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Lederman FRS 128 Page 1 of 6 Professor Rena Lederman Office Lederman FRS 128 Page 1 of 6 Professor Rena Lederman Office: 58 Prospect, #206 Email: [email protected] Hours: Tuesday 11-1 and Phone: x85534 and by appointment FRS 128: Meaning and Value: Anthropology and History of Economic Experience This course explores the meaningful contexts of objects, relationships, and values deemed “economic” in American culture. Employing anthropological, sociological, and historical strategies of interpretation, and drawing on comparative research from around the globe, participants will consider the embedding of the “economic” in historically specific sociocultural experience. Participants will also get an introductory feel for ethnographic “fieldwork” by using their own everyday experience systematically and integrating it with other kinds of research. Readings: N. Z. Davis The Gift in Early Modern France G. McCracken Culture and Consumption M. Sahlins Stone Age Economics Course packet (includes all readings not in the above books) (The books are available at the Ustore. The course packet is available at Pequod.) Assignments: 1. Active participation in weekly discussions requires keeping up with the assigned readings and coming to class meetings with question and reactions. The ANT 205 Blackboard “discussion board”, to which all registered students will have access, will complement in-class discussions. 20% of your grade will be derived from your class participation: class attendance, and active contributions—questions, confusions, comments—to class and Blackboard discussion. (If you must miss a seminar meeting, then you will be expected to make a substantial contribution through Blackboard; otherwise, that online resource is useful for initiating or continuing class discussion.) Readings are drawn both from unfamiliar cultural/historical contexts and from familiar ones. They aim to sharpen your sense of some of Lederman FRS 128 Page 2 of 6 the scholarly debates about the relationship of “economics” and “culture”. 2. All students will keep a field journal keyed to course themes (see sample on the next couple of pages). 20% of your grade will be derived from your field journal: 10% at mid-term time and 10% at the end of the term. The point of the journal is to make explicit and conscious the intertwining of the economic and the cultural in everyday experience. Journal entries (about three per week) may relate incidents and observations drawn both from your own here-and- now and from memories provoked by or bearing on our readings and class discussions. Whether they concern contemporary or past experiences, your journal entries ought to provide opportunities for reflecting concretely on the extent to which and how economic and non-economic relationships, objects, and values are entangled. You will be expected to use your experience as a motivation for discussion and critical reading. In class, we will use this field experience, together with the course readings, to clarify what we take to be “economic” in the first place: how or when do “economic” meanings and values color other dimensions of life, and in what ways are “economic” criteria conditioned by those other considerations? When are these questions themselves unanswerable? 3. Students will share responsibility for making brief class presentations. A write-up of your presentation (4 pp. double spaced, standard 12 pt. font)—worth 10% of your grade—is due a week after the presentation. Presentations will be based on your journals and on the assigned readings. In addition to substantive issues, the presentations will be opportunities to discuss the methodological challenges of integrating “fieldwork” with more familiar library (book- or document-based) research. 4. A final paper (10-12 pages, double spaced, standard 12 pt. font)—worth 50% of your grade—is due at 3 p.m. on “Dean’s Date” (Tuesday, May 10). It must be used to integrate and reflect critically on the course readings; it must be based on some aspect of your journal experience. It can (but does not have to) be based, in part, on complementary research. A proposal for the final paper is due on Tuesday, April 1. Each student is encouraged to make an appointment with Professor Lederman before April to discuss possible paper ideas. Lederman FRS 128 Page 3 of 6 TOPICS AND ASSIGNMENTS Note: readings in boldface are in the assigned books; all other readings are in the course packet Packet readings are drawn from books as indicated, most of which can be found on reserve at Firestone 1. Introductory (Week 1) Introductory lecture overviewing course themes and emphases, including the multidisciplinary character of the readings and the particular reading challenges that involves. Discussion of the assignments, and particularly of the process of field journal writing: the ethics and practice of anthropological field research and the particular constraints on “fieldwork” in this course (e.g., conversation and “eavesdropping”, use of