This second edition of Ethnographic Thinking: From Method to Mindset serves as a primer for practitioners who want to apply ethnography to real-world challenges and commercial ventures. Building on the first edition, each chapter now includes a section focusing on practical advice to help readers activate key insights in their work. The book’s premise — that the thought processes and patterns ethnographers develop through their practice have strategic value beyond consumer insights — remains the same. Using real-world examples, Hasbrouck demonstrates how a more holistic view of an organization can help it benefit from a deeper understanding of its offerings within dynamic cultural contexts. In doing so, he argues that ethnographic thinking helps organizations increase appreciation for openness and exploration, hone interpretive skills, and cultivate holistic thinking; allowing them to broaden perspectives, challenge assumptions, and cross-pollinate ideas between differing viewpoints. Ethnographic Thinking: From Method to Mindset is essential reading for managers and strategists who want to tap into the full potential that an ethnographic perspective offers, as well as those searching more broadly for new ways to innovate. It will also be of value to students and practitioners of applied ethnography, as well as professionals who would like to optimize the value of ethnographic thinking in their organizations.

This book argues that ‘ethnographic thinking’—the thought processes and patterns ethnographers develop through their practice—offers companies and organizations the cultural insights they need to develop fully-informed strategies. Using real world examples, Hasbrouck demonstrates how shifting the value of ethnography from simply identifying consumer needs to driving a more holistic understanding of a company or organization can help it benefit from a deeper understanding of the dynamic and interactive cultural contexts of its offerings. In doing so, he argues that such an approach can also enhance the strategic value of their work by helping them increase appreciation for openness and exploration, hone interpretive skills, and cultivate holistic thinking, in order to broaden perspectives, challenge assumptions, and cross-pollinate ideas between differing viewpoints. Ethnographic Thinking is key reading for managers and strategists specifically wishing to tap-into the potential that ethnography offers, as well as those searching more broadly for new ways to innovate practice. It is essential reading for students of applied ethnography, and recommended for scholars too.

Viewed as a breakthrough in applied anthropology, Business Anthropology was the first concise work to juxtapose, compare, and integrate anthropological methods and theories with those of contemporary business practices and theories. In this latest edition, Jordan retains enduring, illustrative examples and adds fresh insights to familiarize readers with anthropological techniques and show their ever-growing utility in a variety of organizational and consumer settings. Business Anthropology explains how anthropologists distinctive training and skills equip them to address issues ranging from work processes, diversity, and globalization to product design and consumer behavior, in both for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Anthropologists use a holistic approach to gather and analyze data. They get to know people both inside and outside the organization, understand diverse perspectives from an objective viewpoint, gain in-depth knowledge about local wants and needs, and see old realities in new ways.

Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be humanÑand thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of EcuadorÕs Upper Amazon, Eduardo Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the worldÕs most complex ecosystems. Whether or not we recognize it, our anthropological tools hinge on those capacities that make us distinctly human. However, when we turn our ethnographic attention to how we relate to other kinds of beings, these tools (which have the effect of divorcing us from the rest of the world) break down. How Forests Think seizes on this breakdown as an opportunity. Avoiding reductionistic solutions, and without losing sight of how our lives and those of others are caught up in the moral webs we humans spin, this book skillfully fashions new kinds of conceptual tools from the strange and unexpected properties of the living world itself. In this groundbreaking work, Kohn takes anthropology in a new and exciting directionÐone that offers a more capacious way to think about the world we share with other kinds of beings.

Written by a leading authority, this book discusses a wide range of analytic ideas that can and should inform ethnographic analysis. In introducing the notion of ‘granular ethnography’ it argues for an approach to qualitative research that is sensitive to the complexities of everyday social life. A much-needed antidote to superficial research and analysis, the text deals not merely with the practical methods of fieldwork, but with the far more ambitious enterprise of turning ethnographic data into productive ideas and concepts. Paul Atkinson enables us not merely to do ethnography, but truly to think ethnographically. His book will prove invaluable to students and researchers across the social sciences.

Cultural responses to most illnesses differ; dementia is no exception. These responses, together with a society's attitudes toward its elderly population, affect the frequency of dementia-related diagnoses and the nature of treatment. Bringing together essays by nineteen respected scholars, this unique volume approaches the subject from a variety of angles, exploring the historical, psychological, and philosophical implications of dementia. Based on solid ethnographic fieldwork, the essays employ a cross-cultural perspective and focus on questions of age, mind, voice, self, loss, temporality, memory, and affect. Taken together, the essays make four important and interrelated contributions to our understanding of the mental status of the elderly. First, cross-cultural data show the extent to which the aging process, while biologically influenced, is also very much culturally constructed. Second, detailed ethnographic reports raise questions about the behavioral criteria used by health care professionals and laymen for defining the elderly as demented. Third, case studies show how a diagnosis affects a patient's treatment in both clinical and familial settings.; Finally, the collection highlights the gap that separates current biological understandings of aging from its cultural meanings. As Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia continue to command an ever-increasing amount of attention in medicine and psychology, this book will be essential reading for anthropologists, social scientists, and health care professionals.

Drawing upon the work of some of the most influential theorists in the field, Thinking Through Things demonstrates the quiet revolution growing in anthropology and its related disciplines, shifting its philosophical foundations. The first text to offer a direct and provocative challenge to disciplinary fragmentation - arguing for the futility of segregating the study of artefacts and society - this collection expands on the concerns about the place of objects and materiality in analytical strategies, and the obligation of ethnographers to question their assumptions and approaches. The team of leading contributors put forward a positive programme for future research in this highly original and invaluable guide to recent developments in mainstream anthropological theory.