Seminar in category Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
First date
Wednesday, 24.10.2018 14:15 - 15:45
Pre-requisites
Recommended Reading: Hann & Hart’s Economic Anthropology will provide the theoretical backbone of the lectures. Students may wish to obtain a copy as a reference. To prepare for English-language lectures, students may enjoy listening to U.S. National Public Radio’s “Planet Money” (episodes ~20 minutes), “The Indicator” (8-10 minutes), or “Rough Translation” (30-40 minutes). The instructor will post some recommended episodes before the start of the term.
Performance record
Studienleistung: Wird in der ersten Stunde bekannt gegeben.
Modulleistung: Seminararbeit
SWS
2
Miscellanea
Besonderheiten: Der Kurs wird auf Englisch unterrichtet. Alle Studien- und Modulleistungen werden auf Englisch erbracht.
This course introduces students to questions of labor and value, distribution and exchange, material culture and consumption, and property and power across a broad geography. Particular emphasis will be placed on enduring questions of ethics and morality: can trade be “fair?” Is labor always exploitative? What role does religion play in business? What guides people’s senses of what is just, or to whom they are obligated? We historicize these questions with classic texts from anthropology and adjacent fields, but move quickly to investigate their contemporary relevance to, for example, tea plantations in India, migrant-sending villages in Guatemala, outdoor markets in Vietnam, mining in Papua New Guinea, oil production off Equatorial Guinea, housing crunches in Jordan, start-ups in Silicon Valley, and food delivery services in Berlin.
We will also pay close attention to recent transformations in post-socialist space, especially in the “new Europe.” In December, we will bring our conversation home to Halle through community-based ethnography. A secondary objective of this course is to hone students’ skills in academic English. In addition to attending lectures and discussing readings (or videos, or podcasts), students will complete shorter writing assignments so that they and the instructor can track their progress. Students will finish the term with a solid grasp of key themes in economic anthropology, a taste of ethnographic fieldwork, and more confidence in their English.
