Anthro-Vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life

by Gillian Tett

While today’s business world is dominated by technology and data analysis, award-winning financial journalist and anthropology PhD Gillian Tett advocates thinking like an anthropologist to better understand consumer behavior, markets, and organizations to address some of society’s most urgent challenges.

Amid severe digital disruption, economic upheaval, and political flux, how can we make sense of the world? Leaders today typically look for answers in economic models, Big Data, or artificial intelligence platforms. Gillian Tett points to anthropology—the study of human culture. Anthropologists learn to get inside the minds of other people, helping them not only to understand other cultures but also to appraise their own environment with fresh perspective as an insider-outsider, gaining lateral vision.

Today, anthropologists are more likely to study Amazon warehouses than remote Amazon tribes; they have done research into institutions and companies such as General Motors, Nestlé, Intel, and more, shedding light on practical questions such as how internet users really define themselves; why corporate projects fail; why bank traders miscalculate losses; how companies sell products like pet food and pensions; why pandemic policies succeed (or not). Anthropology makes the familiar seem unfamiliar and vice versa, giving us badly needed three-dimensional perspective in a world where many executives are plagued by tunnel vision, especially in fields like finance and technology.

“Fascinating and surprising” (Fareed Zararia, CNN), Anthro-Vision offers a revolutionary new way for understanding the behavior of organizations, individuals, and markets in today’s ever-evolving world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology, Business, Economics, Sociology, Psychology, Audiobook

304 pages, Hardcover

Published June 8, 2021

About the author

Gillian Tett is a British author and journalist at the Financial Times, where she is a markets and finance columnist and U.S. Managing Editor. She has written about the financial instruments that were part of the cause of the financial crisis that started in the fourth quarter of 2007, such as CDOs, credit default swaps, SIVs, conduits, and SPVs. She became renowned for her early warning that a financial crisis was looming.

Reviews

[Andrew Carr · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. For the past few months, I've been looking for books which help change or shift your thinking. Not in terms of the issues, but frameworks. This is one such book.

Tett was trained as an anthropologist and loves her discipline. She begins by recounting her PhD training in Tajikistan and from there explores how the skills of a profession commonly pigeonholed as 'studying exotic tribes' has great relevance for understanding any group of people, in any profession, in any part of the world. At heart, this book encourages us all to remember "that may be your world view, but it isn't everyone's". (A line offered in a glowing cameo by my ANU colleague Genevieve Bell)

Tett has a knack for translating broad disciplinary norms and theories into common sense proposals. Antho-Vision as she describes relates to five steps for better thinking about what is going on: First, recognizing we are 'all creatures of our own environment', shaped by the forces around us. Second, that there 'is no single "natural" cultural frame'. Third, we should 'seek for ways to immerse ourselves....in the minds and lives of others to gain empathy'. Fourth, 'we must look at our own world with the lens of an outsider to see ourselves clearly'. Finally 'we must use that perspective to actively listen to social silence, ponder the rituals and symbols that shape our routines'.

I always read with a pen in hand, and normally the underlining reduces over time, as I get more used to the book, find the discussion less compelling or repeating what came before. This book however has underlines and scribbles throughout it. Time and again Tett, who works as a journalist for the UK Financial Times offers compelling anacdotes that illustrate her points. From her own effort to try and understand 'what were those financiers doing trading securities and mortages in the mid 2000s', to insights into companies which presumed their employers or customers would act in ways that they simply did not.

Often the simple message is to look at the wider web of meaning for why people act as they do. The choice of teenagers to live on their phones is not simply a fascination with screens and Facebook dopamine hits (as often feared), but also a search for a human outlet when all of the normal places for teenagers to be teenagers (malls, walking to school etc) are increasingly prevented by a generation of fearful parents and reduced public places. This is the 'anthro-vision' of the title, a willingness to look at the wider picture and wonder without judgement 'why are they acting like that' (or perhaps harder but just as importantly 'why do I think that').

