel chip-manufacturing facilities in Costa Rica and Malaysia.
Their article aims to provide insight for nonpractitioners into what for-corporation ethnography
encompasses—namely, work for employers that is designed to improve corporate operations.
They describe physical settings [factories with two floors, with “production happening on the
warehouse-like ground floor” (p. 97)] and temporal cycles (shifts with changes at 7:00 AM and
7:00 PM), reminiscent of classical ethnographic accounts of space and time in indigenous
communities around the world. They also underscore the phenomenon of replication, so central
to cultural processes more generally—“Intel prides itself on the interchangeability of machinery,
work processes, and people between factories”—noting the use of reflexive metacultural processes
(Urban 2001): “the ubiquitous slogan ‘Copy Exactly!’” (p. 97). They also document their
ethnographic method of following the course of one production unit (or “lot”) from start to
finish. A reader of ethnographies more generally will appreciate the richness of their account
[see also Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC) proceedings for for-corporation
research]. Meanwhile, other research has explored various workplace concerns such as the work
practices of software engineers (Churchill & Whalen 2005); efforts to change the way a global
IT company delivers its services (Blomberg 2011); clothing use by workers at a company that
manufactures work clothes (Bruner 2005), in which one function of clothing turned out to be
signaling collective identities of different work crews; an Internet café development project in
China (Thomas & Lang 2007); and the possibilities for developing new technologies to improve
digital production printing (Martin et al. 2007).
Consumer-oriented ethnographic research, in contrast with workplace-oriented studies, fo-
cuses on how (potential) consumers use corporate products. Although some of this work has been
in marketing research (McCracken 2005, Sherry 1995), the most exciting developments of the
past two decades have been in the area of design ethnography (Forsman & Rojas 2010, Malefyt
2009, Squires & Byrne 2002, Wasson 2000), which has burgeoned in the zone between product
development and marketing. Instead of seeing the two concepts as separate, with marketers selling,
through persuasive techniques, whatever the developers produce, design ethnography focuses on
how consumers actually use products and, hence, on what new developments in a given product
line (or what new products) may be most useful for the consumer.
Wasson (2000), in addition to reviewing the field of design ethnography, describes some of
the work of E-Lab LLC, a design firm for which she worked and which has made considerable
use of ethnographic methods. One of E-Lab’s first customers, Steelcase, wanted to know how
people use the large cavernous spaces designed by architects; one of E-Lab’s findings was that
hallways and other “in between” spaces turned out to be key sites of employee interaction and,

hence, areas for which new products “ranging from chairs to whiteboards” could be developed
(Wasson 2000, p. 384). Leinbach (2002) used ethnographic methods to redesign recreational
vehicles (RVs). He describes traveling “America’s blue highways” for the “better part of a year,”
“watching, videotaping, and recording the behaviors and practices of these nomadic Americans”
(p. 5). The RV designed out of this study proved to be so successful that the “manufacturer reduced
the production of other lines to meet the backlog for its new model” (Leinbach 2002, p. 6). In
a very different “rapid ethnographic” study, anthropologist Squires (2002) discusses her research
for a company that wanted “to learn about family morning routines and breakfast time behavior”
(p. 108). This study resulted in a new product on the market today: Go-Gurt.
Although individuals with some anthropological training have been working for corporations
probably as long as anthropology has been an academic discipline, what Cefkin (2009) called
the “active pursuit by companies to hire anthropologically trained ethnographers directly into
research and product development labs” (p. 4) began in the late 1970s. She points in particular
to Xerox’s hiring of Eleanor Wynn and Lucy Suchman into their Palo Alto Research Center.
Arguably, design ethnography has been on the cutting edge of for-corporation research, driving
much of the corporate interest in anthropology (see also Blomberg et al. 1996).
Corporate arenas, as Fischer (2009) writes, present “particularly compelling and challenging
configurations” (p. 229). It is reasonable to question whether for-corporation research is illumi-
nating anthropological understanding of the corporation. After all, the results of for-corporation
research are typically the property of the corporation; and as Hirsch & Gellner (2001) write,
anthropologists “may find their notes on the organization become a kind of covert research
which it is hard to publish” (p. 10). They normally find their way into academic understanding
through spin-off publications or when business ethnographers leave the corporate world to take
up positions in academia.
It is also the case that for-corporation ethnography beckons us to rethink the very nature of
the corporation as cultural form and to reflect on practical and ethical problems that nonacademic
research in corporate settings present, which continue to be “unfamiliar to people trained to
do more traditional ethnographic research” (Browner & Chibnik 1979, p. 63). For-corporation
research generates an epistemological tension between studying the corporation and studying for
the corporation.5 And, of course, corporate research poses challenges regarding access to sites
(Coleman 1996).
Our earlier formulation of an anthropological account of the modern business corporation
stressed its existence as a social group and not merely as a nexus of contracts, but it also distinguished
it, among social groups, by its organization around the profit motive. For-corporation research,
while by no means denying the centrality of a profit motive, focuses attention on group organization
around the purpose of provisioning goods and services. That is, it does highlight or at least
recognize the social and economic function of the corporation as a social form. Such recognition
is key to promoting a dialogue between effects-oriented and inner-workings research. In this way,
the for-corporation perspective is essential if anthropology is to develop a full understanding of
the modern business corporation.
Furthermore, as we argued earlier, corporations are not just groups organized around specific
purposes, whether the purpose is construed as primarily profit making or provisioning of goods and
services. They are also shaped by, and so products of, circulating conceptions of the corporation as
5
In their article, Jordan & Dalal (2006, p. 359) suggest methods to resolve the differences in “worldviews of managers and
ethnographers,” which hinder ethnographic work in organizational settings. See also Morais & Malefyt (2010) who argue that
the difference between business anthropologists and corporate clients is one of language and culture.
148 Urban · Koh

