{"title":"How an Animation Production Studio Survived the Pandemic: The Case of Graphinica, Inc.","authors":"Naotaka Hirasawa, Ryotaro Mihara","doi":"10.22439/jba.v11i2.6778","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/jba.v11i2.6778","url":null,"abstract":"The following account has been generated through an interlocution between Ryotaro Mihara, an anthropologist, and Nao Hirasawa, the CEO of Graphinica, Inc. Graphinica is a Tokyo-based computer graphics (CG) animation production studio. It is well recognized among the global animation community for a number of popular animated titles, including Expelled from Paradise (Seiji Mizushima, dir. 2014), Hello World (Tomohiko Ito, dir. 2019), and Netflix original Record of Ragnarok series (Masao Ookubo, dir. 2021). Hirasawa is also the founder of Arch Inc., an animation planning and producing company. Mihara has been conducting his fieldwork at Arch since 2018, observing their works of developing animation projects as well as participating in them, especially their attempts to expand their business scope outside Japan, as Arch’s “Global Business Advisor.” Leveraging this connection, Mihara interviewed Hirasawa regarding his experience in leading Graphinica in the midst of the pandemic, and discussed the implications on the future of the animation business. Hereinafter, subject “I” refers to Hirasawa and “we” refers to Graphinica, unless otherwise stated. The following account is, however, a","PeriodicalId":348499,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Anthropology","volume":"103 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132150410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Organizing Cultural Change: Leveraging the Four Forces Framework","authors":"M. Hill, M. Moussa","doi":"10.22439/jba.v11i2.6777","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/jba.v11i2.6777","url":null,"abstract":"Ron Johnson boasted a stellar resume. Educated at Harvard and Stanford, he spent twelve years at Apple, designing the retail strategy that birthed the fabulously successful Apple Stores. He went on to a stint at Target, where, as vice president of merchandising, he launched the eye-catching line of Michael Graves products and, according to retail experts, made the stuffy company “hip.” Then he migrated to J.C. Penney, the ailing low-cost department store chain, where he assumed the top spot in late 2011. At the time, reflecting on why he had taken the job, he said:","PeriodicalId":348499,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Anthropology","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134484536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Like Clockwork: Experts and Expertise in Stockholm’s Startup and Innovation Ecosystem","authors":"A. VandenBroek","doi":"10.22439/jba.v11i2.6780","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/jba.v11i2.6780","url":null,"abstract":"SthlmTech, Stockholm’s startup ecosystem, is famous for being an innovation hub that produces more billion-dollar startups per capita than anywhere else except Silicon Valley. This success, people within the community say, is down to the ecosystem of organizations and experts that facilitate the creation and growth of startups via a well-organized curriculum that guides entrepreneurs through the “business” of starting-up. In this article, I examine this understanding of the ecosystem as a neutral, smooth, and ordered apparatus for maximizing the speed and efficiency of innovation. Specifically, I challenge how this popular conception of the ecosystem conceptualizes expertise and experts as mechanistic components ready to be deployed along the path of entrepreneurs training. By analyzing the expertise of ecosystem experts in practice, this paper aims to demonstrate what the ecosystem curriculum foregrounds and what it obscures and how the ideas behind this curriculum shape much more than routine business procedure.","PeriodicalId":348499,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Anthropology","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124426816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kasper Pape Helligsøe, Rikke Rønnau, Peter Bredsdorff-Larsen
{"title":"Appropriate Disturbances: Team Development in Sports and Business","authors":"Kasper Pape Helligsøe, Rikke Rønnau, Peter Bredsdorff-Larsen","doi":"10.22439/jba.v11i2.6779","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/jba.v11i2.6779","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we will present an anthropological research project that explores possible benefits of comparing a professional handball club and a software company. More specifically, we turn our attention to the phenomenon of “disturbances.” In workplace contexts, disturbances are most often experienced as hindering focus and immersion, thus having a negative impact on job performance. However, by exploring everyday practices in the Danish professional handball club Bjerringbro-Silkeborg Handball, it becomes apparent that (former) head coach Peter Bredsdorff Larsen deliberately uses what he calls “appropriate disturbances” to provoke change and give direction to processes of team development. This causes us to ask one of the fundamental questions of our overall research project: what form would such appropriate disturbances take in a software company? In an effort to explore this question, we describe our experiments with the concept of “reflection time” as an appropriate disturbance to team development in the software company Systematic. We argue that such disturbances can create moments and spaces in which the potential for improvement and development emerges through a temporary destabilization of everyday life in the