Anthropology 163B – Production, Consumption, Exchange
Fall 2015
Tuesday and Friday 9:30-10:50
Daniel Souleles
703-888-7323
Office Hours Tuesday 2:00-4:00 and by appointment
Brown 322
Course Description[1]:
Ever wondered about questions like these?
What is the nature of value? What do people mean by “globalization?” When I donate a T-Shirt to the Salvation Army, where does it end up?
This course has the answers!
We read in the newspapers, books, and hear in everyday discussion about “the economy,” an identifiably separate sphere of human life with its own rules and principles and its own scholarly discipline (economics). This class starts with the premise that this “common sense” idea of the economy is only one among a number of possible perspectives on the ways people use resources to produce, exchange and consume in ways that meet their basic and not-so-basic human needs. We’ll take a comparative look at modes of production, consumption and exchange that challenges Euro-American assumptions about value, economic decision-making and economic systems.
The course is divided into two parts: first we will look at some foundational texts and concepts for the field of economic anthropology and some of the debates and schools of thought that have defined the field, including the formalism-substantivism debate, political economy, and ecological anthropology. We will then approach a number of questions central not only to economic anthropology, but to anthropology in general and to any comprehensive study of the nature of economic activity. Courses readings will touch on a number of case studies of contemporary production, consumption and exchange in the global economy.
Assignments
- Reading Response20%
- Ultimatum Game(Due 2/12/2016)20%
- Closet Interview(Due 3/8/2016)20%
- Commodity Biography(Due 4/12/2016)20%
- Research Paper/Proposal (Due TBD)20%
Reading Response: For each class you will prepare a paragraph length reading response, to be submitted on Latte no later than 8 AM the day before class. To take an example, if class is on Tuesday, the Monday prior you will submit a reading response by 8 AM that morning. These will be graded pass/fail. I will consider submitting 20 of 25 passing.
The Ultimatum Game: The Ultimatum game is an experimental test of economic rationality and maximizing behavior. It’s been conducted in numerous cross cultural sites and seems to suggest that people prefer some form of fairness as opposed to sheer maximization. You are going to conduct five ultimatum games with different people, debrief them and write a paper reporting your results. Your paper will be between 600 and 800 words and will reference two class readings. (Due Date 2/12/2016)
Closet Inventory:One theme we will be thinking about quite a bit over the semester is the way that physical objects help make people’s worlds. For this project you are going to conduct and interview in which you have someone explain the contents of their closet. Ask them about all their clothing, when and why they wear it, and how they got it. You will write a 600 to 800 word paper explaning your findings and will reference two class readings. (Due Date 3/8/2016)
Commodity Biography:Continuing the courses interest in things and how they move through the world, you will write a brief commodity biography describing the origin of a thing and the different sites on which and people with whom it gathers value. This will be a research paper and will require at least four outside sources and two class sources. Your paper will be between 800 and 1000 words. (Due date 4/12/2016)
Research Paper/Proposal: Your final assignment for this course will either be a research paper on a topic of your choosing and of relevance to this class OR a research proposal suggesting a project you’d like to undertake in relation to a topic in this course. Should you choose to write a research paper be sure you have a clear thesis and a logical, evidence-rich argument proving it. Should you choose to write a research proposal be sure you have a background explanation, research questions and methods to answer them, and then suggestions as to the significance of this project. Either option should be between 1400 and 1600 words. (Due date TBD)
Grading
Each assignment will receive a letter grade (A 4 points, B 3 points, C 2 points, D 1 point, F 0 points); and your final grade will be a weighted average of your grade in the course.
Final Grade = (20% Reading Response) + (20% Ultimatum Game) + (20% Closet Inventory) + (20% Commodity Biography) + (20% Research Paper/Proposal)
Disability
If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis University and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me.
Rewrites
Broadly speaking, grades get used in one of two ways—either as an indicator of some sort of innate intelligence or worth (grades as sorting and ranking of people—class rank, gpa, SAT score, etc.), or more narrowly as an indicator of how an individual did on a particular assignment (grades as communication on the progress of your intellectual apprenticeship, not necessarily tethered to who you are, just how you did). I do not like the first use of grades as I don’t accept a lot of the assumptions that underlie ranking people by virtue of academic performance. As such I try to make my grading policy one that allows you to both get honest feedback on a given assignment and to have the opportunity to improve should you so desire—model number two.
Given this, you will be allowed to rewrite, as many times as you would like, any of the assignments in this class. I will fully explain every assignment and its rubric prior to its due date. I will make myself available via email and in office hours to discuss assignments. And I will give you comments explaining why your work is graded the way it is.
Should you find yourself dissatisfied with a grade, or simply wanting another crack at an assignment you can rewrite it. However a few constraints apply. In order to rewrite you will need to:
- Wait one week from return of the assignment to submit a rewrite.
- Talk to me about your rewrite, either over email, over the phone, or in person in office hours.
- Submit your original draft with comments, your revised draft, and a rewrite cover sheet (available on Latte).
NB: I will accept no rewrites of regular course assignments after the last day of class—the class has to end sometime.
NB: Should you wish to rewrite your final assignment: 1) I will accept no rewrites over the break between semesters, so 2) you will have the first 30 days of the subsequent semester to submit a rewrite. All other points apply.
