Anthropology of Money

3 credits · Graduate

This course explores the history and theory of money – what money represents, how it circulates, its contemporary and historical transformations – not only in the metropole but also across the global south. Topics include shell currencies, gifts, paperless money, banking, global debt, futures, mobile phone cash transfers in Kenya, Ponzi schemes, microfinance. After exploring classic theories of money, from Adam Smith to Marx and Simmel, we will turn to the anthropological and historical archive to follow money's functions, transmutations and travails, across time and space.