Postgraduate Course: Consumption, Exchange, Technology: The Anthropology of Economic Processes (PGSP11176)
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 | The course discusses how goods are produced, circulated and consumed, and how these three fundamental processes of social life and reproduction are mediated by technology. Classically, economic anthropologists focused on how such activities were organised in small-scale societies or in colonial territories; often production and exchange, with their associated technologies, were highlighted while consumption received less attention. Today the impact of globalisation, the rise of the digital society, and the overflowing material abundance that characterises life in the advanced economies and aspirations elsewhere, have led many social theorists to focus on consumption and communication as the key factors determining how people experience power, identity, connections and conflicts. We study a range of case studies and theoretical essays, evaluating the strengths, weaknesses and applicability of different approaches. |
| Course description |
Outline content:
1. Gifts
Gifts are among the most central and celebrated topics in anthropology. Why is this? In anthropological thought, exchange is often regarded as the cornerstone of relational life, particularly in small-scale societies. In this class we will explore the theoretical work of exchange through a discussion of classic and contemporary analyses of the gift. In so doing, we will examine the potential and problems of exchange as a social phenomenon and analytical category.
2: Commodities
One of the central components of capitalist economies is the commodity. Anthropologists have historically opposed the commodity to the gift as a sort of asocial token of exchange, a large-scale capitalist analogue of the small-scale non-capitalist gift. In this class we will explore these arguments, as well as more recent critiques that trouble an easy distinction between commodities and gifts, and between capitalism and non-capitalist forms of economic organization.
3: Value
Value is a multivalent term that has recently been given new prominence in anthropological theory. Value is about economics, but also ethics, ¿culture,¿ differentiation, and rank. This lecture will explore the various interrelated definitions of value common in anthropology to attempt to arrive at a unified theory.
4: Production
The process of production ¿ the transformation of matter into useful goods through work ¿ forms a central tenant of capitalist economic theory and practice. Anthropologists have consistently questioned assumptions of the universality of a capitalist mode of production. This lecture will interrogate this important area of scholarship. What does an appreciation of the necessary embeddedness of production in the domains of kinship, gender, class, and politics reveal for instance? How is production linked to other areas economic concern, such as commodities and value?
5: Consumption
What does it mean to think of people as ¿consumers¿? Such an approach has its roots in political economy, but can be controversial today on the grounds that it plays into the hands of big business. At the same time, anthropologists have found consumption as a useful conceptual and methodological tool for exploring how activities such as shopping, eating, getting dressed, having leisure time, and making homes are both important facets of human experience. Consumption can provide insights into what people think about kinship, politics, time, and religion.
6: Technology
Technology has served as both a catalyst and a measure of progress in the modern world. This week we look at some anthropological perspectives on the compulsion of technology and its social or cultural impacts, considering ways in which technology has been bracketed off from society. We discuss subjective experiences of technology and how to understand these socially.
7: Money
Money has often been described as a singularly disrupting technology, a universal equivalent that shifts the ground under value and exchange. In at least some societies, the introduction of money has been greeted as a dangerous change, subject to moral censure. This class will examine different responses to money, as well as the various ways that money is used around the world.
8: Debt
While debt as it relates to a gift economy has been central to anthropological study for over a century, it is only recently that debt in the contemporary, financialized sense of the term has received significant attention in the discipline. This class will examine the emerging literature on debt as it pertains both to older fiduciary institutions and new credit regimes. It puts into conversation moral and monetary economies and asks: What do we owe to each other ¿ to our loved ones, banks and states? What are the temporalities of making debts? What happens when debts are not repaid?
9: Finance
This lecture explores the burgeoning field of the anthropology of finance. The issue of the corporation has assumed particular importance since the global financial crisis that began in 2008, with bankers¿ bonuses perennially in the news, and accusations of corruption levelled at corporate bosses. But what is a corporation ¿ legally, socially, and ideologically? How have anthropologists tackled the nature of modern business, greed and the legal implications of ¿corporate personhood¿?
10: Economic utopias and dystopias
Economic anthropologists have always had a different relation to the past and the future than economists. By valuing diversity over linear progress, anthropologists have usually been suspicious of overhyped projections of future growth. Ethnographies of other societies and non-capitalist modes of production often have utopian undertones. The final lecture is an invitation to use our anthropological skills for thought experiments: How does our discipline equip us to study alternative and future economies? Are there limits to what can be commodified, and who can be included into productive labour?
Student Learning Experience:
The course involves one two-hour lecture a week for the whole class, together with small group support teaching in a separate one-hour tutorial session.
The 'small group' support teaching (tutorials) will normally be concerned with one or more readings that illustrate, underpin or extend issues raised in the main sessions. Students should note that participation in the small group support teaching sessions is compulsory.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2021/22, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 50 |
| 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 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
This course will be assessed by 2 essays:
Short Essay worth 30% (word-limit 1,500)
Long Essay worth 70% (word-limit: 3,500) |
| Feedback |
Essay questions are set by the course organiser, or you can design one yourself in consultation with the course organiser.
Formative assessment: the course organiser will give feedback on tutorial presentations so you can learn what is expected. You may also submit an essay plan for comment. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- show a general understanding of classical and contemporary anthropological approaches to economic processes in non-industrialised, industrialised and post-industrial contexts
- Utilise critical analysis and discussion of case studies and theoretical essays to build anthropological skills in evaluating the strengths, weaknesses and applicability of different approaches.
- show an enriched understanding of the evolution of the study of economic categories through appreciating the ways in which they have been subjected to scholarly analysis for the past 25-30 years.
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Reading List
Check course handbook for current reading lists.
- Mauss, Marcel (1925/1990) The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge.
- Carrier, James G. (ed) (2005) A Handbook of Economic Anthropology. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
- Zelizer, Viviana (2010) Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Miller, Daniel (1987) Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Graeber, David (2001) Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. New York: Palgrave.
- Graeber, David (2010) Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Melville House.
- Parry, Jonathan and Maurice Bloch (eds.) (1989) Money and the Morality of Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Appadurai, Arjun (ed) (1986) The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Agustin Diz
Tel: (0131 6)50 3079
Email: adiz@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Teri Beveridge
Tel: (0131 6)51 3244
Email: tbeveri2@ed.ac.uk |
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