cultural form. We agree with Fischer (2009) and Foster (2010, p. 100), who call for ethnographic
research “with people located across the whole field of relations that comprise corporations—and
not just people who suffer the effects of externalities.” Anthropology can play a role in shifting
emphasis to the beneficial social functions of the corporation, in addition to summoning attention
to its harmful effects.
In-Corporations Research: Variations in the Corporate Form

A major contribution of anthropology has been the ethnographic documentation of variability in
the corporate form. Here the inspiration, as reflected best perhaps in Kim’s (1992) study of the
Poongsan Corporation in South Korea, is the anthropology of small-scale societies.
However, the field has not produced an abundance of book-length ethnographic studies of
specific corporations analogous to the classic ethnographies of Africa or New Guinea or the
indigenous Americas. Rather, we have seen attempts to document variations in the corporate form
linked to the broader national or regional cultures in which the corporations operate, as well as, to
a lesser degree, the type of corporation or productive sector; finance stands out in the most recent
phase of research. Kim’s work itself, in addition to providing a general ethnography of Poongsan,
was concerned with corporate variation attributable to regional culture, in particular Confucian
values and how they shaped hierarchical relations and the production process within the firm.
The problem of differences in corporate culture linked to differences in national or regional
culture in which the corporation operates can be found as well in Hamada’s (1991) study of a joint
American-Japanese venture, in which she points to sharp differences in American and Japanese
managerial values. The concern with national cultural difference is also present in numerous fo-
cused studies, such as Nakamaki’s (2002) investigation of funeral practices and Shintoism inside
Japanese corporations or Mazzarella’s (2003) investigation of an Indian advertising agency’s strug-
gle to define an Indian consumer electronics company as both Indian and cosmopolitan. An early
and still excellent example is Rohlen’s (1974) account of the internal culture of a Japanese bank.
As to world areas, East Asia, especially Japan, has received the most in-corporation attention
(Moeran & Garsten 2012); such attention includes the research already mentioned (Hamada 1991,
Nakamaki 2002, Rohlen 1974), along with Moeran’s (1996, 2007) work inside a Japanese advertis-
ing agency; Sedgwick’s (2011) multi-sited ethnography of employees’ cross-cultural experiences
at a Japanese multinational firm; Connolly’s (2010) account of a retirement party at a Japanese
multinational firm in the United States; and Hamabata’s (1990) study of a Japanese business family.
Elsewhere in Asia, South Korea has received considerable attention, with Kim’s (1992) ethnog-
raphy and also Janelli & Yim’s (1993) work inside a large conglomerate as well as Han’s (2008)
study of the rise and fall of an IT venture firm. Privately held (as opposed to state-owned) business
enterprises became legal in China during the 1980s, with research beginning to appear: Gao (2010)
and Chunxia (2010) on Chinese entrepreneurs, Jaesok Kim’s (2013) study of Korean textile firms
in China, and Rofel’s (1999) more effects-oriented study of changing women’s work experiences
in a state-owned silk-weaving factory. Some ethnographic accounts of Indian businesses are also
appearing (Mazzarella 2003).
In-corporation ethnographic work remains underdeveloped for Latin America and Africa, with
effects-oriented research better represented for these regions. Exceptions are Duarte’s (2010)
ethnographic account of the corporate social responsibility program implemented by a Brazilian
mining company, as well as Villaveces-Izquierdo’s (1998) account of a Colombian photo-
processing company. Benedict’s (1968) earlier research on two family firms in East Africa continues
to be one of the few in-corporation ethnographic accounts for this region, in addition to Kapferer’s
(1972) classic account of Zambian workers in a small Indian-owned clothing factory in Zambia.