This is an easy and fun read. It offers a way to shape and improve your thinking, offering a passionate introduction to anthropology and the value of its intellectual work. Every discipline should be so lucky to have such an advocate like Tett. Don't let its simple sounding messages, and perhaps slightly odd title/subtitle dissuade. This is a clever book for those looking to improve their ability to understand the world around them.

[Lisa Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you thought anthropology was about studying "primitive" tribes in far flung places, think again. Nowadays they are more likely to be studying the tribes within corporations, Wall Street and Washington. Tett makes the case that anthropologists are essential to understanding our WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic) behavior especially as relates to business. They provide lateral (as opposed to tunnel) vision. Insightful and engaging. I loved it!

[K.J. Charles]

Reasonably interesting anthropology-based look at business and finance and politics. Could have done with deeper dives into specific communities (it felt like every time we were getting there, it ended "and then the funding was pulled so the project shut down"). The message is in the end basically "don't assume everyone thinks like you or shares your values", but that's worth repeating.

[Orestis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Σε έναν κόσμο που κινείται όλο και περισσότερο με ποσοτικές ανάλυσεις και big data, η συγγραφέας αναδεικνύει την άξια της ανθρωπολογίας για την σωστή ανάλυση των καταστάσεων.
Η αλήθεια είναι ότι έχω το ελάττωμα, ως ερευνητής, συχνά να απαξιώνω την κοινωνική διάσταση των θεμάτων όταν αφορά μελέτες, και να στέκομαι πάντα στην αλήθεια των αριθμών. Το βιβλίο αποδεικνύει ότι όσο σωστά και αν είναι τα στοιχειά, μπορούν να έχουν λάθος αντικείμενο όταν δεν έχει πραγματοποιηθεί μια ανάλυση του ανθρωπινού παραγοντα. Και ειναι, αν θελετε, μια συνθηκη αιτιου αιτιατου πολλες φορες. Αν αγνοήσουμε το πλαίσιο και την κουλτούρα, ιδιαίτερα όταν αυτό το πλαίσιο αλλάζει με τον καιρό, οποιαδήποτε μοντέλα ή αναλύσεις χρησιμοποιήσουμε θα είναι αναποτελεσματικά. Πρέπει να δούμε τι αγνοούμε. Πρέπει να εκτιμήσουμε πώς πλέγματα νοήματος και πολιτισμού διαμορφώνουν τον τρόπο με τον οποιο αντιλαμβανόμαστε τον κόσμο. Τα Big Data μας λένε τι συμβαίνει. Δεν μπορούν να μας πουν το γιατί. Από τα πρώτα μαθήματα κάθε αξιόλογου εγχειρίδιου οικονομετρίας είναι πως η συσχέτιση δεν αποτελεί αιτιότητα (correlation is not causation). Ούτε καν μια πλατφόρμα τεχνητής νοημοσύνης μπορεί να μας πει για τα επίπεδα αντιφατικών νοημάτων που κληρονομούμε από το περιβάλλον μας: πώς οι σημειωτικοί κώδικες μεταλλάσσονται, οι ιδέες κινούνται και οι πρακτικές αναμειγνύονται. Για αυτό πρέπει να αγκαλιάσουμε μια άλλη μορφή AI: την "ανθρωπολογική νοημοσύνη". Την anthro-vision. Χρειαζόμαστε ένα πλαίσιο δεν παράγει συνήθως καθαρά σημεία ισχύος, σκληρά επιστημονικά συμπεράσματα ή δεσμευτικές αποδείξεις. Πρέπει να το δούμε ως μια ερμηνευτική πειθαρχία, πέρα απο την εμπειρική προσέγγιση.

