The Social Life of Pricing: How Cultures Assign Value Beyond Economics
Prices look numerical, objective, and rational. However, anthropologists have long demonstrated that value is never simply economic. Rather, value is relational, symbolic, and cultural. How societies value, that is, how they price their goods, reflects their notions of fairness, identity, status, and morality. In many product markets, "price" becomes a stand-in for "meaning." "Value signaling" is the term that anthropologists use to describe the notion that a higher price ind
The Anthropology of Corporate Space: How Office Design Shapes Power, Identity, and Innovation
Office design is about so much more than meters and cubicles. It is a social endeavor with significant stakes—the geometry of a space, the placement of a chair, the thrum of a shared area all communicate something about who we are, who is valued, and what we need to do together. Space equates with value, with power, with expectation the instant you step inside. Anthropologists have long studied the ways in which a community is organized—and where people live, conduct market
When Products Become Rituals: How Everyday Consumer Goods Turn Into Cultural Anchors
A routine set of products, such as headphones, a smoothie in the morning, and a water bottle, can be rituals despite the lack of religious importance. Routinely being used within an everyday routine, these products can be elevated from being simple products into important cultural objects within anthropology related fields concerning business, especially within marketing, which may often overlook such effects. pasties de nata in Lisbon, Portugal Rituals involve something more
The Entrepreneur as Ethnographer: What Startups Can Learn from Fieldwork
Entrepreneurship is often framed in the language of innovation, disruption, and strategy. Founders are supposed to analyze markets, model financials, and build products that scale. But, beneath these technical skills lies a deeper, less frequently talked-about capability: the ability to understand people. Not people as data points or demographic categories, but people as cultural beings—individuals formed by habits, identities, emotions, and social worlds. This ability is not