workplace.","PeriodicalId":348499,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Anthropology","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130562166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dual Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic","authors":"Julia Gluesing, Zachary C. Stevenson","doi":"10.22439/jba.v11i1.6621","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/jba.v11i1.6621","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":348499,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Anthropology","volume":"290 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124391062","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Stranger to Neighbor: Field Entry in the Time of Death and COVID in the Hi-Lo Country of New Mexico","authors":"Ken C. Erickson","doi":"10.22439/jba.v11i1.6624","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/jba.v11i1.6624","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":348499,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Anthropology","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127172733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Business Anthropology, Podcasting, and the Pandemic","authors":"Matt Artz","doi":"10.22439/jba.v11i1.6611","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/jba.v11i1.6611","url":null,"abstract":"On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. It was four days after I gave a TEDx Talk and just over a month since I participated in the University of North Texas’ Applied Anthropology Expo. Both inperson events provided fertile ground for discussing my findings, practice, and the merits of anthropology. But as the reality of the pandemic sank in, it became clear that I would not have a similar opportunity for some time.","PeriodicalId":348499,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Anthropology","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115082839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Covid-19 Exposed the Entrenchment of Neoliberal Ideals Within Female Friendship","authors":"Isabel Goddard","doi":"10.22439/jba.v11i1.6623","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/jba.v11i1.6623","url":null,"abstract":"As hook-up culture overtakes dating, the average age at marriage increases, and romantic relationships expand beyond historical expectations of heterosexuality, friendship has become an increasingly central relationship for many college students (Demir, 2010; Holland, 1990). Through an ethnographic study of undergraduate and graduate student friendship networks, I examine how Covid-19 highlights the way in which forms of emotional work within female friendship take on a neoliberal shape as they pervade into student’s understandings and aspirations for themselves as self-determined and continually improving individuals (Hochschild, 1983; Gill, 2018). I argue that as market principles encroach into the intimate sphere of personal relationships, requiring the honing of personality traits such as resilience, flexibility, and relentless positivity, friendship becomes both a tool and a barometer of self-development and in turn, self-value among young adult women (Springer et al, 2016).","PeriodicalId":348499,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Anthropology","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125684036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Entropic Event: Introduction to the Pandemic Issue","authors":"Nancy Ameen, G. Urban","doi":"10.22439/jba.v11i1.6610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/jba.v11i1.6610","url":null,"abstract":"A disruptive, potentially catastrophic event unfolds over time. How do human beings with their culture respond? Do they persist in habituated ways, like those depicted in the movie Don’t Look Up, carrying on with their customs as second nature as their world breaks into pieces, like Hawking’s teacup? Can they have efficacy in changing and adapting during the time course of the unfolding? Are the effects of such entropic events always negative, or can something positive emerge during the unfolding? What does the response tell us about the cultural and social worlds in which it unfolds? These are questions that motivated our solicitation of essays by business anthropologists.","PeriodicalId":348499,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Anthropology","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127973643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ethnography in Pandemic Times","authors":"T. Salverda","doi":"10.22439/jba.v11i1.6620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/jba.v11i1.6620","url":null,"abstract":"Some months before the Covid-19 pandemic brought the world to a halt I last visited my research site in Zambia, where, a few hours’ drive from the capital Lusaka, I have been following a European agricultural (land) investment since 2015. Until the pandemic, I had been conducting research there every year. This offered me the chance to obtain a good understanding of how such a large-scale investment develops over time, and the impact it has on rural residents (see Salverda 2019a; 2019b; 2021; Salverda and Nkonde 2021). Since my last visit in 2019, however, I have not been able to return to Zambia. Covid-19 restrictions have prevented me from travelling, both because travel options have dwindled and because employers (the University of Vienna in my case) have prohibited employees from travelling to countries within a certain (Covid-19) risk category. As with many other cases, Zambia’s risk level has fluctuated (as seen from an Austrian perspective).","PeriodicalId":348499,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Anthropology","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122446217","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}