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SoSe 21: Economic anthropology

Aksana Ismaelbekova, Nikolaos Olma

Comments

This course will introduce students to how people in various socio-cultural settings engage in economic activity and will provide them with a critical reading of basic assumptions about the economy. Economic behaviour is not isolated from other spheres of social life, and, hence, the ways in which people produce, distribute, and consume goods and services are embedded in social, cultural, and political institutions. Taking this as a point of departure, the first part of the course will examine the historical debates that have shaped economic anthropology, as well as various theoretical approaches to understanding economic life. Thereby, it will show that economic anthropology addresses issues regarding not only anthropology but also human nature itself, for among the questions it asks are how people make decisions and how these decisions are affected by personal considerations and socio-cultural factors alike. In the second part, the course will examine a variety of economic phenomena from across the globe, before it turns, in part 3, to the study of informality. Throughout the course, students will engage with original ethnographic work which captures the diversity of systems of production, distribution, and consumption the world over and deals with a range of themes including gift, exchange, property, money, value, morality, and consumerism. close