It’s becoming trendy for Corporate Marketeers and Research departments to call themselves Anthropologists or call what they do Ethnography. And while I myself do this to some degree (I actually prefer phenomenologist but I’m basically doing the same thing) I totally understand the frustration expressed by academic anthropologists.

But the bigger issue for academics is the fear that corporate anthropology is an ethical free-fire zone. “If there isn’t an IRB [institutional review board], a sort of neutral third party that watches out for the interests of those who are being researched, then obviously there is cause for concern,”

Roberto González, a cultural anthropologist who teaches at San Jose State University, goes so far as to argue that those who don’t follow the American Anthropological Association’s code of ethics should no longer be considered anthropologists at all. “Part of being an anthropologist is following a code of ethics, and if you don’t do that, you’re not an anthropologist”—just as you’re no longer fit to call yourself a doctor if you do unauthorized experiments on your patients. “Of course,” Hugh Gusterson adds, “we don’t license anthropologists, so we can’t un-license them either.”

Marketers can adopt the practices but if they don’t also adopt the ethics then it’s like security guards calling themselves police officers. One is hired to protect the people and one is hired to protect corporate property. There’s some overlap but it’s very superficial. 

One of the main things I see lacking in corporate anthropology is the simple process of stopping and asking what harm this study might do. 

A primary ethical obligation shared by anthropologistsis to do no harm. It is imperative that, before any anthropological work be undertaken —in communities, with non-human primates or other animals, at archaeological and paleoanthropological sites — each researcher think through the possible ways that the research might cause harm. 

It’s something that doesn’t even have to be done formally but it’s something I do personally. It’s one of the reasons I feel so much more comfortable using anthropological practices in my customer experience role than I ever did in a marketing role. By definition my job is to look out for the customer. 

So if you’re out there doing applied anthropology, good on you. Keep it up, I fully support it. But at least take a few minutes and read the ethics. 

Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.

But, oh, my God, the terrible things these people do to words. It’s like watching some sadist work over a baby lamb with a rusty crowbar and a broken gin bottle. The names of these startups sound like the products of an aggressive brain tumor on the frontal lobe. Crowdegy, Placeling, Kouply, QuoteRobot, Appthwack, Makegood, Onthego, Nickler, Kahal, Tanzio, Taskk. They’re all whimsical and unique in exactly the same way.

What do all these words that were seemingly invented by a wizard in a kid’s picture book do? They each solve a specific problem. You ever have trouble organizing an office softball team? Don’t you hate looking at the long list of search results that happen when you type a query into google? (“The problem is…the list.”) Isn’t it awful, having an abundance of news sources? Do you have too many tasks? One pitch begins with a simple, honest mission statement: ““There’s a big problem we all face every day: Information.”

They praise the “cool ecosystem” between a traveler and a concierge. They assure each other that ““Our retail metrics are cost-effective.” They use “input” as a verb, as in, “They turn to our app and input the selections.” “Mobile multitasking in real time” is a promised result. Nobody communicates, they “engage.” Everything is “curated.” They pronounce “integral” like “in-trickle.” They ask each other, “What’s the biggest challenge going forward?” and they decide together that “it’s a marketing challenge, at the end of the day.” They discuss how one app is “a purpose-built tool” with “added value.” There are no words, no photographs, no graphic design. It’s all “content,” which is “consumed.” The event’s website features a Twitter testimonial that reads, “Startup Riot was so good yesterday I couldn’t tweet. I was just deeply engaged in meaningful 1-on-1 conversations.” It’s linguistic nihilism, in which everything means nothing and nothing means anything at all.