A Random Walk

Not one of the twenty anthropologists I interviewed had pursued anthropology as a path into business. In fact, none of them even knew that such a path existed upon starting their programs. Most hoped for tenure track professor positions. After all, why else would one get an advanced degree in anthropology? It is common sense that if you want to go into business, then you go to business school. Many were neither exposed nor encouraged by academia to explore a trajectory into business. Nonetheless, each of my “academic anthropologists” ultimately was employed in for-profit business contexts as an anthropologist. Referring to anthropologist Mary Butler’s concept of “a random walk” (Butler 2006), Susan Squires captured perfectly a theme that was pervasive across my interviews: