Seminar: BA: Ethics and Economics: The Anthropology of Getting Ahead - Details

Seminar: BA: Ethics and Economics: The Anthropology of Getting Ahead - Details

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General information

Course name Seminar: BA: Ethics and Economics: The Anthropology of Getting Ahead
Course number BA_SE:W/T
Semester SoSe 2025
Current number of participants 22
maximum number of participants 35
Home institute Ethnologie/Kulturvergleichende Soziologie
Courses type Seminar in category Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
First date Tuesday, 01.04.2025 12:15 - 13:45, Room: (Melanchthonianum, HS XVI)
Learning organisation Besonderheiten: Der Kurs wird auf Englisch unterrichtet. Alle Studien- und Modulleistungen werden auf Englisch erbracht.
Performance record Essay
Lehrsprache(n) Deutsch
SWS 2

Rooms and times

(Melanchthonianum, HS XVI)
Tuesday: 12:15 - 13:45, weekly (15x)

Fields of study

Comment/Description

What does it mean to act virtuously in a capitalist society? What constitutes a good life, and what actions are justified in pursuing it? Can the pursuit of profit be moral? Can one truly remove oneself from capitalist modes of accumulation? What is “virtue” and what is “interest” and do the two co-constitute each other? This course examines the ethical dimension of economic activities, how people earn a living, what responsibilities they might feel, and how they come to see themselves as moral beings doing what is right through these pursuits. Bringing together works from economic anthropology and the Anthropology of Ethics, it takes seriously the notion that people orient their actions towards “the good,” however they define it, and that this idea of the good comes to influence economic strategy. Using ethnographic examples from East Africa, South Asia, and Europe and the USA, it challenges the notion that capitalist markets are inherently amoral, even as it shows how the everyday actions of actors across the world often seem to assume this. Ultimately, this course aims to examine how people conceive themselves as moral subjects through economic actions, and how such acts of self-cultivation can have transformative potential.

Admission settings

The course is part of admission "Beschränkte Teilnehmendenanzahl: BA: Ethics and Economics: The Anthropology of Getting Ahead".
The following rules apply for the admission:
  • A defined number of seats will be assigned to these courses.
    The seats will be assigned in order of enrolment.