In this context, a number of recent studies document the reorganization of the kinds of
populations traditionally studied by anthropology—such as African and Native American tribal
groupings—around the profit motive and the business corporation model (Cattelino 2011,
Comaroff & Comaroff 2009, Flanders 1989, Greene 2004). The corporate form, in these cases,
often facilitates the protection of cultural and intellectual property, as well as tangible assets such
as mineral or petroleum deposits, or enables ethnic groups to capitalize on government-granted
legal rights, as in the 1988 Federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act or in tourism.
Anthropological ethnographic in-corporation research has been less concerned with differences
in corporate form attributable to state versus private (i.e., nonstate including publicly traded) own-
ership, which had been a focus in Burawoy’s studies of factories under communism and capitalism
(1985). Nor has it examined the kinds of variation studied by political scientists (Gourevitch &
Shinn 2005), involving diffuse versus concentrated share holdings or mandatory representation
of unions on boards of directors. Anthropological ethnographic research, rather, has documented
differences typically in the realm of beliefs, values, practices, and social relations.
In-Corporations Research: Narratives and Practices

During the past three decades, anthropological ethnography in general has moved away from
comprehensive ethnographic studies of peoples, tribes, and societies and toward more problem-
focused investigations of discourse and practices. In-corporation ethnography has participated in
this overall change; nevertheless, the focused investigations illuminate the nature of corporations
as social entities, even where the latter topic is not explicitly addressed.
In addition to the research referred to earlier, in which stories and narratives play a mythological
role, helping to shape and define a corporation’s culture, Schneider (1998) examines Wal-Mart
shareholders meetings during which company representatives attempt to evoke the values of a
mythic small-town America. In her study of the Advanta Corporation, Ninetto (1998) describes
the “competing official and unofficial narratives” concerning the company’s corporate sponsorship
of a Cezanne exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She argues that the narratives helped
to invent a corporate identity and cultivate loyalty among employees. In yet another function for
narratives within corporations, Orr (1996) proposes that the circulation of stories “is the principal
means by which the technicians stay informed of the developing subtleties of machine behavior
in the field” (p. 2). And still another function is explored by Fisher (2006), who studies the use of
narratives to construct gendered identities for Wall Street women.
Apart from narrative and other discourse practices, attention has also been given to corporate
rituals, which, as Connolly (2010, p. 32) contends, create meaning and affective bonds among
stakeholders. Kunda (1992) provides an anthropologically inspired in-depth ethnographic account
of ritual practices at a tech firm. The “meeting,” to take one of his examples, involves distinct
phases: “a transitional phase during which participants gather and jointly shift from routine to
ritual” (p. 95); the “main event,” marked by the arrival of a key speaker (p. 96); an interactive
phase, in which different individuals engage and even resist the speaker; and a postmeeting phase,
in which “participants begin to draw their own meaning from the event” (p. 101).
In Japan, according to Nakamaki (2002), it is common for companies to organize funeral cer-
emonies for top administrators. He argues that such funeral ceremonies express and affirm the
value of the associative business relations within the company and enable the company to be re-
born (p. 150). Along with other rituals practiced within Japanese corporations (such as entrance
and farewell ceremonies, groundbreaking ceremonies, and rites at a company shrine), the funer-
als lend to the corporation an aura of Durkheimian “sacredness.” An intriguing counterpoint
150 Urban · Koh

is Villaveces-Izquierdo’s (1998) descriptions of a photo-processing company established by

Colombians in a “shanty part” of Bogotá, Colombia, which chose to create an internal culture de-
signed around Japanese rituals and themes, in order to build “moral subjects deeply committed to
work, to the organization, to high-quality service, and to family” (p. 116). In this account, culture—
far from deeply rooted in an ancient past—is readily transportable and creatable on the spot.
The distinctive character of the ethnographic approach to corporations can perhaps best be
seen in these problem-oriented studies, in which narratives and ritual practices are linked to the
formation of subjectivities. The issues go well beyond the production of a shared corporate culture
and include opportunities for and expressions of resistance, always present, for example, in Kunda’s
account of corporate rituals; cultural creativity and emergence, as so many of the studies illustrate;
and flows across space and time both within and across corporate boundaries.
In-Corporation Research: Cultural Reflexivity and Change

