Economy and Culture

1 Course Unit

This course serves as an introduction to anthropological studies of economic life. Central to our discussions of “the economy” are questions of its entanglements with larger social, cultural, and historical processes. This approach emphasizes practices of meaning making, forms of classification and representation, histories and structures of institutions, and ways of thinking that shape patterns of behavior, cultivate desires, and constitute identities. What is the relationship between forms of economic life and the family? How do ritual and religion, questions of morality and law, and notions of beauty and justice intersect with forms of production, distribution, reciprocity, and consumption? What is money? How are social values produced, rejected, or acquired? In addressing these questions, this course will survey histories of markets, global networks of trade, and the ways that economic life varies considerably across time and place, becomes and object of study and debate, and opens or forecloses certain aspirations for the future. Prior economic coursework is not required, nor will this course entail much quantitative analysis. This is not a course in traditional economics or finance. Instead, we will examine socio-cultural, historical, and biological aspects of different economic arrangements, and discuss how anthropological approaches to the economy draw from larger theoretical perspectives. Students will be evaluated on short written responses to readings, a midterm and non-cumulative final exam, and a research paper. 1 Course Unit