Anthro-Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life, reviewed

This is an enjoyable read and one of the best business books this year that we have read and reviewed. You can see more about this book by Gillian Tett on the Penguin website here.

Anthro-Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life, reviewed

This is a smart, interesting and provocative book. Even better Tett actually was an anthropologist in a previous life, before becoming a journalist with the FT, doing her PhD studies in a mountain village in Tajikistan. This gives a great context and lead in to the sectors that she explores and the insights that anthropology has brought to them.

Tett looks at the financial sector, AI, the rise of Trump and other globally significant events that slightly crept up most of the world in an unsuspecting manner.   The common train of thought naturally being that if we had been able deprogram some of our biases, ‘of course Trump won’t win, he is an idiot’, whereas Tett identifies  his ability to tap on the world wresting way of trash talking your opponents, and bringing them down to your level.

The book is relatable and enjoyable too. Cambridge Analytica is also looked at with the same critical perspective, with the challenge to us to be aware of our own ‘lenses’ and the ability to understand what is hiding in plain sight in front of us. In many ways this book succeeds in the way that successful popular science books work, by breaking the concepts down, pushing us to question our own biases, and to listen harder. This book is well worth reading, and would be a worthy contender for the annual business book of the year short-list.

More about the book ->

For over a century, anthropologists have immersed themselves in unfamiliar cultures, uncovering the hidden rituals that govern how people act. Now, a new generation of anthropologists are using these methods in a different context – to illuminate the behaviour of consumers and businesses at home.

In Anthro-Vision, Gillian Tett – bestselling author, Financial Times journalist, and anthropology PhD – reveals how anthropology can make sense of people’s behaviour, in business and beyond. She outlines how anthropology helps explain consumer habits – revealing the ‘webs of meaning’ that underpin how we shop, and unpicking the subtle cultural shifts driving the rise of green investment.

She explores how anthropology can shed light on the workplace, identifying the hidden tribes within the office, and pinpointing which rituals are binding together a team. And she shows how we can all use anthropology in our own lives, too: helping us make better decisions, navigate risk – even work out what our peers are really thinking.

Along the way, Tett draws on stories from Tajik villages and Amazon warehouses, Japanese classrooms and Wall Street trading floors, all to reveal the power of anthropology in action.

The result is a wholly new way to make sense of human behaviour. In a short-sighted world, we can all learn to see clearly – using the power of Anthro-Vision.

More about the author

Gillian Tett is the chairman of the editorial board and editor-at-large, US, at the Financial Times. Perhaps best known for predicting the 2007-8 financial crisis, Tett’s bestselling book Fool’s Gold was one of the definitive books on the crash. Tett holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge, where she studied marriage rituals in Tajikistan. Her work for the FT has taken her around the world – from Brussels to Tokyo to Moscow to New York – and won her numerous awards, including Columnist, Journalist and Business Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards.

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