AN256 Half Unit
Economic Anthropology (1): Production and Exchange
This information is for the 2022/23 session.
Teacher responsible
Prof Alpa Shah OLD 6.17A
Availability
This course is compulsory on the BA in Social Anthropology and BSc in Social Anthropology. This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law, Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Cape Town), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Fudan), Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Melbourne) and Exchange Programme for Students in Anthropology (Tokyo). This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.
Course content
What is the economy? We will explore how the history of capitalism has been inextricably tied to producing an idea of the economy as a distinctive domain of life and how anthropologists have persistently challenged this understanding, showing how economic life is inextricably tied to religion, politics and kinship, for instance. We will show the radical possibilities of social relations that anthropologists have offered by studying communities that appear to be ‘the original affluent society’, seemingly not affected by capitalist societies, or incorporated on their own terms. At the same time, we will examine the impact of capitalism and the inequalities it has brought on diverse people around the world, looking at the role of colonialism and empire, industrialisation and neoliberalisation, which includes regimes of production, accumulation and dispossession. Central to our examination will be understanding processes and experiences of exploitation, oppression and domination. We will unveil the invisible work of the many that is never valued but gets hidden in precarity, by migration regimes and within households. We will highlight the ways in which gender, race, ethnicity, caste and class need to be central to any analysis of the economy. At all times, we will look for people’s creative responses to the situations they find themselves in, whether it is through acquiescence, reincorporation, religious conversion, weapons of the weak or outright rejection and revolt.
Teaching
10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the MT. 1 hour of lectures in the ST.
The contact hours listed above are the minimum expected. This course has a reading week in Week 6 of MT.
Formative coursework
Students will be expected to produce 1 piece of coursework