Corporations, tecnoscienze e sviluppo locale: dialogo o conflitto

The paper wants to propose an introduction to the Anthropology of Corporations, trying to establish some fundamental connections between this peculiar field of Anthropology and its historical, ethnographic, and epistemological premises. The corporation is introduced as a relevant contemporary world actor, which is actually not a new element in the scenario of human relationships: such approach requires a broad confrontation between Anthropology and History of Economics. The ethnographic analysis of Anthropology of Corporation is then introduced starting from the primary needs of establishing precise borders in term of space and time for the Corporation as a research field. The paper moves on towards the refl ection on some outcomes of my research, developed since 2009 in one of the largest world Corporations. In particular, I analysed the Centre of Research opened by the Corporation in Bangalore: in this context, belonging both to a global and local settings, I observed processes of homologation as well as mechanisms of appropriation, that allowed me to reason on the overall part played by technology, on the relationships between power and development, and on the interlinks between separate and different contexts arising in unforeseen ways, all requiring a further investigation.