This post concludes my December series on anthropology’s fundamental frameworks for understanding culture and organizations. I’ve prepared it for friends in the Agile community who have shown interest in scholarly reference points to inform their approaches to speaking and coaching.  Special thanks to Lisette Sutherland, who gave a presentation on Tribal Leadership at an Agile HR conference in Stockholm, Sweden and afterwards asked for some feedback.  – ES

Majoring in Cultural Anthropology began a trajectory of understanding how very much I do not understand.  Our own culture always constrains our understanding of other cultures.  This affects our development as an individual, our ability to communicate and the quality of our relations with people.

I used principles of Anthropology to climb out of the paper bag I was in, namely the American South.  As a white, privileged woman, my cultural lens had sculpted my viewpoint and behavior in ways I sought to change as I became aware that they caused harm and pain.  Of course, this is an ongoing process of awareness, acceptance and just plain muddling through.

With perspective gained through academic study I found it possible to correct for cognitive biases, navigate and contribute to cultural diversity, and learn to enter complex organizations and communities with respect and exit with mutual trust and new friendships.  Today as a business professional I draw upon my training in Cultural Anthropology to quickly map out underlying power structures, conduct ethnographic research and function effectively as a participant-observer.  I believe the discipline offers key insights on many of the problems that Agilists face in positioning their role as change agents inside organizations.

In a paper called Business Anthropology and the Technology Company, Daisy Rojas writes, “the use of anthropological practice within technology companies brings about understanding of something outside of engineering processes.  This may include human thought processes and methods of interaction.”  She quotes from Scott Ambler’s work Agile Modeling: Effective Practices for eXtreme Programming and the Unified Process (2002) in discussing information flow among teams about how new technologies are used or built.

I had the good fortune to meet up with Daisy in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the holiday break and chat about influential concepts in 20th century Cultural Anthropology.  (Previous two posts cover earlier periods.)

“Every technological system functions within a social system and is therefore conditioned by it.” Leslie A. White

White examined major historical events such as the Agricultural Revolution and the Fuel Revolution.  He looked at transportation, energy, medicine and communication in terms of social change and patterns of adaptation.

“Life inevitably diversifies,” Marshall D. Sahlins.

Sahlins defined diversity as the production of new cultural forms evolving out of old forms.  He saw progress as the tendency of forms to become increasingly complex.

“Anthropology will one day have a choice of becoming history, or nothing.” E. E. Evans-Pritchard

Pritchard turned a reflexive lens on his own discipline and helped Anthropology critique itself.  He accurately predicted a shift of the emphasis among anthropologists toward contemporary studies.

Levi-Strauss contributed a view of kinship based on alliances.  In much of his work he sought out a “deep grammar” of underlying structures within the human mind to explain culture in terms of contrasting binary opposites.

“A ritual is a stereotyped sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects…designed to influence forces on behalf of the actors’ goals and interests”  Victor Turner.

From the early to mid-1950s, Turner lived among the Ndembu, a central African tribe and studied their society and religious practices.  He contributed the concept of liminality as a state of being betwixt and between a culture’s recognized categories.

“Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.” Clifford Geertz

Geertz interpreted the symbols that give rise to meaning in a culture.  He believed that cultural symbols are a primary source of order in people’s lives.  His writing has a distinct literary flair.  My favorite is an essay called “Thick Description” about all the different ways an you can interpret a wink and the ethnographer’s role in discerning among them.

Today, more in the Agile community are coming to see, understand and promote the value of anthropologists’ contributions to their approaches to leading change in organizations.

The Self Management Institute published my reflections on Victor Turner’s concept of Communitas earlier this year   http://self-managementinstitute.org/blog/entry/outsider_wisdom_self_organization_and_12_step_recovery/   Very similar anthropological concepts have been woven into the framework for Open Agile Adoption, as described in this article:  http://newtechusa.net/agile/victor-turner-elinor-slomba/

Here are some additional resources:

High Points in Anthropology

http://www.amazon.com/High-Points-Anthropology-Paul-Bohannan/dp/0075539772/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387076369&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=High+Ponts+in+Anthropology

Conformity and Conflict, Readings in Cultural Anthropology

http://www.amazon.com/Conformity-Conflict-Readings-Cultural-Anthropology/dp/0205234100

The Cultural Experience: Ethnography in Complex Society

https://kindle.amazon.com/work/the-cultural-experience-ethnography-complex/B000AI6HCW/1577663640

The Anthropology Network, an open LinkedIn Group

Anthropology and Design, an open LinkedIn Group

Lisette Sutherland is an expert on remote collaboration and community-building.  We are presently gathering case studies for a book about working remotely.  If you have a story to tell on the subject, please reach out to us: @lightling and @artsint.   The results will help others and improve the world of work.  

