Publications
Handbook of Anthropology in Business
Edited by Rita Denny and Patricia Sunderland
June 2014
2015 CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE "In this tour de force of scholarly contributions addressing the burgeoning field(s) at the intersection of anthropology and business, editors Denny and Sunderland provide lively, insightful, and well-crafted introductions to the book as a whole and to each...
Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research
Patricia Sunderland and Rita Denny
November 2007
An essential guide to the theory and practice of conducting ethnographic research in consumer environments, drawing on decades of the authors’ own research—from coffee in Bangkok and boredom in New Zealand to computing in the United States. 2009 CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC BOOK. "In this...
The Phenomenology of Aging
Michael Donovan
Journal of Business Anthropology 4(1), 2015
Reflections on aging are tied to present-day cultural narratives which challenge our long held beliefs about “getting old.” The ideas of “aging spurts” and “liminality” are offered to grapple with experiences of aging and to engage current cultural conversations and...
Articles & Essays by Subject
Culture and Consumption
The Phenomenology of Aging
Michael Donovan
Journal of Business Anthropology 4(1), 2015
View Article >Reflections on aging are tied to present-day cultural narratives which challenge our long held beliefs about “getting old.” The ideas of “aging spurts” and “liminality” are offered to grapple with experiences of aging and to engage current cultural conversations and possibilities.
Random in the Time of Social Media
Michael Donovan
Journal of Business Anthropology 3(2), 2014
View Article >This essay asks us to take a look those inadvertent “happened upon” experiences in daily life that are so often captured and conveyed though social media. These “random” life moments, once tweeted, posted, “liked,” shared, are instrumental in the creation of an online voice and community. We contemplate the ways the word is bent to suit the temporal and spatial simultaneity of platforms such as tumblr, Instagram, Twitter where the here and there – the embodied and digital life – intermesh.
The Luminosity of the Local
Michael Donovan
EPIC2012 Proceedings
Download File >Conference Website This paper seeks to capture the local in Locavore — both its concrete and symbolic character. Locavore is a kind of nascent identity that emerges from constellations of social relationships, self-defining “food communities”, made up of consumers and farmers and chefs, and food writers and environmentalists of various stripes. These communities live in the blogosphere, tweets and other media as well as through face-to-face relationships and transactions. At their core are representations of the local — in foods, dishes, recipes, meals, places, and persons. Place-bound identities in some theoretically interesting ways transcend place. Drawing on classical anthropological theory and recent studies in cultural geography, we explore ways in which the local is invented and given representational power in the creation of face-to-face and digital communities. We address the implications for branding, marketing and for understanding the continued power of place-bound identities in the very constitution of digitized and globalized worlds.
Shopping at the Strand
Michael Donovan
Essay, 2010
Download File >This short memoir of graduate school book shopping describes the organic process through which a brand comes to life in shopping. It provides lessons for retail design and branding.
When Did Boredom Become an Emotion?
Rita Denny and Patricia Sunderland
QRCA Views, Winter 2008
Download File >Excerpted from a larger study involving participants in the US, UK, and NZ, this article suggests that the experience of boredom in the U.S. is rooted in missed opportunities for self-betterment.
Researching Cultural Metaphors in Action: Metaphors of Computing Technology in Contemporary U.S. Life
Rita Denny and Patricia Sunderland
Journal of Business Research 58(10), October 2005
Download File >In this paper, prepared for a La Londe Seminar, we illustrate the utility of cultural metaphor as an analytic tool and theoretical construct in consumer research. We take as our prime example the ways that computer and internet metaphors have impacted U.S. consumers.
Connections among People, Things, Images, and Ideas: La Habana to Pina and Back
Patricia Sunderland and Rita Denny
Consumption, Markets and Culture, September 2005.
Download File >This publication includes a video and print version of a photo essay of images taken in the fall of 2003. Through an analysis of the photographs, we tackle issues of representation, meaning creation and understanding — of marketplaces, consumption, brands, and culture.
The Anthropology of Shopping
Michael Donovan
Society for Applied Anthropology, Annual Meetings 2004
Download File >"Good" shopping environments (brick and mortar, paper, or electronic) provide the cues, symbols, and well-crafted spaces that engage the cultural imagination. This paper takes examples from recent fieldwork in consumer anthropology to examine how retail myths can come to life.