Two developments took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s that initiated changes in the
relationship of culture to corporations in the United States. First, as mentioned earlier, some
forward-looking companies began to hire anthropologists for their expertise in qualitative research.
Second, however, and not as a result of the first, academic anthropological ideas about culture
began to enter the business management literature.
As suggested by Moeran & Garsten (2012) in their introduction to the new Journal of Business
Anthropology, management interest in culture in the 1980s arose, at least in part, from Japan’s
success on the world economics scene. Some attributed this success to Japanese culture and also
its corporate form, which “imitated the Japanese household system” (p. 10). Popular management
literature appearing at the time included Ouchi (1981) and Pascale & Athos (1981), both focused
on Japan, and also Deal & Kennedy’s (1982) work, which drew on anthropological ideas and
thinking about culture, though without the Japanese focus. Thanks to such popular works, the
culture concept entered the C-Suites and boardrooms of corporate America. The result was a
corporate-internal reflexivity about culture; CEOs and upper-level managers often employed the
phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast” or some variant thereof.
As self-consciously created social groupings built with explicit purposes, for-profit business
corporations have always been driven by reflexive culture, with some rituals created by design.
Once established, the rituals evolve and change organically. There have also long been stories or
sayings or formulations of values created for strategic purposes that underwent modification as
they were circulated over time. However, a management literature explicitly discussing culture,
along with executives’ and other company employees’ extensive use of the term culture, and
with the addition of anthropologists who now work in many corporations, has sparked a new
salience to these reflexive metacultural processes, along with new forms of awareness, some of
them documented in the edited volume by Marcus (1998).
Some studies have examined such explicit reflexive metacultural creations of corporate culture:
Kunda’s (1992) study of a tech firm, Cawood’s (2011) description of the novel social organization
created at W.L. Gore, and Villaveces-Izquierdo (1998) on Foto-Japón. One study (Urban et al.
2007) considered the reflexive metacultural emphasis on the new in the “sport utility vehicle”
(SUV) industry, with a focus on the Jeep Grand Cherokee. Ethnographic investigation has
increased greatly in the specific area of corporate social responsibility, by which companies in
different parts of the world self-consciously attempt to fashion themselves into “good” citizens by
modifying their practices (Duarte 2010, Koh 2010, Moeller 2012, Rajak 2011, Smith & Helfgott
2010, Welker 2009).

ETHICAL ISSUES
Which ethical issues surround ethnographic research on modern business corporations? We refer
not just to questions typically raised by institutional review boards about the conduct of research
but also to the sentiments of the anthropological community more generally about research on
corporations. The literature suggests that effects-oriented research is uncontroversial for anthro-
pologists and, indeed, grows naturally out of anthropology’s past, including its democratizing
impulse, manifested in the idea of cultural relativity. Research that uncovers adverse effects also
apparently resonates with the more recent critical orientation to power and its consequences.
Effects research, however, is typically done in place of engaging with the corporation’s inner
workings: the perspective of the managers and of the corporation as agent. This lack of engagement
predominates even where anthropologists make observations while employed as workers (Roy
1959, Yelvington 1995). As evidenced by commentary in the anthropological literature, these
effects studies appear to be ethically uncontroversial.
Research conducted under the auspices of the corporation, however, is another matter,
especially where the research directly benefits the corporation and its managers. Cefkin (2009)
refers to the “self-flagellation hindsight marked by the mea culpa tone sometimes found in
the work of academic scholars” who venture into this realm (p. 18). In his account of the
self-reflexive engineering of corporate culture, Kunda (1995) distinguished two academic views
(not specifically anthropological) of the matter: a utopian optimism that such engineering
would lead employees to new “peaks of corporate performance and personal self-actualization”;
and in contrast, a “continuing stream of criticism of the corporation” (p. 228). In the latter
view, efforts to improve corporate culture are “a disguise for malevolent managerial intentions,
now in the form of tyrannical attempts to penetrate and shape employees’ minds and hearts”
(p. 228).
Within research on corporate inner workings, it is important to distinguish between for-
corporation and in-corporation ethnography, as we did earlier. However, the differences are
blurred in regard to ethics. Even purely academic research involves, minimally, permission from
corporate managers to conduct research, and managers are reluctant to allow research access
unless they see benefits to the corporation.
“In U.S. anthropology,” concludes Jordan (2010), “there has been great concern about
these ethical issues because the employee and the everyday consumer are the subjects of
our research and they could be harmed by the information we gather,” thereby activating
the “do no harm” provision in the anthropological code of ethics (p. 21). More specifically,
(a) ethnographically gathered marketing information might be used to manipulate consumers’
wants or needs; (b) studies of workplace culture might be utilized to harm workers; and
(c) ethnographic design studies might lead to technological developments in production that
make employees obsolete.
As Kunda (1995) suggests is more generally true within academia, the ethical divide in anthro-
pology appears to be between those who regard corporations as necessarily destructive, with few
or no redeeming features, and those who think some corporations are (or at least can be made
into) agents for social betterment. The former typically view corporations as engines of profit
within a capitalist system; the quest for profit forces managers to exploit workers, manipulate
consumers, and damage the environment. The latter are more likely to acknowledge corporations
as instruments performing social functions by provisioning goods and services; accordingly, in this
latter view, ethnographic research can be used to improve the well-being of employees, to help
consumers acquire the goods and services they want or need, and to design practices to produce
long-term sustainability and protection of the environment.
152 Urban · Koh

