General information

• Study points: 4.00
• Language: English
• Category: Lectures
• Duration: 26.0 hours 
• Periodicity: Taught in the second semester
• POC: POC Antropologie

Taught by

Breusers Mark

Aims

Aims
 
-          Students understand the culture-embeddedness of all economies;
-          Students are familiar with major anthropological perspectives on ‘economic’ processes of production, exchange and distribution, and consumption;
-          Students know how to read and critically analyze, from an anthropological perspective, articles and texts presenting cases of economic processes in various societies;
-          Students are able to situate economic anthropology within the broader field of social and cultural anthropology and the discipline’s history;
-          Students are able to situate economic anthropology vis-à-vis economics and to understand the controversies and overlapping interests binding the two disciplines.
 

Content

Content
 
The course is divided into four main parts, and consists of a combination of discussions of theory and presentations of cases. A first part elaborates on the history of economic thinking, on the history of anthropological analyses of economic processes, and on the controversy between economics and economic anthropology. Included are discussions of neo-classical economics, Malinowski’s ‘utilitarian’ functionalism, substantivism versus formalism, political economy and recently developed anthropological approaches that attempt to come to grips with ‘globalization’. The remainder, larger part of the course is structured around the three economic ‘functions’ of production, exchange and consumption. Before turning to anthropological approaches of production, first some basic dimensions of production are dealt with, through a discussion of case studies dealing with, among others, the organization and meaning of work, time perception in industrial and non-industrial societies and property relations (with a focus on the privatization/reclaiming of the commons controversy). The ‘exchange’ part of the course deals with spheres of exchange, processes of conversion and diversion, and various understandings of gifts and commodities (as elaborated among others by Mauss, Bourdieu, Godelier and Gregory). Special attention goes to the making and meanings of money (market made, state made, community currencies). Finally, the growing importance of anthropological studies of consumption in relation to the rise of ‘consumer society’ is discussed (semiological/categorical approaches, Miller’s and Carrier’s understanding of consumption in terms of appropriation/possession).
 

Course Material

Course material
 
            Reader
            Lecture notes
 

Course activities

Course activities
 
Students critically read texts in preparation of lectures, distilling arguments from the texts to use during discussions in class;
Students follow the lectures and actively participate in discussions.
Students write four short essays (one to two pages) on course related topics (see evaluation).
 

Evaluation description

Examination type:
    oral with written preparation
    written
When?: final examination during examination period
Evaluation type:
    Paper
    Presentation

Explanation

Evaluation
 
The final evaluation consists of a written exam (paper) or an oral exam with written preparation. A paper consists of 15 to 20 pages (between 6000 and 8000 words).  It should be written in the form of an essay and include, besides the main body (introduction, middle part, conclusion), a title, an abstract, keywords and a reference list. Topic and bibliographic sources to be used in the paper need to be discussed with the teacher first. The paper should consist of a personal and creative reflection upon one or more of the themes discussed in class, in the lecture notes or in the reader, or upon an otherwise related theme. Those opting for an oral exam are expected to present during about 20 minutes a thesis on a course-related topic, making use of not only personal opinions but also information from other sources (reader, lecture notes, book chapters, articles, etc.). Students choosing to submit a paper are not required to present themselves for the oral exam.
 
The final evaluation counts for 15 out of 20 points. The remaining 5 points are to be earned by handing in intermediary assignments (four in total) consisting of short essays on course-related topics. The topics are announced in the course of the semester.