Daisy Rojas can be reached at the University of Virginia.  Her paper was published in the International Journal for Business Anthropology: http://www.na-businesspress.com/IJBA/forsman_abstract.html#!

This post continues a primer on Cultural Anthropology for friends in the Agile community who have shown curiosity in the discipline’s perspectives on culture change.

 Recap:  Anthropology distinguished itself from the other branches of social science by attempting to retain a comprehensive view of humankind and by an emphasis on empirical data.   For Early Attempts at Explaining Cultural Differences, and Data Gathering, see earlier post:  https://artsinterstices.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/from-anthro-to-agile-culture-in-context/

The influence of 20th century politics focused attention on the interplay between individuals and institutions.  This phase of the discipline’s development pushed themes like social control to the forefront.

“How contradictory it is to admit that the individual is himself the author of a machine which has for its essential role his domination and constraint.” Emile Durkheim

Durkheim’s main theme was social solidarity.  He wanted to understand how a society holds its members together and prevents alienation.

“The most important spiritual mechanism is the one which obliges us to make a return gift for a gift received.” Marcel Mauss

Mauss analyzed gift-giving.  He outlined rituals of exchange which form a kind of “moral economy” that can influence status in a hierarchy.

“An institution is a group of people united or organized for a purpose.  They have a charter or explanation, and they have the technology with which to achieve, or strive to achieve, that purpose.” Bronislaw Malinowski

Malinowski raised the standards for exacting fieldwork.  He focused on how culture functions to help man achieve seven basic needs: nutrition, reproduction, bodily comforts, safety, relaxation, movement and growth.

“An economic system is is a set of relations between persons and groups which maintains and is maintained by the circulation of goods and services.” A.R. Radcliffe-Brown

Radcliffe-Brown put forward the the view that all parts of a social system work together with harmony or internal consistency.  This he called Functional Unity.

The next post in this series is Cultures Respond to Complexity.   For additional information, see these resources:

High Points in Anthropology

http://www.amazon.com/High-Points-Anthropology-Paul-Bohannan/dp/0075539772/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387076369&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=High+Ponts+in+Anthropology

Conformity and Conflict, Readings in Cultural Anthropology

http://www.amazon.com/Conformity-Conflict-Readings-Cultural-Anthropology/dp/0205234100

The Cultural Experience: Ethnography in Complex Society

https://kindle.amazon.com/work/the-cultural-experience-ethnography-complex/B000AI6HCW/1577663640

The Anthropology Network, an open LinkedIn Group

Anthropology and Design, an openLinkedIn Group

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cultural-Anthropology/113886345302023

Cultural Anthropology is the Flagship Journal for the Society of Cultural Anthropology

This series on Anthro for Agile is intended to provide an index of ideas to help ground and articulate cultural change efforts.   SPECIAL THANKS to Lisette Sutherland of happymelly.com who requested the references.   She has a talk available on Tribal Leadership, and the two of us are presently collecting case studies on Remote Collaborations.  Tweet to me @artsint and Lisette @lightling. 

“First, swap out the baby. Then we’ll talk.”

On Monday my co-work space, The Grove in New Haven, Connecticut, toasts this occasion.

Navigate Complexity 

Nov 2013-Feb 2014

a visual exhibition 

& open sourced catalogue

produced by E. Slomba Arts Interstices

The artists included are Amy Bock, Tracie Cheng, Christine Chiocchio, Ellen Cochise Corso, Giada Crispiels, Jennifer Davies, Bryant Davis, Daniel Eugene, John Fallon, Alexis Granwell, Luke Hanscom, Jaime Krikscium, Mark Krueger, Judy Rosenthal, Joanna Schiff, Rashmi Talpade, and Mark Williams.

My friend and associate Stuart Scott asked me to share some of the “lively messiness” of curation.  This he contrasts to the “sanitized order” of most gallery settings.

Curation is mainly a game of association.  The game mirrors the theme of this particular show.  I like to find out what artists are already thinking about, what’s floating around out there in the ether.

