11Th Konitsa Summer School in Anthropology, Ethnography and Comparative Folklore of the Balkans
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The Municipality of The University of Ioannina Border Crossings Network Konitsa 11th Konitsa Summer School in Anthropology, Ethnography and Comparative Folklore of the Balkans Konitsa, Greece, 27/7 - 12/8/2015 New trends in economic anthropology: Labour, finance, and solidarity in a turbulent world Dr. Aliki Angelidou, Panteion University, Athens Dr. Dimitra Kofti, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle Dr. Theodoros Rakopoulos, University of Bergen Tyler Boersen, New School for Social Research, New York 2 COURSE SYLLABUS Description: During the last decades the world economy has taken new directions, shaped by the free flows of capital and information, financialization, the precarization and fragmentation ofemployment, growing inequalities and the development of multiple grassroots initiatives and struggles. As a result, anthropologists became more critically engaged in discussions concerning local performances of global processes of capitalism. This course aims to critically discuss ways in which anthropological understandings of economy have been informed through ethnographies on the neoliberal turn of the economy and the effects of the financial and the sovereign-debt crisis which occurred in the US and Europe since 2008. During the course, we will discuss the growing anthropological interest on notions such as ‘finance’, ‘labour’, and ‘solidarity’ that have given lately a new breath to economic anthropology. We will focus on case studies from our own fieldwork research in Southeast Europe, as well as from numerous ethnographies dealing with recent anthropological approaches to late capitalism and crisis. Teaching methods: Lectures, ethnographic film screening and team-work exercise. Lecturers: Aliki Angelidou ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, Panteion University, Athens. She completed her PhD in Social Anthropology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in Paris, exploring socio-economic transformations in postsocialist rural Bulgaria. Additionally, she has collaborated with the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie des Institutions et des Organisations Sociales (LAIOS/CNRS), Paris, investigating the (re)definitions of the European identity after the enlargement of the European Union towards the East. She has also published on migrants’ mobility from East European countries to Greece and on the economic elites’ mobility in the Balkans. Currently, she carries out research on household economy and crisis in a Greek agrotown. She has been a research fellow at the University Kliment Ohridski (Sofia) and at the Center for Advanced Studies Sofia (CAS) and a visiting scholar at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle. She is external partner of the Institut d’ethnologie méditerranéenne, européenne et comparative (IDEMEC/CNRS), Aix-en-Provence. Her academic interests include economic anthropology, anthropology of Eastern Europe and postsocialism, migration, borders and transnationalism, the comparative history of anthropology in Southeast Europe as well as applied anthropology. Tyler Boersen ([email protected]) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the New School for Social Research, New York City, USA. He holds a master’s degree in anthropology from The New School and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan. His doctoral research based on long term fieldwork in Athens, Greece investigates ‘insolvency’ as a social, political, and economic concept. He has taught and published on the intersections of finance and work, most recently The New Insolvencies: From Detroit to Athens (August 2015, in Greek) in To Vima Magazino. 3 Dimitra Kofti ([email protected]) is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Germany), member of the research group on financialization. She has studied history and anthropology (BA University of Thessaly, Greece) and social anthropology (MA, PhD University College London, UK). She has worked on class and changing temporalities in the context of privatisation and flexibilisation of labour in Bulgaria and has formerly been a member of the ‘Industry and Inequality’ research group at the Max Planck Institute. She is currently completing her film on crisis and deindustrialization in Bulgaria. She has also worked and published on cross-border relations and economic transactions, with a particular focus on business mobility and on consumer tourism at the Greco-Bulgarian borders. She has been a research fellow at Central European University in Budapest and at the University Kliment Ohridski in Sofia. Her research interests include economic and political anthropology, historical