Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Gillian Tett, anthropologist and journalist

Gillian Tett is assistant editor at the Financial Times, and this article in The Guardian should be read by all anthropologists. It notes how her anthropology helps her in her work, and how anthropology, along with experience in Tajikistan's civil war and in Japan, has prepared her to see the world as culturally created and frail at that. When struggling because of her lack of financial knowledge when she needed to write about foreign exchange, "I thought, you knownwhat, this is just like being in Tajikistan. All I have to do is learn a new language. This is a bunch of people who have dressed up this activity with a whole bunch of rituals and cultural patterns, and if I can lern Tajik, I can jolly well learn how the FX market works!" Well said.

See "On The Money" by Laura Barton in The Guardian (31 October 2008)