21A.111
For Love and Money: Rethinking the Family
Cross-cultural case studies introduce students to the anthropological study of the social institutions and symbolic meanings of family, gender, and sexuality. Investigates the different forms families and households take and considers their social, emotional, and economic dynamics. Analyzes how various expectations for, and experiences of, family life are rooted in or challenged by particular conceptions of gender and sexuality. Addresses questions surrounding what it means to be a "man" or a "woman," as well as a family member, in different social contexts.
Spring 2016
Topics
- Introduction to the study of family, gender and sexuality
- Gender acquisition: Learning (and unlearning) the “facts of life”
- Arranged marriage, ascribed status, inheritance and gendered divisions of labor in pastoral and agrarian societies
- Gender, agency, and virtue
- Chosen marriage, achieved status, and gendered divisions of labor in wage labor societies
- The racial and gendered economy of social reproduction
- Family, class and social mobility in the U.S. (1)
- Family, class and social mobility in the U.S. (2)
- Consumption and social citizenship
- Rethinking the meaning(s) of love
- Marriage and heteronormativity
- Is “the family” a cultural universal?
- Not all happily ever after: Anger, violence & harm
- Making families, making citizens
- The problem of childlessness, the problem of ‘familylessness’
- The labor of reproduction: Surrogacy
- Reproductive rights, redux
- Where to go next: “Having it all,” or reframing the question?
- Student presentations
- Student presentations (cont.)
Readings
- [P] = Park, Lisa Sun-Hee. Consuming Citizenship: Children of Asian Immigrant Entrepreneurs . Stanford University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780804752480.
- SES #: 1 · TOPICS: Introduction to the study of family, gender and sexuality · READINGS: No readings assigned
- Thorne, Barrie. “Children and Gender: Constructions of Difference.” In Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference . Edited by Deborah L. Rhode. Yale University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780300052251.
- Abu-Lughod, Lila. “Preface.” In Writing Women’s Worlds: Bedouin Stories . University of California Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780520083042.
- Rapp, Rayna. “Family and Class in Contemporary America: Notes Toward an Understanding of Ideology.” Chapter 10 in Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions . Edited by Barrie Thorne with Marilyn Yalom. Northeastern, 1992. ISBN: 9781555531454.
- Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. “From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor.” Chapter 26 in Unequal Sisters: An Inclusive Reader in U.S. Women’s History . 4th edition. Edited by Vicki L. Ruiz with Ellen Carol DuBois. Routledge, 2007. ISBN: 9780415958417.
- [W] Chapter 1: A World of Iron and Steel: A Family Album.
- [W] Chapter 2: It All Came Tumbling Down: My Father and the Demise of Chicago’s Steel Industry.
- [W] Chapter 3: Places Beyond.
- [P] Chapter 1: Consumptive Citizenship.
- [P] Chapter 2: Minding the Family Store.
- [P] Chapter 3: Searching for a “Normal Family.”
- [P] Chapter 4: The Business in Children’s Lives.
- [P] Chapter 5: The American Narrative of Asian Immigration.
- [P] Chapter 6: Consumption Fantasies of Upward Mobility.
- [P] Chapter 7: Consumption, Democracy, and the Good Immigrant.
- SES #: 13 · TOPICS: Searching for a happily ever after? · READINGS: Constable, Nicole, ed. “A Tale of Two Marriages: International Matchmaking and Gendered Mobility.” Chapter 9 in Cross-Border Marriages: Gender and Mobility in Transnational Asia . University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. ISBN: 9780812218916.
- Davis, Maxine. “The Importance of Sexual Harmony.” Chapter 2 in The Sexual Responsibility of Women . William Heinemann Medical Books, 1957. ISBN: 9780434179022.
- Hugh Hefner’s inaugural editorial statement. Playboy , December 1953.
- Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Continuum.” In Women-Sex and Sexuality . Edited by Catharine R. Stimpson and Ethel Spector Person. University of Chicago Press, 1980. ISBN: 9780226774763.
- Gordon, Linda. “Voluntary Motherhood: The Beginnings of the Birth-Control Movement.” Chapter 5 in Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: Birth Control in America . Penguin Books, 1990. ISBN: 9780140131277.
- ———. “Social Purity and Eugenics.” Chapter 6 in Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: Birth Control in America . Penguin Books, 1990. ISBN: 9780140131277.
- Roberts, Dorothy. “The Dark Side of Birth Control.” Chapter 2 in Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty . Vintage, 1998. ISBN: 9780679758693.
- Collier, Jane, Michelle Rosaldo, et al. “Is There a Family? New Anthropological Views.” Chapter 2 in Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions . Edited by Barrie Thorne with Marilyn Yalom. Northeastern, 1992. ISBN: 9781555531454.
- Hart, C.W.M., Arnold R. Pilling, et al. “Tiwi Marriage.” Chapter 1 in The Tiwi of North Australia . 3rd edition. Cengage Learning, 1987. ISBN: 9780030120190.
- Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion on marriage equality (read prologue + pp. 1–22):
- Landsman, Gail. “Real Motherhood,’ Class, and Children with Disabilities.” Chapter 6 in Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism . Edited by France Winndance Twine and Helena Ragoné. Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 9780415921107.
- Kanaaneh, Rhoda A. “Conceiving Difference: Birthing the Palestinian Nation in the Galilee.” Critical Public Health 7, no. 3–4 (1997): 64–79.
- Inhorn, Marcia. “Missing Motherhood: Infertility, Technology, and Poverty in Egyptian Women’s Lives.” Chapter 5 in Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism . Edited by France Winndance Twine and Helena Ragoné. Routledge, 2000. ISBN: 9780415921107.
- Park, Lisa Sun-Hee. Consuming Citizenship: Children of Asian Immigrant Entrepreneurs . Stanford University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780804752480.
Prerequisites & course information
Same subject as WGS.172[J] Prereq: None Acad Year 2027-2028: U (Spring) Acad Year 2028-2029: Not offered 3-0-9 units. HASS-S
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Spring 2016
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.