Being Mexican and American: Negotiating Ethnicity in the Practice of Market Research
Patricia Sunderland, Elizabeth G. Taylor, and Rita Denny
Human Organization 63(3), 2004
Download File >Based on experience conducting research among Mexican Americans, we discuss the value and dynamics of collaboration among researchers and respondents across ethnicities and disciplines.
Psychology vs. Anthropology: Where is Culture in Marketplace Ethnography?
Patricia Sunderland and Rita Denny
In Advertising Cultures, T. Malefyt and B. Moeran, eds. London: Berg, 2003
Download File >Buy the book on Amazon > Part of an edited collection, this chapter outlines the meaning and heuristic value of using a cultural rather than a psychological analysis in ethnographic consumer research.
What is Coffee in Bangkok?
Patricia Sunderland and Rita Denny
Anthropology News, November, 2002
Download File >These articles, drawing on a training exercise investigation of coffee in Bangkok, explore the uses of semiotic analysis in qualitative research and point to the necessity of cultural knowledge.
Strange Brew: How Semiotics Became Au Fait with Au Lait
Patricia Sunderland and Rita Denny
Research Magazine, November, 2002
Download File >These articles, drawing on a training exercise investigation of coffee in Bangkok, explore the uses of semiotic analysis in qualitative research and point to the necessity of cultural knowledge.
The Social Life of Brands
Michael Donovan
Association for Consumer Research, Annual Meeting, Austin, 2001
Download File >This essay examines the social nature of brands. It presents an anthropologist's view of brands' dual nature as symbols and things. It provides a consumer focused framework for understanding brand value and identity.
The Intimate Geography of Family Farms
Michael Donovan
Comparative Studies in Society and History, April, 2001
Download File >This article considers how global ideas about development are locally understood and the powerful role that these visions of development play in transforming the countryside in western Kenya. It includes implications for those who are interested in understanding processes of globalization, mobility, and place making, which have reverberations everywhere.
"You May Not Know It, But I'm Black": White Women's Self-Identification as Black
Patricia Sunderland
Ethnos 62(2), 1997
Download File >This paper discusses issues of ethnic identity in the U.S., showing how White women within the African American artistic world of jazz draw upon discourses of race and ethnicity in order to construct themselves as Black.
Speaking to Customers: The Anthropology of Communications
Rita Denny
In Contemporary Marketing and Consumer Behavior, J. Sherry, Jr. editor. NY: Sage, 1995
Download File >Buy the book on Amazon > This paper focuses on communications by utility companies to respond to customer concerns about EMFs in the 1980s in which the implicit (or presupposed) content of customers' words are explored. The paper suggests that all communications (advertising or otherwise) set up an expected frame or relationship with customers, a frame that is grounded by cultural symbols.
Ethnography in Action
The Cry for More Theory and The Cry of Practicality
Patricia Sunderland and Rita Denny
In Advancing Ethnography in Corporate Environments, edited by Brigitte Jordan, 2013
View Article >These chapters center on the dynamic tensions between theory and practicality in applied anthropological work, using case studies from our work to illuminate the ways that bringing theory into the work is a crucial aspect of the practical work that needs doing in consumer research.
When Ethnography REALLY WORKS
Michael Donovan
QRCA Views, Fall 2013
Download File >When ethnography really works, it changes the frame of understanding; it upends rather than confirms thinking. In the upending, category wisdom is often challenged and the impossible becomes possible, creating a win for clients, consumers and researchers.
QRCA Qualcast: Expanding the Parameters: When Ethnography Works
Rita Denny, Mike Donovan, Charley Scull and Patricia Sunderland
Thursday, November 1, 2012
View Article >Consumer Segmentation in Practice: An Ethnographic Account of Slippage
Patricia L. Sunderland and Rita M. Denny
In Inside Marketing: Practices, Ideologies, Devices, edited by Detlev Zwick and Julien Cayla, 2011
View Article >This chapter, a story of slippage in timelines and agendas, illuminates the inherent messiness, in essence the effervescence of humanity, embodied in consumer research and consumer segmentation.
