Money Talks

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course takes the common idiom—“money talks”—as a starting point for interrogating the relationships between people, money, and power. Drawing on foundational concepts and theories in economic anthropology, we examine how money, wealth, and affluence are understood in different social and cultural contexts. This includes concerns about “right” and “wrong” ways to acquire wealth; acceptable ways to share, redistribute, or make claims on wealth and resources; and how gender, age, race, and class structure differential access to wealth and power. Some course topics include: financial markets, Pentecostal churches, call centers, suburbs and gated communities, and multi-level marketing schemes.