Postgraduate Course: Demystifying Money (PGSP11533)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Knowledge of how money works and how critically to think about money's many uses, users, avatars, and relations are key practical skills for any person in today's world. This course will demystify notions of money and its relationships as being abstract and too complex for anyone but economists and mathematicians to understand. |
| Course description |
Money is often thought of at once as mundane and ordinary - we all deal with money in some form on a daily basis - and impossibly complex, best left to professional economists and bankers. In this course, we will explore the rich anthropological literature from across the world to demystify our notions of money as being simple/neutral and as complex/universal. Through topics from value, happiness, morality, and debt to analyses of financial booms and busts, we will reveal anthropological tools as crucial for understanding human monetary systems across time and space. Weekly concepts will be illustrated through a term-long game, in which students will deal with and trade in the course's own alternative currency.
The delivery of this course is based upon a simulated money game using an alternative currency specific to the course. In the first lecture, students will receive printed cash money, but they will not be told its value or use. In the second lecture, the value of the cash comes to be known, and through subsequent weeks students will be able to buy, sell, receive, invest, save, hedge, and perform other transactions with their accumulated money (distributed for participation in each lecture and tutorial), according to the particular week's key concepts and readings.
For example, in the week on financial instruments, students will learn about the central role of risk and be able to purchase illness insurance so that they still receive their lecture payment even if they are forced to be absent, and they can hedge against potential price increases in the 'cost' of submitting their essays. In the week on money's inequalities, the value of each 'dollar' possessed by certain types of students (e.g. men, Europeans, people not wearing glasses) will be devalued at 79 cents, limiting what they can do with their money that week and devaluing their work to earn their lecture-attendance 'wage'.
At the end of the game (in the last week of the course), students will be prompted to reflect overall on how notes circulated, what strategies they used to accumulate wealth, whether wealth accumulation or other goals were prioritized, whether students attempted to trade their money for other value-bearing items, whether they collaborated to pool resources and with whom, the role of power and of trust in the valuation of money, etc.
|
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Academic year 2019/20, Available to all students (SV1)
|
Quota: 20 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 20,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 10,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
166 )
|
| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Short essay (30%): 1000 words«br /»
Long essay (60%): 3000 words«br /»
Participation/blog posts (10%): Short paragraphs (100-200 words): a) describing a real-world encounter, experience, conversation, or micro interview they have conducted related to the form of money use in each week's topic; and b) explaining what they did with their course currency each week.«br /»
«br /»
The two essays will stimulate critical reflection of the lecture and reading materials, synthesize and relate topics across weeks, consider the role of money from multiple theoretical and real-life angles, and engage with a variety of cases from different geographies and time periods. Participation in the course-long game using an alternative currency will spur students' creative thinking and interest and instil an understanding of each week's concepts by actively enacting them. Weekly blog posts will anchor students' theoretical and ethnographic understanding of the material in real-world encounters and in their own decision-making within the currency game.«br /»
|
| Feedback |
Essay marks and feedback will be returned within 15 working days of submission. Participation/blog posts will be assessed throughout the course with feedback occurring in real time (during tutorial). |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Critical awareness and extensive knowledge of key concepts and debates in the anthropology of money
- In-depth understanding of the power relationships and socio-structural features that underpin monetary use in micro and macro contexts
- Ability to critically analyze and evaluate moral and political claims regarding projects of money initiated by governments, international finance organizations, development agencies, households, firms, and individuals
- Ability to identify and effectively navigate methodological and ethical complexities of research in the field of economic anthropology and the anthropology of money
|
Reading List
Ho, Karen. 2009. Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street. Durham: Duke University Press.
Kwon, Heonik. 2007. The Dollarization of Vietnamese Ghost Money. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13: 73-90.
Maurer, Bill. 2015. How Would You Like to Pay?: How Technology is Changing the Future of Money. Durham: Duke University Press.
Miyazaki, Hirokazu. 2003. The Temporalities of the Market. American Anthropologist 105(2): 255-265.
Parry, Jonathan, and Maurice Bloch (eds.). 1989. Money and the Morality of Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Zelizer, Viviana. 1997. The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and other Currencies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
|
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
By the end of the course, students will be equipped with new skills in:
1. Synthesizing and analyzing empirical and theoretical materials from a variety of sources, with particular emphasis on lateral thinking.
2. Examining, using, and assessing evidence in support of explanatory and normative claims.
3. Developing and evaluating arguments that take different kinds of social complexity into account.
4. Exercising informed independent thought and critical judgment.
|
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Juli Huang
Tel:
Email: Juli.Huang@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Becky Guthrie
Tel: (0131 6)51 1659
Email: becky.guthrie@ed.ac.uk |
|
|
University Homepage