CONCLUSION
A review of anthropological literature suggests that ethnographers have approached the modern
business corporation, construed as cultural formation, from two distinct directions: (a) the effects
of corporations—on workers, communities, consumers, and the broader environment; and (b) the
inner workings of corporations as small-scale (or even large-scale) societies. The latter research
includes not only academic studies, but also work performed for corporations. Our contention in
this article is that an intellectually honest appraisal of corporations can be achieved only if these
two contrasting approaches are brought to bear on one another.
Together with similar work done by sociologists, anthropological ethnographic research stands
to complement and significantly correct dominant views growing out of economics and legal
studies, in which the corporation is frequently seen as a “nexus of contracts” ( Jensen & Meckling
1976). Ethnographic research demonstrates that, internally, corporations resemble the kinds of
societies long studied by anthropologists. Corporations have (or develop over time) their own
distinctive internal cultures, characterized by the circulation of myths and stories, practices, rituals,
beliefs, and values.

At the same time, ethnography also shows corporations to be powerful agents or actors on
the world scene, producing effects on people and local cultures as well as on the environment.
Corporations shape work practices and, in so doing, often reorganize gender relations and
family patterns and elicit varying cultural responses. They impact the communities in which
they operate. Furthermore, the goods and services produced by corporations also themselves
disseminate culture, often on a global scale; however, the uptake varies from locale to locale.
The challenge confronting anthropology at this juncture is how to integrate the principal
ethnographic approaches to the corporation. One approach is from the outside, with attention to
(largely negative) effects. The other is from the inside, with a focus on agency. To integrate these
distinct ethnographic approaches, researchers must attempt to reconcile or bring into dialogue the
view of the corporation as profit seeking, on the one side, and as provisioning goods and services
for society, on the other.
If, as we suggested above, the corporate form not only shapes culture, but also itself is shaped
by culture, then anthropology may be able, in some measure, to influence how society thinks about
the corporate form. It can do so, as it has done already, especially in relation to Third and Fourth
World populations by unmasking the corporation’s damaging effects in the world. With more
anthropologists working for corporations, and more gaining access to study the inner workings of
corporations, it may be possible as well to nudge corporations from the inside in directions that
enhance their benefits for society, while minimizing the harms.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
The authors are not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that
might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank Michelle Molchan, who assisted with bibliographic research. K.-N.K.’s work
was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund of 2012.
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AN42-FrontMatter ARI 18 September 2013 17:41
Annual Review of
Anthropology
Contents Volume 42, 2013
Perspective
Ourselves and Others
André Béteille p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 1
Archaeology
Power and Agency in Precolonial African States
J. Cameron Monroe p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p17
The Archaeology of Illegal and Illicit Economies
Alexandra Hartnett and Shannon Lee Dawdy p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p37
Evidential Regimes of Forensic Archaeology
Zoë Crossland p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 121
Biomolecular Archaeology
Keri A. Brown and Terence A. Brown p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 159
Biological Anthropology
Agency and Adaptation: New Directions in Evolutionary Anthropology
Eric Alden Smith p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 103
Teeth and Human Life-History Evolution
Tanya M. Smith p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 191
Comparative Reproductive Energetics of Human
and Nonhuman Primates
Melissa Emery Thompson p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 287
Significance of Neandertal and Denisovan Genomes
in Human Evolution
John Hawks p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 433
Linguistics and Communicative Practices