Market Research, Webnography, and Chronic Disease
Charley Scull
American Anthropological Association, 2009 Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA
Download File >This paper was presented as part of a session titled: “How Anthropology Can Help End Healthcare as We Know It: Practicing Anthropology in (and on) the Medical System”. This paper weighs the strengths and weaknesses of the approach as the author describes forays into the world of online “ethnographic” research of chronic disease. Throughout the paper the author attempts to reconcile shrinking research budgets, the goals of pharmaceutical market research clients and the ethical concerns of the anthropological approach in this new digital environment.
Engaging Ethnography's Cultural Muscle
Rita Denny and Patricia Sunderland
QRCA Views, Fall 2008
Download File >A brief introduction and overview, this essay serves as a concise argument for the role and contribution of cultural analysis in ethnographic research.
Communicating with Clients
Rita Denny
In The collaboration of anthropologists and designers in the product development industry, S. Squires and B. Byrne, eds. Westport, CT: Greenwood. 2002
Download File >This chapter focuses on the representation of anthropology in consumer research.
Performers and Partners: Video Diaries in Ethnographic Research
Patricia Sunderland and Rita Denny
Qualitative Ascending: Harnessing its True Value. Amsterdam: ESOMAR, 2002.
Download File >This paper explores the uses of videotape in ethnographic consumer research practices, examining why video is embraced so strongly in today's U.S. market.
Glancing Possibilities
Patricia Sunderland
Anthropology News, April, 2000
Download File >This piece outlines the possibilities of conducting ethnographic, anthropologically informed analysis in short periods of time. Argued also is that in consumer and corporate contexts, fast-paced research is both a necessity and refraction of contemporary realities.
Making Markets
The Luminosity of the Local
Michael Donovan
EPIC2012 Proceedings
Download File >Conference Website This paper seeks to capture the local in Locavore — both its concrete and symbolic character. Locavore is a kind of nascent identity that emerges from constellations of social relationships, self-defining “food communities”, made up of consumers and farmers and chefs, and food writers and environmentalists of various stripes. These communities live in the blogosphere, tweets and other media as well as through face-to-face relationships and transactions. At their core are representations of the local — in foods, dishes, recipes, meals, places, and persons. Place-bound identities in some theoretically interesting ways transcend place. Drawing on classical anthropological theory and recent studies in cultural geography, we explore ways in which the local is invented and given representational power in the creation of face-to-face and digital communities. We address the implications for branding, marketing and for understanding the continued power of place-bound identities in the very constitution of digitized and globalized worlds.
Consumer Segmentation in Practice: An Ethnographic Account of Slippage
Patricia L. Sunderland and Rita M. Denny
In Inside Marketing: Practices, Ideologies, Devices, edited by Detlev Zwick and Julien Cayla, 2011
View Article >This chapter, a story of slippage in timelines and agendas, illuminates the inherent messiness, in essence the effervescence of humanity, embodied in consumer research and consumer segmentation.
Researching Cultural Metaphors in Action: Metaphors of Computing Technology in Contemporary U.S. Life
Rita Denny and Patricia Sunderland
Journal of Business Research 58(10), October 2005
Download File >In this paper, prepared for a La Londe Seminar, we illustrate the utility of cultural metaphor as an analytic tool and theoretical construct in consumer research. We take as our prime example the ways that computer and internet metaphors have impacted U.S. consumers.
The Anthropology of Shopping
Michael Donovan
Society for Applied Anthropology, Annual Meetings 2004
Download File >"Good" shopping environments (brick and mortar, paper, or electronic) provide the cues, symbols, and well-crafted spaces that engage the cultural imagination. This paper takes examples from recent fieldwork in consumer anthropology to examine how retail myths can come to life.
Being Mexican and American: Negotiating Ethnicity in the Practice of Market Research
Patricia Sunderland, Elizabeth G. Taylor, and Rita Denny
Human Organization 63(3), 2004
Download File >Based on experience conducting research among Mexican Americans, we discuss the value and dynamics of collaboration among researchers and respondents across ethnicities and disciplines.