In recent years, anthropology has gained unprecedented attention in the world of business. Whether it concerns design and innovation, organization and management, branding and consumer research, consultancy and strategy, the recurring point is that anthropology has proven valuable as a human-centered, socially focused and culturally sensitive approach to business issues. While anthropologists have been intermittently engaged in business since the 1930s, the current situation is characterized by a sustained engagement that includes a growing number of non-anthropologists who argue strongly for the use of anthropological theories and methods. In some senses, anthropology has become a brand on the capitalist market, although the portrait of anthropology may not always be easily recognizable.

In this Brown Bag, we wish to initiate a discussion of this development. Drawing on insights from two recent Master theses – one on future-making at Novo Nordisk and one on consultancy at Is It a Bird – we present ethnographic snapshots and analytical thoughts on how anthropology is actually practiced in corporate contexts. What is it, in other words, that anthropologists do in these settings? This question raises not only the issue of what we can learn from insights into the practice of anthropology that may useful for the discipline itself. It also urges us to discuss how we are to respond to the ‘branding of anthropology’. Should we simply ‘go with the flow’ and hope for some productive ‘overflowings’? Should we engage more forcefully in a kind of ‘brand management’? Or should we, perhaps, resist every attempt to think and speak of anthropology in such business language?