Anthropologist Inc Summary

In the article, “Anthropology Inc.”, Graeme Wood describes how anthropologists study a specific group of people, and how anthropologist practice research. When I was reading the article, the first example was the study of “Corrida de lesbianas” in home parties. Their goal was to write an ethnographic survey of drinking parties. The anthropologist approached to the study of this people by focusing on what, when, and how people drank Vodka. Then, they asked themselves; what are people seeking when they drink? In the end, they concluded that people where seeking for personal narratives because the narratives said in the party shows humor and creates a more trusting environment. I personally was convinced with this first study because they not only focus on what people say that they want, but they instead, focus more

Another study conducted by anthropologist presented in the article was when they ask housemother’s how they use their living space. The anthropologist interviewed a housemother named Rebecca. Rebecca mentioned that she breaks some rules of her own religion, for example, eating pork. When the anthropologist listened to her, they start to figure out what rules were important to her in the first place. In page 101 of the article “Anthropologist Inc.”, it says, “An object’s meaning is greater than it’s utility.” I strongly agree with this statement because most the time people don’t buy a product because of what it’s able to perform. We as consumer buy a product because of its personal meaning to us. For example, now in days, the corporation of Apple sells more computers than Dell, mainly because Apple’s computers represent an upper product that not everyone can afford. Anthropologist emphasizes the meaning behind a product. In the article, Wood introduces an example, where tech companies demonstrate the concept of “personal” device, which is culturally wrong because the device is marketed, and designed as a shared household, if it wasn’t, it probably not