media sources, comparisons with non-anthropological field studies). Reading (due 2/2): 1. Sunstein and Chiseri-Strater (2002) “Writing self, writing cultures” (FieldWorking Chapter 2, pp. 55-104) 2. Osborn (2002) “Consuming rituals of the suburban tribe” (NYTimes Magazine 1/13/02, pp. 28-31) 2. Consumption: who says there’s no accounting for taste? (Weeks 2-5) We are used to two contradictory arguments, both academic and popular: that consumer society is oppressive and that it is liberating. In this seminar, we will treat life-style—i.e. the particular patterning of consumption—as culturally- and historically-specific by looking at “demand” (that is, “needs” and “wants”—the ends to which we apply our means) comparatively and over time. We will consider the implications of viewing “scarcity”—that is, the sense that our means are limited (necessitating choices among alternative uses)—not as a universal natural condition but as a variable cultural one. Similarly, we will consider “demand” not as a backgrounded or tacit condition (as it often is in economics) but as an explicit object of cultural/historical study. Reading (due 2/9): 1. M. Sahlins (1972) “The original affluent society” (Stone Age Economics, pp. 1-39) 2. R. Lee “What hunters do for a living, or how to make out on scarce resources” (Lee and DeVore, eds. Man the Hunter pp. 30-48) 3. J. De Graaf et al. (2001) Affluenza (selections: pp. 1-8, 68-76, 109-118, 121- 127) Lederman FRS 128 Page 4 of 6 Reading (due 2/16): 1. M. Douglas and B. Isherwood (1979) “Why people want goods” (The World of Goods pp. 3-10) 2. D. Miller (1987) “Introduction” (Material Culture and Mass Consumption, pp. 3-18) 3. G. McCracken (1990) Culture and Consumption Chapters 1, 4, 5, 9 (pp. 3- 30, 57-89, 130-137) Reading (due 2/23: 1. R. Robbins (2002) “Capitalism and the making of the consumer” (Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, pp. 1-31) 2. D. Miller (1998) “Coca Cola: a black sweet drink from Trinidad” (Miller ed. Material Cultures, pp. 169-87) 3. Production: when did time become something you can run out of? (Weeks 6-7) We will pay attention to the background assumptions of a range of different production centered approaches (e.g., to contrasting ideas about “time” and “labor”). Backing up from questions about life-styles we need to think about enabling conditions: where does all our “stuff” come from and how is access to it constrained? If reference to natural constraints (e.g., resources) are not exactly convincing, then we need to consider how styles of life are limited or opened up by alternative sociopolitical organizations of production. We might start with Sahlins’s deceptively simple question: what gets people to work so hard? Reading (due 3/2): 1. A. Smith (1937) Wealth of Nations (Chapters 1-4, pp. 3-29) 2. M. Sahlins (1972) Stone Age Economics Chapters 2-3, pp. 41-148 Reading (due 3/9): 1. E. P. Thompson (1967) “Time and work discipline in industrial capitalism” (Past and Present 38: 56-97) 2. A. Rabinbach (1990) “From idleness to fatigue” (The Human Motor Chapter 1, pp. 19-44) 3. C. Helman (1987) “Heart disease and the cultural construction of time” (Social Science Medicine 25 (9): 969-79) 4. M. F. Smith (1982) “Bloody time and bloody money” (American Ethnologist 9(3): 503-518) Wednesday, March 16: MIDTERM BREAK – no class Lederman FRS 128 Page 5 of 6 4. Exchange: moneymoneymoneymoney (and that’s not all…) (Weeks 8-12) We’re used to thinking in terms of a linear cultural “evolution”: earlier, simpler, less efficient socioeconomic practices give way to capitalist or market economies over time, everywhere. While our readings and discussions have already called this linear progression into question, here we’ll consider the matter from the integrative perspective of exchange—arguably the dynamic link between production (sociopolitical relationships and technical means) and consumption (style of life). We’ll sample the classics of exchange theory. We’ll compare “gift”, “barter”, and “market” exchanges paying special attention to “money” and to the historical intertwining of forms of exchange. We’ll consider a sampling of implications for the interpretation of contemporary experience. Reading (due 3/23): 1. M. Mauss (1990; orig 1950) “Introduction”, “The exchange of gifts” and “Conclusion” (The Gift pp. 1-18, 65-83) 2. M. Sahlins Stone Age Economics Chapters 4, 6 3. K. Polanyi (1958) “The economy as instituted process” (Polanyi et al. eds. Trade and Market in the Early Empires, pp. 243-69) 4. S. Cook (1966) “Our obsolete anti-market mentality” (Am Anthropologist 68: pp. 323-45 and E. LeClair and H. K. Schneider, eds. Economic Anthropology, pp. 208-228) NOTE: proposal for final paper due on Tuesday, 4/1 Reading (due 3/30): 1. C. Humphrey and S. Hugh-Jones, eds. ( 1992) Barter, Exchange and Value, “Introduction” (pp. 1-20) 2. S. Hugh-Jones (1992)“Yesterday’s luxuries, tomorrow’s necessities: business and barter in northwest Amazonia” (Humphrey and Hugh-Jones, eds.
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