Sex, Money, and Power: Ethnography and Social Theories

Undergraduate / Graduate

If the Epstein files in the U.S. have established anything without a shadow of a doubt, it is that sex, money and power continue to be intimately linked with, and to structure, aspects of the contemporary social order. This class mobilizes foundational social theories and ethnographies for understanding how these entangled dynamics shape different worlds of desire, embodiment, and value. At the same time, we probe the dark side of money, sex and power - the shadowy zones of illicit exchange, conspiracy theories, and political horror that shape historic and contemporary conditions of inequality and resistance. We pay particular attention to the intersections of anthropology and feminist studies, especially where they take up shared objects of analysis, including nature/culture, kinship, the body, sexuality, exchange, value and agency. Throughout the course, our discussions will encourage a reflexive examination of the way these fields of inquiry approach sex, money, and power both as (1) scholarly contributions in academic settings and (2) as political interventions in the larger world (e.g., pay equity, #MeToo, sex positive activism, queer politics, feminist economics, the Manosphere, anti-gender campaigns, tradwives, etc.). Requirements: Active participation in class discussion based on weekly readings, occasional in-class writing, and a final exam.