anthropology, anthropology of space and film. Theodoros Rakopoulos ([email protected]) currently works as Research Fellow at the Egalitarianism ERC programme, University of Bergen. He has a PhD from Goldsmiths and has previously worked as Research Fellow at the Human Economy Programme (University of Pretoria). He has conducted long-term fieldwork in rural Sicily and urban Greece in research supported by the Wenner- Gren Foundation. His previous and forthcoming publications include articles anthropological and regional journals (including Focaal, Social Analysis, Dialectical Anthropology, Critique of Anthropology and Social Anthropology, as well as the Journal of Modern Italian Studies and the Journal of Modern Greek Studies). His monograph titled Working on mafia land: work cooperatives and the Sicilian antimafia is due for publication by Berghahn. Course outline: Monday 25th July The crisis of the capital and the coming back of Economic Anthropology (Developed by Dr. A. Angelidou) This lecture is an introduction to anthropological readings on economic anthropology and a critical overview of the ambivalent relationship between social anthropology and economics. Following a historical approach we will focus on the main conceptual frames, methodologies and thinkers. Starting from the establishment of political economy in late 18th century we will follow the theoretical shift to economics in late 19th century. We will examine the works of Boas, Μalinowski and Mauss in the interwar period, regarding systems of exchange in non capitalist societies (potlatch, Kula, gift) that have shaped the field of 'primitive economics'. We will explore the 'golden age' of economic anthropology (1950-1970), when the debates between 'formalists' and 'substantivists' and the Marxist debates on production in pre-capitalist social formations dominated the main discussions. We will discuss the turn to consumption, commoditization and the 'cultural life of things' in the 1980s-1990s and the decline of economic anthropology. We will finally examine critical approaches to the ‘economy of market’ and 'neoliberalism' that came back again at the front stage after the end of the Cold War and mostly since the recent economic crisis. Our aim is to show how economic anthropology allows the shift from an ideological, and to a great extent abstract debate on the economy, to the study of concrete economic practices which are viewed as ‘cultural’ and ‘social’ rather than ‘natural’ events. Key texts: 4 Hann C. and Hart K., 2006, ‘A short history of economic anthropology’, http://thememorybank.co.uk/2007/11/09/a-short-history-of-economic-anthropology/. Hart K., Laville J.-L. & Cattani A. D., 2010, 'Introduction', in Hart K., Laville J.-L. & Cattani A. D. (eds.), The Human Economy. A Citizen’s Guide, Cambridge, Malden MA, Polity Press, 1-17. Milonakis D. & Fine B., 2009, From Political Economy to Economics. Method, the Social and the Historical in the Evolution of Economic Theory, London & New York, Routledge. Readings: Carrier J. (ed.), 2005, A Handbook of Economic Anthropology, Edward Elgar Cheltenham, UK, Northampton, MA, USA. Godelier M., 1972 [1966], Rationality and Irrationality in Economics, London, New Left Books. Godelier M., 1986, The Mental and the Material: Thoughts, Economy and Society, London, Verso. Graeber D., 2001, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value. The False Coin of Our Own Dreams, New York, Palgrave. Graeber D., 2011, Dept: The First 5,000 Years. New York, Melville House. Gudeman S., 2008, Economy’s Tension: The Dialectics of Community and Market, New York, Oxford, Berghahn Books. Gudeman S., 2010, ‘Creative Destruction: Efficiency, Equity or Collapse?’, Anthropology Today, 26(1), 3-7. Hann C., 2014, "Varieties of Capitalism and Varieties of Economic Anthropology", in Nitsiakos & als (eds.), Balkan Border Crossings. Third Annual of the Konitsa Summer School, Munster, LIT Verlag, 9-30. Hann C. and Hart K., 2009, Market and Society: The Great Transformation Today, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Hann C. and Hart K., 2011, Economic Anthropology: History, Ethnography, Critique, Cambridge, Polity. Hart K. & Ortiz H., 2008, "Anthropology in the financial crisis", Anthropology Today 24(6), 1-3. Hart K. & Sharp J. (eds.), 2014, People, Money and Power in the Economic Crisis. Perspectives from the Global South, Oxford and New York, Berghahn Books. Harvey D., 2005, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harvey D., 2010, The Enigma of the Capital and the Crises of Capitalism, London, Profile Books. Mauss M., 1990 [1925], The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, London, Routledge. Narotzky S., 1997, New Directions in Economic Anthropology, London, Pluto Press. Polanyi K., 1944, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic