(Reader beware… this one is personal). I recently had friends over this weekend, and they asked the question that I often get, “How do you use anthropology in the private sector?” Well, this time I was more prepared than usual. I had recently had a lot of time to think through this question as I spent a couple of weeks in the hospital dealing a fairly scary health event.
One of my husband’s friends called me while I was in the hospital and said something to me, which although seemingly simple on its surface, was truly earth shattering at the time. He told me, “You have to have hope.”
Hope. It totally blew me away. How do I get that… where does hope come from? I started to think about the places where I seen hope or where and when people have talked to me about hope. And that’s when it hit me that out in “the field” anthropologists are always talking to people about their hopes.
Traditionally, anthropologists go into the field (years in Thailand, or Papua New Guinea, or post Communist Russia) believing that we are going to ask a lot of questions, or really stimulate a lot of discussion around a wide array of topics political systems, religious beliefs, marriage rites, daily rituals, educational processes, and the like. But as our informants, our collaborators bring us into their social and cultural worlds much of what they speak of is tied to their hopes and dreams, their sense of themselves in the world they inhabit and how they seek to find happiness within this world.
In fact, this is no different from what we talk to our clients about here at Context. We go out into the field-Mom’s kitchen, the community playground, a yoga class, the local Target-and we spend time with people striving to pursue small hopes. By small I don’t mean inconsequential; indeed these hopes are very consequential. Rather I mean that they are rooted in the reality of people’s lives. These folks are not dreaming up big schemes; rather they are looking to get through the complications of each day happy and whole, and surrounded by loved ones who are also happy and whole.
So, when marketers are trying to understand where their products fit into peoples’ lives what they need to look for is hope.
June 25th, 2008 - Posted in Anthropology, Behavior, Consumer Products, Ethnography, Huh? | |
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