Ethnographic Research on Modern Business Corporations
Greg Urban and Kyung-Nan Koh p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 139
vii
Language Management/Labor
Bonnie Urciuoli and Chaise LaDousa p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 175
Jurisdiction: Grounding Law in Language
Justin B. Richland p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 209
Francophonie
Cécile B. Vigouroux p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 379
Evidence and Authority in Ethnographic and Linguistic Perspective
Joel Kuipers p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 399
International Anthropology and Regional Studies

Anthropologizing Afghanistan: Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters

Alessandro Monsutti p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 269
Borders and the Relocation of Europe

Sarah Green p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 345
Roma and Gypsy “Ethnicity” as a Subject of Anthropological Inquiry
Michael Stewart p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 415
Sociocultural Anthropology
Disability Worlds
Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p53
Health of Indigenous Circumpolar Populations
J. Josh Snodgrass p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p69
The Anthropology of Organ Transplantation
Charlotte Ikels p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p89
The Anthropology of International Development
David Mosse p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 227
The Nature/Culture of Genetic Facts
Jonathan Marks p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 247
Globalization and Race: Structures of Inequality, New Sovereignties,
and Citizenship in a Neoliberal Era
Deborah A. Thomas and M. Kamari Clarke p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 305
The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure
Brian Larkin p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 327
The Anthropology of Radio Fields
Lucas Bessire and Daniel Fisher p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 363
viii Contents
Theme: Evidence
The Archaeology of Illegal and Illicit Economies
Alexandra Hartnett and Shannon Lee Dawdy p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p37
Evidential Regimes of Forensic Archaeology
Zoë Crossland p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 121
Biomolecular Archaeology
Keri A. Brown and Terence A. Brown p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 159
Teeth and Human Life-History Evolution
Tanya M. Smith p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 191
The Nature/Culture of Genetic Facts
Jonathan Marks p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 247

Evidence and Authority in Ethnographic and Linguistic Perspective

Joel Kuipers p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 399
Significance of Neandertal and Denisovan Genomes
in Human Evolution
John Hawks p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 433
Indexes
Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 33–42 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 451

Cumulative Index of Article Titles, Volumes 33–42 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 455
Errata
An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Anthropology articles may be found at

http://anthro.annualreviews.org/errata.shtml
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AN42CH09-Urban ARI 18 September 2013 15:12

• Our comprehensive search 1

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2013. 42:139–58 Keywords

WHAT IS A BUSINESS CORPORATION?

140 Urban · Koh

www.annualreviews.org • Ethnography of Corporations 141

inﬂuence of colonization, Europe-derived national states, and multinational business enterprises.

142 Urban · Koh

Effects on Local Communities

www.annualreviews.org • Ethnography of Corporations 143

144 Urban · Koh

by England to colonize the New World.

www.annualreviews.org • Ethnography of Corporations 145

CORPORATE INNER-WORKINGS RESEARCH

146 Urban · Koh

www.annualreviews.org • Ethnography of Corporations 147

148 Urban · Koh

In-Corporations Research: Variations in the Corporate Form

www.annualreviews.org • Ethnography of Corporations 149

In-Corporations Research: Narratives and Practices

150 Urban · Koh

is Villaveces-Izquierdo’s (1998) descriptions of a photo-processing company established by

In-Corporation Research: Cultural Reflexivity and Change

www.annualreviews.org • Ethnography of Corporations 151

152 Urban · Koh

beliefs, and values.

www.annualreviews.org • Ethnography of Corporations 153

154 Urban · Koh

www.annualreviews.org • Ethnography of Corporations 155

Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press

156 Urban · Koh

Manning P. 2010. The semiotics of brand. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 39:33–49

www.annualreviews.org • Ethnography of Corporations 157

158 Urban · Koh

Contents Volume 42, 2013

Linguistics and Communicative Practices

International Anthropology and Regional Studies

Anthropologizing Afghanistan: Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters

Borders and the Relocation of Europe

Jonathan Marks p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 247

Evidence and Authority in Ethnographic and Linguistic Perspective

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 33–42 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 451

An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Anthropology articles may be found at

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