Articles

This concluding commentary argues that large language models relocate the expertise required to build computational tools, making it practical for anthropologists to build their own tools and to treat building as a way of knowing.

This introduction to the Human Organization special issue on anthropology and AI returns to cybernetics to describe human-AI relations as a recursive loop, and asks who designs that loop, under what conditions, and toward whose goals.

As AI adoption accelerates across organizations, business anthropology stands at the threshold of an emerging agentic turn characterized by AI systems capable of delegated autonomous action, goal-directed reasoning, and participation in research itself.

This essay reframes discourse around large language models by drawing on anthropological and linguistic theories of magic, arguing that effective prompt construction functions as ritual magic and that AI forms a mutual cybernetic relationship rather than serving as a singular tool.

This introduction to JBA’s themed issue on AI and business anthropology traces what nine essays found: a field mid-conversation about whether contemporary AI represents a fundamental shift for the discipline or a cumulative extension of the digital turn already underway.

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems increasingly mediate access to knowledge, anthropologists face questions about how to engage with these technologies constructively. In this article I demonstrate how pairing large language models (LLMs) with knowledge graphs, an approach called neuro-symbolic AI, can transform how we engage with our own disciplinary scholarship. I constructed the SfAA Bibliographic…

This study analyzes search keyword data to examine what career pathways people associate with anthropological identity when explicitly framing job searches around disciplinary training. Using search engine keyword data collected in October 2025, the analysis examines 42,290 monthly searches across 2,880 unique keywords containing “anthropology” or its subfield names.

This article argues for the establishment of AI anthropology as a recognized subfield, integrating the critical study of AI, AI-enhanced research methods, and anthropological contributions to AI development.

This paper introduces multi-agent ethnography (MAE), an approach that positions LLM-based AI agents as configurable collaborators within distributed human−AI research networks. MAE extends anthropology’s tradition of methodological innovation—from multi-sited to multi-species ethnography—by incorporating AI agents as research partners across the entire research lifecycle.

As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) emerges as the latest technological gold rush, this preliminary study examines how entrepreneurs made sense of this transformative moment in the early months of ChatGPT. Through semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs adopting GenAI, observations of AI creators in Silicon Valley, and computational analysis of our qualitative data, as well as Twitter…

This article explores sandboxing as an anthropological approach to emerging technology engagement, examining how practitioners can create bounded experimental spaces for testing new ideas and innovations within applied anthropological practice.

The evolution of search engines necessitates a shift in digital marketing for companies, products, services and personal brands towards optimising for artificial intelligence and knowledge algorithms. This paper investigates the significance of search, assistive and answer engines in the future of digital marketing, and the critical role of multimodality, including text, image, video and, potentially,…

This article examines the informed consent challenges posed by direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies, drawing on ethnographic research with consumers who were largely unaware of the extent to which genetic companies could use or profit from their biological data.

This essay examines the emerging “digital turn” in business anthropology, a phenomenon propelled by the increasing prevalence and influence of digital technologies. Despite the significant underrepresentation of digital anthropology in current literature within the Journal of Business Anthropology, its relevance to the traditionally focused areas of organizational culture, marketing, consumer research, advertising, and user experience…

This article proposes ten speculative predictions for the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on anthropology, demonstrating that AI is not merely a tool, but a future transformative force in the discipline. The predictions span disruption across all five fields of anthropology, the role of AI as a collaborative partner, its ability to transform ethnography and…

The paper explores the potential for combining anthropology, data science, and artificial intelligence to create a transdisciplinary practice capable of modeling and interpreting human culture. It proposes an Ethnographic Semantic Data Modeling (EKSDM) approach to combine ethnographic practices with semantic data modeling techniques for greater context and explainability.

This article examines the role of podcasting as a medium for business anthropology during the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring how digital audio platforms created new opportunities for anthropological knowledge sharing and public engagement.

As algorithms become increasingly responsible for discovering information, how we choose to design them will have a significant impact on our collective lived experience. One example is how algorithmic bias affects the estimated 50 million people that make up the creator economy.

My latest piece titled How to Improve Consumer DNA Tests is now published in the American Anthropological Association’s Anthropology News Genetics issue, I discuss improvement areas for the direct-to-consumer DNA testing industry.

Climate change is considered a significant public health threat that affects human health both directly and indirectly. It is projected that between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause an additional 250,000 deaths annually and over the next 15 years to push more than 100 million people into poverty.