[anchi · Rating 4 out of 5]

原本看標題還很疑惑的我，在看了第一章之後有種豁然開朗的感覺，原來，是要聊人類學呀。結果一看不可收拾，不知道是作者舉的例子太引人入勝，還是對於人類學的好奇心使然，其實很快就把書看完了！

書裡討論的話題其實非常廣泛，還包括了之前熱度很高的劍橋分析事件，也讓我開始思考究竟數據這種東西，為什麼總是會被自己直接給出去，只為了玩一個facebook上面的小遊戲。

本書裡也有一些關於金融市場的討論，最後更提到為什麼交易員更喜歡回到辦公室上班。儘量不爆雷的總結就是，我們需要善用人類學的視角來看清未來！

這本書真的很好看，尤其是成功改變了我對人類學的刻板印象，也看到一些大企業如何應用人類學的案例，突然激發了我對人類學的興趣(咦？)

[Kristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and captivating analysis of contemporary social phenomena through the lens of social anthropology with a broad range of interesting examples.

[Nadia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Хороша книжка про те, як антропологи (в широкому розумінні цього слова) допомагають бізнесу і державі. Бізнесу - на прикладах з фінансових ринків, технологічних стартапів, організації праці на заводах, споживчих ринків. Державі - на прикладах з політики, охорони здоров'я тощо.
Я просто люблю читати байки про дослідження і дослідників :)

[Aaron Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book that I thoroughly enjoyed taking my time to slowly read it all.

(This is dedicated to Alice and all my colleagues in my work who supported me this long year.)

[Natasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This reassured me that I will not end up permanently unemployed with my anthropology degree. Although, I still don’t think I will be seeking a job in finance, so that bit was less helpful. Anyway, it was very interesting to read about how anthropology can have value in business settings as well as everyday life. Gillian Tett keeps it engaging by using real life (and often unlikely) scenarios where anthropology has made a difference.

As the Tesco tagline goes: every little helps. If this book makes any contribution to increasing Anthropology’s visibility I think that could only have a positive impact on business and also my career prospects.

[Avnish Anand · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed my whole understanding of anthropology. Like many others I thought it had to do with studying primitive tribes and cavemen. And had no application for life or business. I was so wrong.

I am so glad Gillian Tett wrote this book. In addition to being an anthropologist, she has deep knowledge about business and is an excellent writer ( after all she is a star editor at the Financial Times). As a result, she is the best equipped person to write such a book.

She does a great job of explaining the basic concepts of the subjects and then sharing a whole bunch of case studies to explain how these principles can be applied to different walks of life.

As a marketing and business person, I loved the business chapters. But the best chapter is the one on the financial crisis.

Gillian is clearly evangelising anthropology. But she never steps over the line. You become convert because you realise how good the anthropological tools are to study human behaviour.

Anthropology can help a lot of people and businesses. The studies are usually long and time taking. The insights needs to be synthesised with prior business knowledge to make them actionable and impactful. It’s not a quick fix. But if you are looking for impactful solutions, you should try it. And there’s no better place to start than this book.

[Wilte · Rating 5 out of 5]

Use the tools of anthropology (ethnography, similar to applying behavioral insights), like qualitative research and looking at what people do instead of what they say. And beware of your own biases, context and dirty lens.


Quotes:

Three core principles of the anthropology mindset that are the most important to grasp, which shape the structure of this book.

1️⃣ in an era of global contagion, we urgently need to cultivate a mindset of empathy for strangers and value diversity

2️⃣ listening to someone else's view, however "strange," does not just teach empathy for others, which is badly needed today; it also makes it easier to see yourself

3️⃣ embracing this strange-familiar concept enables us see blind spots in others and ourselves

"the least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable," as the nineteenth-century French physician and anthropologist Paul Broca reputedly said. It is a dangerous mistake to ignore the ideas we take for granted, be that about language, space, people, objects, or supposedly universal concepts, such as "time."

none of those crucial insights could be gathered just with computers. Big Data can explain what is happening. But it cannot usually explain why. Correlation is not causation.

Three caveats:
1️⃣ this book does not argue that anthro-vision should replace other intellectual tools, but complement them.
2️⃣ I would not pretend that these ideas are just found in the academic discipline of anthropology; some crop up in user-experience research (USX) stud- ies, social psychology, linguistics, geography, philosophy, environmental biology, and behavioral science. That is good: academic boundaries are artificial, reflecting university tribalism.* We should redraw them for the twenty-first century. Whatever word you use to describe anthro-vision, we need it.
3️⃣ This is not intended as a memoir

Anthropology, how- ever, takes a different tack. It also starts with observation. But instead of embracing rigid prior judgments about what is important or normal, or how topics should be subdivided, it tries to listen and learn with almost childlike wonder. This does not mean that anthropologists only use open-ended observation; they also frame what they see with theory and hunt for patterns. They sometimes use empirical methods too. But they aim to begin with an open mind and broad lens.

