ANTH 239 Economic Anthropology

Work and labor are central to human subsistence and existence, relations, aspirations, and identity formations. This course offers an anthropological approach to the study of work and its social and cultural meanings and context by introducing the broader field of economic anthropology. We will look at how work and notions of production are caught up with the economy, and how these vary over time, place, and ideology. We will also reflectively examine how our own definitions and categories of work, sociality, and what constitutes the economic arena are shaped. In this course students will produce "auto-ethnographies” drawing upon past, present, or future personal experiences or aspirations of work, and how they relate to sociocultural norms and expectations that may or may not be immediately apparent.