ANTH 307 - “One Good Turkey Hen is Worth 100 Cacao Beans”: An Introduction to Economic Anthropology

What does it mean to be in debt? What is the difference between exchange and barter? Why do things have prices? What are gifts? What is value? These are questions that are fundamental to economics, yet their answers vary significantly between different cultures and time periods. In this course, we examine these questions through the lens of economic anthropology and adopt a holistic framework that considers the diversity of preferences, behaviors, and activities that relate to how people meet their basic (or not) human needs. We will consider behaviors like production, consumption, and exchange from a cross-cultural perspective that shows alternative practices and understandings that confront conventional arguments about human economic behavior. To do so, we will learn about the principles and history of economic anthropology and consider how we might study the economic practices of people today and in the past. What kind of material evidence do we look at? How do we know what was valued in the past? Through a combination of ethnographic texts, museum collections, and archaeological reports, we will consider these questions and call into question the assumed logics and structures of our current economic system. Students will be encouraged to develop and pursue interests in any regions, time periods, and topics they feel drawn to and will be given frequent opportunities to explore these further through various assignments.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201 or ANTH 211
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Notes: This course applies to the department’s SETS concentration.
Not offered: 2023-24
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Evaluate data and/or sources.
Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.