The British culture I had grown up in, shaped by protestant Christianity, presumed that people should only have one religion or belief system. Western culture tends to prize "impartial principles over contextual particularism," as the anthropologist Joseph Henrich has observed, and assumes that "moral truths exist in the way mathematical laws exist." Intellectual consistency is considered to be a virtue; a lack of it, hypocrisy. Yet this idea is not universal: in many other societies there is a presumption that morals are context-based, and it is not immoral to have different values in different situations. P22-23

sometimes there is value in taking a worm's-eye, not bird's-eye, view and trying to combine these perspectives (…) "Ethnography is empathy," observes the anthropologist Grant McCracken. "You listen until you go, 'Oh, like that,' and you suddenly see the world as they do." p27

"The point is that you have to listen to consumers, where they are. You cannot assume anything." P38

But when the anthropologists observed what drivers actu- ally did not what they said they did they saw that whenever drivers got bored in traffic, they reached for their personal handheld devices and used those, not the voice-command systems that engineers had so lov- ingly designed. Rhetoric diverged from reality (…) "That may be your worldview, but it is not everybody's!" It was simple to say, but painfully hard to remember. P43

"What we learned was that you can make policy much more effective when you work with the communities and bring them into solutions."
To which the anthropologists might have replied: "Of course." P69

One benefit of anthropology is that it can impart empathy for the strange "other." Another is that it can offer a mirror for the familiar-ourselves. It is never easy to draw clear lines between what is "familiar" and "strange." Cultural difference exists in a shifting spectrum, not rigid static boxes. But the key point is this: wherever you sit, in whatever blend of familiar and strange, it always pays to stop and ask yourself a simple question that the bankers on the Riviera were not asking: If I was to arrive in this culture, as a total stranger, or as a Martian or child, what might I see? P80

"But what about the 99 percent of the population that is not on Bloomberg?" I asked. The financier looked baffled; it did not seem to have occurred to him that they might have a right-or desire to peer into finance. It's that Bloomberg village again, I thought. What financiers were not thinking or talking about mattered. So did the fact that this oversight was so habitual that it felt natural. As Bourdieu had once ob- served "the most successful ideological effects are those which have no need of words." Or as the American novelist Upton Sinclair posited, more punchily: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" P91

"What I do is make explicit what has been implicit," Briody ex- plained to a journalist, shortly after the Delta Two project. "Sometimes that makes people uncomfortable. But that's the anthropologist's job. We help people see patterns more clearly." p101

Miscommunications are sometimes more dangerous when people ap- pear to speak the same language or have the same national identity, precisely because nobody even notices or questions the assumptions they use or ask whether other people have the same assumptions. P111

One way to describe this distinction was with the phrase memo- rably coined by Salena Zito, the journalist: while the elite took Trump "literally but not seriously," many of his voters did the reverse-and took him seriously but not literally. Or to use the framework outlined by Henrich that I cited in the last chapter, around WEIRD cultures: the "educated" groups in America were interpreting Trump's words through the type of sequential logic that WEIRD education taught peo- ple, namely one-directional reasoning, and thus thought that Trump's comments did not "make sense." But, as Henrich had always stressed, WEIRD thinking operated on a spectrum, and even inside a WEIRD country like America, there were variants. P149

That meant, I argued, that journalists needed to take four steps: First, "recognize that our lenses are dirty. Second, to consciously note our biases. Third, to attempt to offset these biases by trying to see the world from different perspectives [and] last but not least, to remember that our personal lens will never be perfectly clean, even if we take the first three steps." Instead of laughing, we-I- needed to listen to social silence.

