“Robust, Serious Work”: The Value of Anthropology Within Corporate Socioenviromental Governance in Chile

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the production and valuation of anthropological labor within socioenvironmental governance in Chile, a sector that has become a central site of employment for practicing and applied anthropologists. Drawing on research on anthropological practitioners conducted between 2023 and 2025, the article examines how anthropologists working in private companies and consultancies create value under conditions of indeterminate labor mandates and unstable valuation criteria. The analysis conceptualizes anthropological work as social reproductive labor oriented toward the creation, maintenance, and formalization of relationships among companies, communities, and state actors, materialized through reports, agreements, and plans. Within this configuration, wage relations, project‐based contracting, and person‐hour accounting operate as mechanisms through which anthropological labor is partially subsumed under capitalist relations of production. This partial subsumption generates persistent struggles over pricing, workload, and professional legitimacy. Adopting a Marxist framework of value, the article shows that anthropological labor cannot be understood merely as an extension of the structure of governance. Rather, it consists of concrete labor processes that produce different use values, while remaining structurally constrained around processes of valorization in complex and uneven ways.