Applied Anthropologist Profile: Dr. Karen Ho, Expert on Wall Street Culture

Dr. Karen Ho (Source: Epic)

 

Like many previously discussed anthropological professionals featured on this blog Dr. Karen Ho did not initially intend on becoming an anthropologist.  In fact, she initially majored in pre-med, following in her father’s footsteps.  It was through taking general education and elective courses that she fell in love with feminist theory courses, which eventually led her to anthropology.  It was her life experiences growing up as a second generation Taiwanese-American in rural Tennessee, wherein she experienced first hand issues related to race, social construction of realities, and social hierarchies, that ignited her desire to better understand power dynamics.  Taken together these led her to become one of the leading experts in the anthropology of business, specifically within the frameworks of Wall Street culture.

 

Dr. Karen Ho earned degrees from Stanford University (B.A. and M.Ed.) and Princeton (Ph.D., Anthropology).  She knew that ethnography and anthropology were tools that she could use to better understand power dynamics within societies, but she was not initially sure in what contexts she wanted to study these processes.  It was while she was reading articles about financial, business, and economic news that she decided upon what she wanted to study: business cultures.  She opted to study the juxtaposition of power within Wall Street, specifically how downsizing companies, a process by which companies reduce their overall size by firing staff and eliminating positions, were simultaneously detrimental (as it negatively affected the employees) but also celebrated (by investors who reaped the profits).  While many scholars believed that these practices were the work of a few actors within the financial world she rejected this idea, instead claiming this trend was part of a larger socio-economic framework that people followed.

 

Ho did not take a traditional trajectory toward her career in anthropology, although the steps she did take in the completion of her doctoral research match the expected methods of anthropological study.  She opted to take a literal participant observer approach in that she took a job within Wall Street.  While being employed as an analyst, a position that positioned her directly between the supervisors (who make the downsizing decisions) and the workers (who produce the work and products and are adversely affected by downsizing), she was able to observe the inner workings of workplace culture.  She also gained access to cultural informants on both sides of the issue.  It was through these intimate work experiences on this job that she got a true understanding of workplace culture on wall street, realizing that downsizing and job precarity was accepted and normalized.  She also came to the conclusion that people were focused on the short term profits, not the long term productivity and quality of products and institutions.  She identifies this as the central flaw in the current attitudes on Wall Street and within business cultures generally, particularly as these attitudes lend themselves to job losses and ultimately economic recessions.

 

Ho has published widely on her research.  She has written a few books, such as the popular title, Liquidated, and several articles.  She has given interviews to various news organizations, including business and financial platforms.  She is currently employed at the University of Minnesota where she is responsible for educating the next generations of business anthropologists, but she continues her applied anthropological work. 

 

Works Cited

Fleming, Rachel C. "Ethnographer on Wall Street: Karen Ho / A Profile." n.d. EPIC: Advancing the Value of Ethnography. Electronic. 3 December 2024.

Ho, Karen. An Anthropologist Explains Wall Street Culture Joe Weisenthal. 1 November 2019. Electronic.

—. "Karen Ho, Professor of Anthropology." 2024. University of Minnesota. Electronic. 4 December 2024.