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Economic Anthropology

Analytical Thinking
Communication
Critical Thinking
Social Awareness & Responsibility

Course Description

Economic anthropology looks beyond business economics to explore the diverse ways that humans have produced, consumed, invested, and exchanged around the globe and through deep time. This course explores questions of material and social value(s), cooperation and competition, livelihood strategies, and structures and experiences of inequality.

Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will take different exams, commensurate with their additional required readings and higher expectations.


Athena Title

ECONOMIC ANTH


Prerequisite

ANTH 1102 or permission of department


Grading System

A - F (Traditional)


Student Learning Outcomes

  • Students will critically evaluate evidence-based arguments and social theories about value, competition, cooperation, human nature, inequality, and social responsibility, using a variety of theoretical perspectives.
  • Students will understand the logic behind different economic and social theories, including those that students intuitively disagree with.
  • Students will decipher quantitative evidence in the form of graphs and statistics that describe income and wealth inequality across case studies.
  • Students will research and write original arguments using peer-reviewed journal articles and proper citation practices.
  • Students will evaluate the ethics of social and economic interactions among people of unequal wealth and power.

Topical Outline

  • Some economic vignettes to whet your intellectual appetite, and the deep question of, "what is the economy?
  • The deep question of value: what makes something valuable?
  • A marginally interesting lecture about marginal utility (value in neoclassical analysis)
  • The gift: value in traditional social exchanges
  • Women and the production of personhood
  • A scheme of reciprocities: generalized, balanced, negative
  • Labor theory of value and commodity fetishism
  • The myth of barter
  • The value of money
  • Games and self-interest: Playing to win
  • Coordination and cooperation games
  • The tragedy of the commons
  • Collective action and institutions
  • The Green Revolution as a clash of theories of rationality
  • Inequalities in Feudal Europe
  • Markets without capitalism: The Aztec Empire
  • Marketplaces in rural Madagascar
  • The Northern Fur Trade: theories of rationality collide
  • Adam Smith's universe
  • Karl Marx's universe
  • Poverty and wealth
  • Economic growth, development, and sustainability

Institutional Competencies

Analytical Thinking

The ability to reason, interpret, analyze, and solve problems from a wide array of authentic contexts.


Communication

The ability to effectively develop, express, and exchange ideas in written, oral, or visual form.


Critical Thinking

The ability to pursue and comprehensively evaluate information before accepting or establishing a conclusion, decision, or action.


Social Awareness & Responsibility

The capacity to understand the interdependence of people, communities, and self in a global society.



Syllabus