[The Typing Baker] Anthropology, a Tool to Escape Repeated Trial and Error

Economic Models and Big Data... The Modern Person's 'Illusion of Knowing'
Crisis Arising from Blind Faith in Advanced Tools
Solving through Anthropology Approaching Culture and Context

[Asia Economy Reporter Minwoo Lee] From the 2008 financial crisis, which was caused by experts and systems, to cross-border pandemics like COVID-19, events that shake nations, societies, and corporations continue to occur relentlessly. We blindly believed that we could diagnose and respond accurately using various economic models and the latest contemporary scientific and medical technologies.

Nevertheless, trial and error are repeated every time. Gillian Tett, author of , points out that our perspective is wrong. She emphasizes that we must acknowledge the incompleteness of existing tools such as economic models and big data, and also utilize anthropology, a tool that reveals culture and context.

Gillian Tett, who serves as the editor of the British financial newspaper Financial Times, holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge. She said, "Navigating the 21st century using only 20th-century tools like rigid economic models is like reading the compass scale in the middle of the night while passing through a dark forest," stressing the necessity of an ‘anthropological perspective.’

Financial firms, global corporations, even the media... The urgent need for an anthropological perspective

This book explains the utility of an anthropological perspective through various cases. The 2008 US subprime mortgage crisis is a representative example. It points out that financial professionals overlooked risks hidden behind terms like ‘innovative financial products’ and ‘disruptive financial engineering,’ which led to an uncontrollable disaster.

The author states, "Financial professionals argued that ‘innovations’ such as financial securitization would benefit even non-financial people, but they did not look into who was borrowing money and how this concept connected to real life," adding, "The main reason finance became uncontrollable was not because someone deliberately tried to cover it up or hide it with a malicious scheme, but because the problem was hidden in plain sight." If this crisis had been viewed through the lens of anthropology rather than the eyes of financial elites, the overlooked risks and internal contradictions could have been detected and prepared for in advance.

Additionally, the book highlights how the consumer goods company Mars caused a turnaround in the pet food industry by reinterpreting the relationship between pets and consumers, and how complex problems that are easy to miss with just big data or statistics?such as cross-border epidemics from Ebola to COVID-19?are addressed through an anthropological perspective.

The author also criticizes the media he belongs to for lacking an anthropological perspective. In September 2016, when then-US President Donald Trump used the word ‘bigly’ during a debate with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, the Financial Times newsroom was filled with laughter. The author reflects that this laughter is evidence that the media, too, was so steeped in elitism that it was unaware of its own narrow perspective. Gillian Tett explains, “People like me laughed because Trump did not construct sentences logically, but some understood it as a signal that Trump was not an elite and cheered.”

“We must recognize the need and limits of the ‘dirty lens’”

The anthropological perspective emphasized by the author may be an ‘old and dirty lens.’ Nevertheless, he appeals that this obvious and simple perspective is desperately needed. While practice may be somewhat difficult, understanding it is not. What if everyone, whose lives are overly familiar, accepted the author’s brief advice?

“First, acknowledge that our lens is dirty. Second, recognize our biases. Third, try to see the world from various perspectives to offset biases. Lastly, keep in mind that even after these three steps, the lens will never be perfectly clean.”

The Silo Effect | Gillian Tett | Translated by Heekyung Moon | Across | 344 pages | 17,800 KRW

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.