by 2018, intangibles were calculated to represent a stunning 84 percent of all enterprise value for the S&P 500.19 In 1975, the ratio had been a paltry 17 percent p167

So how do we get anthro-vision? This book has laid out at least five ideas. First, we need to recognize that we are all creatures of our own environ- ment, in an ecological, social, and cultural sense. Second, we must ac- cept that there is no single "natural" cultural frame; human existence is a tale of diversity. Third, we should seek for ways to immerse ourselves- repeatedly, even if only briefly-in the minds and lives of others who are different to gain empathy for others. Fourth, we must look at our own world with the lens of an outsider to see ourselves clearly. Fifth, we must use that perspective to actively listen to social silence, ponder the rituals and symbols that shape our routines, and consider our practices through the lens of anthropology ideas such as habitus, sense-making, liminality, incidental information exchange, pollution, reciprocity, and exchange. P225

But far more could and should be done to push insights from an- thropology, ethnography, sociology, and other social sciences into the mainstream, and combine qualitative and quantitative analysis. A key message of this book is that if there was ever a time when the discipline's perspective is needed, it is now. The world might not always be ready to listen to what anthropologists have to say; their messages and mode of looking at the world often make people uncomfortable. But that is precisely why the messages of anthropology need to be heard, now. I hope this book will help. P236

[R · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book - well written but also very worrying. It shows a world in which people don’t listen, are too specialised, and not diverse enough in their thinking.

Anthropology – often a derided branch of social sciences that studies culture and society – is about observation, open minded interpretation about micro level details and tries to draw big conclusions. It picks out social silences.

We have a habit in society now of dismissing people who are strange and do not fit our pre-conceived images of perfection.

Take Ebola, where in Africa it is common to hold mass ceremonies for death, including kissing the dead bodies. When the WHO initially went to Africa, they insisted on a centralised process of dealing with dead people’s contagious bodies. This caused locals huge upset as their traditions were not considered, leading to more infection. By fundamentally understanding this point, the WHO then started dealing with the dead in a localised, respectful manner. Locals accepted this, took greater health precautions, and deaths started to drop.

Another antithesis of anthropology is closed societies. Before the financial crisis bankers loved to used complicated acronyms for CDOs, CDSs. It made them feel elite, it allowed them to feel superior when speaking to outsiders, and avoid external scrutiny. When an outsider questioned CDOs, CDSs (i.e. those who did not use a Bloomberg terminal) they were met with anger “you don’t understand”. There was no intellectual humility – and it led to their downfall.

Mocking people from a different language/cultures/behaviour is utterly counterproductive. When Trump used unsophisticated language in his elect campaign, elites laughed. But his supporters related to him. Elites took Trump literally, but not seriously. His supports took him seriously, but not literally. When we mock Chinese for trusting AI/facial recognition, technology is in their culture. We need to see other people’s perspectives.

We need people who link data to wider social contexts. Take economists, whose models only really consider tangible goods, i.e physical goods, and physical exchanges of value i.e money. They have not taken a step back and realised that 1) intangibles make up 84% of S&P’s value. 2) Bartering, the act of providing data in exchange for a service is now the modern way of business, requiring no exchange of capital, thus not included in the model.

So, what can we all do?
1. Recognise we are all creatures of our own environment.
2. Accept there is no single natural/cultural frame/ and accept diversity.
3. Fundamentally understand other people’s perspective and emphasise.
4. Look at our own world through a lens of an outsider.
5. Use perspective to look at social silences. Blend perspectives with other disciplines such as computing, medicine finance, law, and inject this vision in policy making.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anthro-Vision – A New Way to See in Business and in Life (2021) by Gillian Tett expounds on the value of anthropological thinking in the modern world. Tett is a columnist and managing US editor the Financial Times. She has a PhD in anthropology from Cambridge.

She describes how she was studying anthropology in Tajikistan in the Soviet Union and how Communism and Islam interacted but how her plans for her PhD changed when Communism fell.

