The Allure of Capitalism

The "managerial revolution," or the rise of management as a distinct and vital group in industrial society, might be identified as a major development of the modernization processes, similar to the scientific and industrial revolutions. Studying "transnational" or "global" corporate management at the post-millennium moment provides a suitable focal point from which to investigate globalized (post)modernity and capitalism especially, and as such this book offers an anthropology of global capitalism at its moment of crisis. This study provides ethnographically rich descriptions of managerial practices in a set of international corporate investment projects. Drawing also on historical and statistical data, it renders a comprehensive perspective on management, corporations, and capitalism in the late modern globalized economy. Cross-disciplinary in outlook, the book spans the fields of organization, business, and management, and asserts that now, in this period of financial crisis, is the time for anthropology to yet again engage with political economy.

"This is an extraordinary book, huge in every way, one man's personal synthesis of the world we live in, as seen through his own experience of Norway's largest business corporation and much much more. The book and the author have a lot going for them. There are few in-depth anthropological studies of global corporations. Scandinavian anthropology is enjoying a boom and this is reflected in the present study. The author is well-versed in German sources and is open to a very wide range of philosophy, critique, journalism, anthropology and social science." - Keith Hart,Goldsmiths College, London

"[T]his book is a gem. I like it very much…an excellent blending of genres, approaches and disciplines, fused together by an essentially anthropological perspective. It tells a global story through a number of local intermediations of the most significant Norwegian company, Hydro." - Stewart Clegg, University of Technology, Sydney

Emil A. Royrvik is a social anthropologist and senior research scientist at SINTEF Technology and Society, Scandinavia's largest independent research organization. The book has been written also in his capacity as postdoctoral fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Department of Social Anthropology. His research focuses on ethnography and anthropological theory in the context of knowledge work, organizational and managerial culture, and aspects of contemporary economic and cultural globalization.