The Significance of Enterprise Anthropology in Asia

Anthropology is known for its qualitative methods and its body of theory which is based on 150 years of study of human origins and cultures. This vast body of knowledge provides a base for the continuing study of humans in all contexts and twenty-first-century anthropology includes an array of subfields specializing in human behavior in diverse contexts. Enterprise anthropology is one of these subfields and this volume captures some of the valuable work being conducted in this field in Asia. It is a welcome addition to the literature on business anthropology not only for the quality of the research but also because it demonstrates the growth of the field in Asia. In this chapter, I first discuss enterprise anthropology and its relation to the field of business anthropology. Then I provide a brief history of the field’s development to put the importance of this current volume in context.