Tett describes how viewing the world through the lense of an anthropologist makes the way some communities, such as those trading mortgage backed securities gives value because it helps to illuminate the strange ways that community behaved.

Anthro-Vision also describes how various anthropologists are working in Industry and how they have helped market Kit-Kats in Japan, changed the pet food industry and also helped technology firms work out how their products are used.

Anthro-Vision is very well written and is definitely an interesting book. Tett makes the point very well that insights into customs and group behaviour have considerable value.

[Masatoshi Nishimura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another book where she's successfully cashed out of the impossible humanity major to make money on. In her case, she's sold anthropology concept to the business crowd and gain consultant work thereafter. They usually start off as demeaning engineers/managers/financial analysts as people who don't understand human beings to justify their own existence.

Anthropology, which turned out as useful at explaning what has happened. But it'll have very little predictive behaivor. The importance fails at pale compared to entrepreneurs actually testing the value offering.

After reading this book, I came to be convinved more than ever anthropology is a niche subject most young peopl shouldn't be studying for. What she mentions about respect for local rituals and culture can be easily attained by traveling to foreigin culture for a few months.

Similar terminologies popup from time to time: emotional intelligence, empathetic design, user experience, human centered design, etc. They all mean the same thing. Observe humans well.

[Brittany · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book did not click for me at all. While this was the case for pretty much the entire book, I found so much of the discussions on Trump to completely miss the mark. I don't really have the tolerance I once did to entertain reasons for "why Trump won" that do not engage, or at the very least mention, the sexism and racism (and more!) he directly appealed to to win. Attributing people's (and more specifically, left-wing people's) shock at him winning because they couldn't believe that other people think differently than they do is mind-numbingly frustrating.

[deartomato · Rating 2 out of 5]

一位已經嵌入體制���但包裝自己仍有anti establishment價值的人類學出身精英記者，給金融科技商業法律政治精英，寫了一本人類學、民族誌視角的案例分析和應用說明書。
對現存的不公正權力結構和自己在當中已取得的優勢地位表面上中立乃至批判，但整本書內核都在肯定和享受。
除了個人社經地位，這本書還有很強的西方中心優越感，可能是潛台詞已經默認要和現存體制下的有權者（西方世界）對話，所以理所當然引用的例子都受是西方訓練的西方人去到世界不同地方，觀察當地人的行為。
而且對例子的敘述也很結論導向，簡單化了很多不能在寥寥數語下定論的分析內容（只有內化了資本功利效率邏輯才會努力用關鍵詞來歸納社會現象吧）！
譬如，關於人臉識別，為了強調和西方「威脅安全，威脅個人主義」的主流觀點的區別，把中國人對於人臉識別的態度簡述為「safe」——中國人被扁平化標籤化，粗暴歸在了西方人的對立面。
同樣的敘述被用在其他的non-west群體上：面對病毒西方人強調科學醫學非洲人強調民俗迷信；面對道德規範西方人不對家人說謊而非西方人能夠接受對家人說謊因為他們還很在意語境……
看完這本書就是為了看結構���機制是如何softly在不同個體/社群間內化及互相馴化的。（ps這本書是從劍橋人類學推薦讀物中找來的）

[Jim Carroll · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perspective is everything. Excellent

This is kind of like the introduction of psychological analysis to economics to create behavioral economics. This book does an excellent job of presenting anthropologist thinking to economics and business management. Although she didn’t invent the concept she does an excellent job of describing the value of such thinking in today’s business and financial world. Very interesting and well written.

[Kuang Ting · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gillian Tett is one of my favorite journalists. Her reporting is full of insights. I read FT every morning before I start working. This book is her latest journalistic endeavor to shed light on the business world. I really like her insights!
You can ready full review in the link to my column.

https://www.thenewslens.com/article/1...

[Mbogo J · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a long time Physics has been the preeminent field on advising humanity how to live and organise "serious" matters until its models got heavily implicated in the 2007 financial crisis. It also didn't help that they dug some large holes to prove something but the results were underwhelming. Since then it's been open season for any field to come to the front and show society how to do things. Biology had a good theory on how society is like an ecosystem and terms like keystone species and carrying capacity were thrown around. This time it was the turn of anthropology to make its case. A lot of what is good about this book rests more on the author, Gillian Tett, than on the field itself.

