AnthroCurrents – April 3, 2015

A biweekly look at recent stories on anthropology and practicing anthropologists in the popular media

• South Africa’s Business Day reports on Ford’s use of social scientists to drive innovation in their product line. This desire is reportedly due in part to globalization: expanding into markets where consumers have different values and needs requires using professionals who can uncover that information.
• The Royal Academy of the Arts hired a firm to perform ethnographic research with visitors of their Summer Exhibition. Research magazine online describes this effort, which involved Northstar, an international consulting group and perhaps your next employer.
• David Graeber writes about Ferguson and the ways local governments are literally sucking the wealth out of their citizens in Gawker.
• It’s happened at last. The AAA has taken a stand on Native American mascots.
• An estimated 10% of the population of the Philippines are migrant workers, many of them parents. The Atlantic examines the practice of long-distance parenting among these migrants and includes the perspective of anthropologist Clement Camposano of the University of Asia and the Pacific.