Summer 2012 ANTHRO 341-0 Economic Anthropology

Economic Anthropology

Money. The root of all evil or the straight path to happiness? For some it's neither. Others see no contradiction with it being both at the same time. Still others prefer to conduct their transactions with other forms of currency-like social status or thousands and thousands of goats.This course explores different types of and ideas about exchange and economies-and their meanings- cross-culturally and historically. It examines gifts, commodities, money, and other currencies to pose a straightforward question: Do people shape economies or do economies shape them? Or both? How people exchange things and the character of the things they exchange are considerations fundamental to the understanding of all economies, regardless of their scale. No economy, global or local, is strictly monetary.What people sell, trade, give, borrow, steal, hide, and destroy- and the ways in which they do it- is about far more than just economic considerations. Thus, this course focuses on anthropological perspectives about economic objects and the sorts of interactions and systems through which they move.

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