Anthropology is one of those concepts like time where you think you know what it is until someone asks you to define it and then you realize the gaps in your knowledge. My gut definition was a field which goes to the bushes and studies societies in the early stages of development. I was way off. I did some research on the definition. It didn't help. The definitions are vague or all encompassing to the point of serving no purpose as a definition. I resorted instead to try to make sense of it from the book's content but that too didn't help. Some research seemed ground already covered by behavioral economics and it was unclear how anthropology was involved. Others seemed basic market research. May be you need a lot more prior knowledge on the field of anthropology to get how it's contents were applied. The book's post script talks of how a lot was dumbed down for the general audience, may be this is to blame. A few technical terms should have been sprinkled in to show that this was a technical study rather than a reheating of obvious folk wisdom and rechristening it anthropology.

I eventually gave up on trying to figure out how anthropology had been used and instead focused on the stories. This book's got tonnes of them. Nearly all of them interesting, told by a writer at the very top of their craft. This alone is reason enough to read the book. You can also put more effort into charting out how the concepts of anthropology were harnessed in coming up with a new way to evaluate business and life but it is also fine to give up and read the stories. May be anthropology is the art of telling good stories.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that bridges anthropology as it is known, and the state of the world as it is today. People usually see anthro as the subject where people go to far flung islands to find nomadic tribes, but the skills applied in those situations are very well applicable to the financial market and Wall Street too. The author talks about how her anthro training helped her understand how people in finance thought and made decisions. I felt like some of the book was draggy at times, but also took away some good tidbits of information.

[Michael Tutty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant

[Alistair · Rating 4 out of 5]

..from tunnel vision to lateral vision!
This book explains ways to spot the “invisible” solutions that we would’ve otherwise missed.
Incredibly insightful.

[James Dawes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has made me question how I view and navigate the world. My main takeaway is always to remain open and to immerse myself in the lives of ‘others’, embracing culture shock. I think this will help me not only understand the world better but also help my own self-reflexivity.

I particularly found the chapter about the financial crisis interesting, finding it truly mind-boggling that these apparently powerful and influential people weren’t questioning the real-world consequences of their decisions, instead following everyone in their echo chambers like sheep.

[Niamh Fenton · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a hard science student I found this really interesting! Also very relevant for considering company strength and awareness of cultures.

[Prithvi Chandrasekhar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why does the Hindu God Shiva have a third eye?

To see the most important things.

And what are these most important things?

The things which cannot otherwise be seen.

This interpretation of Shiva’s third eye – that it is for the most important things, the things which cannot be seen – is central to Anthro-Vision. She explains that anthropology “enables you to see around corners” by listening to “social silences”, by hearing what is left unsaid. Or, in other words, by observing the world through Shiva’s third eye.

Now that the provenance of the good in Gillian Tett’s ideas is clear, her exhortations to use Anthro-Vision in all walks of life takes on an added urgency. Anthro-Vision is God’s will! So let us readers open our third eyes, see the most important things, hear the sounds of silence, and therefore gain the empathy, insight and sense of humour needed to make the world a better place.

[Abdullah Shams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Step back, and ask what am I not seeing! = Broader Vision

[Nitisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find it off when a published book has spelling errors. Mere mortals are expected to err but not the editors! Apart from that, a decent endeavor by the author. A bit repetitive but maybe because I am from academia with adjacent training in cultural anthropology.

[. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really, really loved this book. I read it in about 5 days and didn't want it to end.