First I guess.  Then I check and see if my guesses are relevant.  I do this by talking to artists.

I play around arranging works by artists who’ve been thinking about similar things.  Then I stand back, squint and see how it all looks.

In this way, an exhibition creates opportunities for artists to become curious about new things and see their work in new contexts.  This is fun and messy, sometimes frustrating and anxiety producing, always surprising and inspiring.

Daniel Eugene and Jaime Kriksciun on Installation Day

Since I do not own the spaces in which I curate, there is also that relationship to consider and negotiate.  Slate Ballard, founder of The Grove, was extraordinary to work with in this regard.  Here is a conversation we had during the process of putting together this show.

Me: I’m afraid to ask you this, but can we drill into the wall?

Slate: Not the concrete ones.

Me: Okay, which ones aren’t concrete?

Slate:  (Shrugs.) Probably this one. (Knocks on the wall to doublecheck.)  Yeah, that one would be okay.

Me: Cool!  Thanks!

The work in question is a peephole piece.   A few years ago, artist Mark Williams ran a successful crowdfunding campaign to tour Luray Caverns so he could draw upon authentic, first-hand experience using cave imagery in his work.  

I met Mark visiting Erector Square, the former Erector Set factory now housing the studios of hundreds of artists.  I asked if he’d be interested in creating a site-specific peephole similar to the one inside his studio door.  

I didn’t get around to asking Slate about this until the day before Mark was scheduled to come take some measurements.  That’s what you call the “last responsible moment.”  

Here’s Mark finishing up with the wall in question.  I had taped one of his cavern postcards there as a place saver so he would know where to start cutting and drilling.

And  here is the wall now, after StartUp Weekend took place in the space.  I hope Mark won’t mind.

As you can see, I’m not possessive of the exhibition’s real estate. We did take that stuff down, though, for the opening.

So that’s how I like to curate.  This does in fact create a lively messiness.  Another case in point is Ellen Corso’s Kissing Project.

For six years she’s been taking pictures of couples kissing outdoors.  Her motto in documenting these moments is “There are more good people in the world than bad.   There is more love in the world than hate.  The world is not a dangerous place.”

All of the feedback was positive until we installed some of her Kiss pictures above the urinal.  Immediately I began hearing comments from men’s bathroom users who were uncomfortable with their placement and content.

I mentioned it to Ellen, to which she replied, “it’s good to make them feel something.”  To date, we haven’t moved the kisses from the urinal area, but it’s still an open question.  Exploring the viewers’ feelings of discomfort, one coworker revealed, “first, you have to swap out the baby.  Then check back and we’ll talk.”  We discovered the trigger!

Italian artist Giada Crispiel’s work is an amazing transformation of newsprint into an elegant, twining organism.  It breathes into the space and adds a touch of whimsy.  Another coworker posted to our community Facebook page:  “really adds a buzz to the place. Well  sited!”

Time to work on the catalogue, which will be posted on LinkedIn for open source comments on the theme.  Below is the starting blurb…

Navigating complexity is all about patterns.  Selectively reducing the data we absorb is an act of creative intention.  The world has become a fiercely complex competition for headspace, so we must design criteria for engagement.  The quality of the paths we find and the sense we make reflect not only trust in our relationships but also our orientation to uncertainty.  

Joanna Schiff, Watching

The theme of complexity showed up at this year’s Drucker Forum #gpdf13.  Toronto-based thinker, author and strategist Roger Martin kicked off his Plenary session on How Leaders Should Embrace Complexity.

In response to the event, complexity theorist Esko Kilpi tweeted, “It is time for the science of uncertainty in management.”  In an essay titled “Complexity, Patterns and Links,” Kilpi writes “Complexity refers to a pattern, a movement in time that is at the same time predictable and unpredictable, knowable and unknowable. Healthy, ordinary, everyday life is always complex, no matter what the situation is. There is absolutely no linearity in the world of human beings.”  http://eskokilpi.blogging.fi/2012/03/27/complexity-and-links-2/

Luke Hanscom, from the Van Dyke Series

All for now as we navigate complexity.  I can’t wait to toast the artists at the opening Monday night.  It’s open to the public at 760 Chapel Street in downtown New Haven, 5:30-7:30pm, where the works will be for sale.   And if you feel curiosity, enthusiasm or desire to contribute to the catalog essays, please know you will have an opportunity very soon.

Tracie Cheng, Relief

Yours in artfulness,

Elinor