Books
Ferry, Elizabeth 2005 Not Ours Alone: Patrimony, Value, and Collectivity in Contemporary Mexico New York: Columbia
Hebdig, Dick 1979 Subculture: The Meaning of Style London: Routledge
Paxton, Heather 2012 The Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America Berkeley: California
Course Schedule
Introduction/Forerunners
January 15:[no reading – course introduction]
January 19:Locke, John 2003 Chapter 5 Of Property. InSecond Treatise on Government, in Two Treatises on Government; and, a Letter concerning Toleration. New Haven: Yale University Press
Smith, Adam, Wealth of Nations, New York, Knopf, 1991. Book I, chs. I-IV
January 22:Marx, Karl 1978 Estranged Labor. In The Marx Engels Reader New York: Norton pp. 70-81
Marx, Karl 1990 1.4 The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof. In Capital Volume 1 New York: Penguin
January 26:Simmel, Georg “The Metropolis and Mental Life” in Kurt Wolff (Trans.) The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York: Free Press, 1950;
Weber, Max 2002 Chapter 2 The Spirit of Capital, Chapter 3 Luther’s Conception of the Calling, and Chapter 5 Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalistm. InThe Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of CapitalismNew York: Penguin
What is Economic Anthropology for anyways?
January 29:Malinowski, Bronislaw 1968 Malinowski on the Kula. in Economic Anthropology: Readings in Theory and Analysis,Edward E. LeClair and Harold Schneider, eds. NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.
Sahlins, Marshall 1972 The Original Affluent Society. In Stone Age Economics, New York: Aldine Press.
February 2:Bohannan, Paul. 1955 Some Principles of Exchange and Investment among the Tiv.American Anthropologist, 57(1):60-70.
Sharon Hutchinson 1992 The Cattle of Money and the Cattle of Girls among the Nuer American Ethnologist 19(2):294–316
Formalism vs. Substantivism
February 5:Polanyi, Karl “The Economy as Instituted Process” in Economic Anthropology: Readings in Theory and Analysis
February 9:Cook, Scott, “The Obsolete ‘Anti-Market’ Mentality” in Economic Anthropology: Readings in Theory and Analysis
Cancian, Frank, “Maximization as Norm, Strategy and Theory”in Economic Anthropology: Readings in Theory and Analysis
Nowak, Matin A. Karen M. Page and Karl Sigmund 2000 Fairness versus Reason in the Ultimatum Game Science New Series 289(5485):1773-1775
in-class debate
Political Economy (Production and Consumption)
February 12 (Ultimatum Game Due): Mintz, Sidney, Sweetness and Power, New York, Viking Press, 1985. Chapter 3
Norris, Lucy, “Creating Fame and Fortune from the Ruins of Handloom in Kerala, South Indi” in Textile Economies: Power and Value from the Local to the Transnational, edited by Walter E. Little and Patricia A. McAnany, AltaMira Press.
February 23:Hansen, Karen, “Commodity Chains and the International Second-Hand Clothing Trade” in The Household Economy: Reconsidering the Domestic Mode of Production, Richard Wilk, ed., Boulder: Westview Press, 1989.
Film, “Mardi Gras: Made in China”
February 26:Kopytoff, Igor 1988 The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as process. In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspectices Arjun Appadurai ed. Pp. 64-95 Cambridge: Cambridgue University Press.
Miller, Daniel 2010 1. Why Clothing is not Superficial Stuff London: Polity Press pp. 12-42
Walsh, Andrew 2004 In the Wake of Things: Speculation in and about Sapphires in Northern Madagascar American Anthropologist 106(2) pp. 225-237
March 1:Hebdig, Dick 1979 Subculture: The Meaning of Style London: Routledge
March 4:Hebdig ctd.
Ecological Anthropology
March 8 (Closet Inventory Due):Rappaport, Roy “Ritual Regulation of Environmental Relationships among a New Guinea People” Ethnology, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Jan., 1967), pp. 17-30
March 11:Gezon, Lisa, “Of Shrimps and Spirit Possession: Toward a Political Ecology of Resource Management in Northern Madagascar” American Anthropologist, Mar 1999, Vol. 101, No. 1: 58-67.
Nadasdy, Paul “Wildlife as Renewable Resource: Competing Conceptions of Wildlife, Time, and Management in the Yukon.” In Timely Assets: The Politics of Resources and their Temporalities. E. Ferry and M. Limbert, eds. Pp. 75-106. Santa Fe, NM: School of Advanced Research Press
March 15:Film, “Drowned Out”
March 18:Arundhati Roy, “The Greater Common Good”
Terence Turner and Vanessa Fajans-Turner, “Political Innovation and Interethnic Alliance: Kayapo Resistance to the Developmentalist State”
March 22:Paxson, Heather 2012 The Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America Berkeley: University of California Press
Consumption and Globalization
March 29:Mette High, “Wealth and Envy in the Mongolian Gold Mines”
Susan Falls, “Picturing Blood Diamonds”
April 1:Purnima Mankekar, “’India Shopping’” Indian Grocery Stores and Transnational Configurations of Belonging;
Pauline Garvey, “‘Ikea sofas are like H&M trousers’: the potential of sensuous signs”
April 5: Sarah Lyon, “Evaluating fair trade consumption: politics, defetishization and producer participation” International Journal of Consumer Studies
April 8:Ferry, Elizabeth Emma 2005 Not Ours Alone: Patrimony, Value, and Collectivity in Contemporary Mexico New York: Columbia University Press
April 12 (Commodity Biography due):Ferry Ctd.
Money
April 15:Bill Maurer, “Mobile Money: Communication, Consumption and Change in the Payments Space” The Journal of Development Studies Vol. 48 (5)
Mrinalini Tankha, Currency Counterpoints, selection
April 9:Film: “Pig Tusks and Paper Money”
April 21: TBD
1
[1] This course was lightly adapted from Elizabeth Ferry’s version of this class. Much of the descriptive language is hers.