This book was a great read for me for a few reasons. Firstly, I have been reading Tett's columns in the FT Magazine for almost a year now, in which she discusses politics, culture, economics, and breaks them down (analyses/explains them) using anthropology. I have never thought of vaccine rollouts, election results, social and economic issues the way she presents them to us in the column, and loved it whenever she gave us a hint of what anthropology was. For example, she once discussed how different cultures look at seasons; one see seasons set by dates, others define seasons only when the appropriate weather arrives. Loving her ideas, I read as much as I could about her online and loved the fact that she did her PhD on marrige rituals in Tajikistan (!?) - but I could only find very little about this? This book touches on what she was doing/researching in Tajikistan! And it was fascinating! The link between her work in Obi-Safeyd and Wall Street/City of London (i.e. how she predicted the GFC) was incredible, and really demonstrates the utility of applying anthropological techniques on the world. I was hooked. Another way she presented the importance of anthropology in looking at the world, is that it is not enought to just use models which use quantitative data - we need to acknowledge people and their culture too! A model could produce a compass telling you which direction to walk in, but you might walk into a tree if you don't look up.

Secondly, this book was an excellent read for me because of the way she broke down the principles of anthropology. This boils down to three ideas. Firstly, try to see the strange as familiar; this allows you to gain some empathy and understanding for people you see as 'outsiders' - as a result, they seem less strange and you can make more sense of people/cultures. Secondly, see the familiar as strange; allowing you to notice your own blindspots, and aspects about yourself/your cutlure you otherwise wouldn't notice. These can become problems (or already are the roots of your problems!). Finally, notice social silences; what are people not talking about? Why not? These silences helped her predict the GFC and the rise of ESG.

More generally however, Tett discusses how symbols and rituals within cultures reinforce certain values and develop maps of meaning. These ideas are presented through stories of participant observing workers at Xerox, Kit-Kat consumers in Japan, and people interacting with facial recognistion technology.

Certain ideas I struggled to understand however, namely sense-making and habitus. Hopefully future reading on anthropology will help this.

Whilst I liked the conclusion, it wasn't my favourite part of the book - but then again, the book covered so many different topics it's hard to wrap them all together in one conclusion. The conclusion did however make me feel positive that I could potentially use anthro-vision/lateral vision to see the world, and that it was important we all try to!

I would highly recomend this book to anyone interested in how anthropology (an often neglected academic discipline) can be used to look at our life, culture and business. It left me hungry to read more about this subject. Thank you Gillian Tett!

[Jennifer Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I expect that this will be one of the most important books I have read this year. It wasn’t the easiest to digest in terms of the complexity of the topic but by the time I finished it I was convinced of one thing: if your organization feels reluctant to incorporate an EDI strategy beyond the performative aspects, this could be the tiny hinge to swing that door open to create change. I firmly believe that as we move from the Information Age to the Age of Perspective there will be a heightened need, emphasis and appreciation of the social sciences - in particular the necessity for AI (anthropology intelligence) to help organizations widen their lens, mitigate the risk of tunnel vision, and enhance their ability to solve complex problems holistically.

Gillian Tett incorporates comprehensive analysis of recent events ranging from a number of sectors - dealing with Ebola, the financial crisis of 2008, politics (as to why Trump resonated with a majority of voters in 2016), the impacts of working from home due to the pandemic - to highlight a few. I won’t attempt to do it justice in my recommendation here, but I know now I will commit to actively developing my “anthro-vision” going forward. I hope this author pursues this topic again in a follow-up book, or at very least inspires other writers to consider this angle to make it increasingly accessible to non-academics.

[Yifei Men · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable read! I enjoyed the span of the materials covered; from the author's earlier days as an ethnographer to more current case studies in companies (automotive, tech, FMCG).

There's a lot of fascination in recent years of technological progress, and the "how" and "what" questions, but the writer urges us to think more about the "why", to keep an open mind, remain curious, questioning and receptive to what is silent / taken for granted.

Anthropologists are often great writers, perceptive to the reader's attention span and emotional landscape; and of course they are wordsmiths commanding an extensive vocabulary, often coining beautiful turn of phrases to frame a discussion. It's been many years since my Anthro classes in college, but it brings back fond memories of mind-opening ways of seeing the world, our every day interactions. I'm less certain on what really to take away as next steps besides an awareness and openness, but perhaps that's a good start. A book that I'll be happy to re-read.