Tett thinks we can — and should — shine the spotlight on our own peculiar and exotic natures. Admittedly, this creates some philosophical problems, most obviously how we can best ensure that our subjective observations are objective. Nevertheless, it’s easy enough to sympathise with Tett’s position ... Refreshingly, Tett is not afraid of self-admonishment ... Tett is highly critical of my 'tribe' of economists, demanding that we stop focusing on money and markets and spend a lot more time considering “externalities” such as the environment. This is unfair, perhaps reflecting Tett’s excessive exposure to economists and financiers expounding narrow-minded 'Davos-think' ... Tett’s book may be anthropological, but it also embraces a style of accessible economic writing that, sadly, went out of fashion as the mathematicians and their models took over. Anthro-Vision reminds me of John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society (1958) and The New Industrial State (1967). Some economists may regard this as a criticism. I can think of no higher praise.

[Tett] comes pretty close to asserting that a field that arose in the 19th century to help the imperial West confirm the 'inferiority' of colonized people, and that changed in the mid-20th century into the polar opposite of its colonizing origins, is a panacea for our present-day ills. Some may find this claim too sweeping; others will be swept along by her enthusiasm ... Her conclusions are bright and buoyant—cynics might say a little blithe.

Tett makes a compelling case ... With case studies and examples ranging from Google’s errors to pandemic beards, Tett explains anthropological revelations invisible to computers ... Inventing words in the hope of creating a brand has become a tiresome fad in business publishing, but 'anthro-vision' is a useful way to illuminate much that can’t be seen any other way — and so are philosophy, literature and history ... In an age obsessed with hard science, it’s becoming painfully obvious that the so-called 'soft' subjects — social sciences and the humanities — have the power to reveal what otherwise remains obscure. One of the glories of Anthro-Vision is that it never argues (as many do) that its way of seeing is the only way. It’s a timely call for decision-makers to wean themselves off their dependency on big data and embrace the full complexity of human life.

... this being a book geared towards businesspeople, Anthro-vision jettisons ethnography and instead adopts the trappings of the business book genre ... It’s telling that the most concrete result Tett relays is not even attributable to corporate anthropology per se, as is the fact that every other example of creating a better world through anthropology she provides is a counterfactual, not something that actually happened ... What Tett’s certainty about the value of anthro-vision misses is the possibility that people don’t want to see alternate perspectives, or that they just don’t care, not that they don’t have the tools to see them. This also seems true of the climate crisis, in which the problem is less an inability to foresee and more of an inability, or unwillingness, to act ... Is it possible for a corporate anthropologist to speak “truth to power” without getting co-opted by it? Tett glances by this question in the postscript, the only time she directly addresses other anthropologists. She acknowledges that the idea of working for businesses might leave a sour taste in the mouths of many...But she has no answer to their ethical concerns, as she can only imagine the anthropologist’s fate as one caught between academic irrelevance and real-world impact, no matter how minimal or detrimental ... Perhaps the idea of the corporate anthropologist lures so many because it straddles perceived opposites: wild/civilized, academia/business, impractical/practical. But its longevity is evidence of anthropology’s potency as a marketing tool more than a measure of business’s use to the humanities and social sciences—which is as illusory as Suchman’s green button.

It’s hard to argue with her common-sense case that companies should strive to take an outsider’s view: 'There are multiple ways to live,” she writes, “and everyone seems weird to someone else.' Packed full of insight, this has the power to change minds.