I. What is anthropology?

A. Economic anthropology = anthropological study of economics
B. Anthropology = study of human beings and their experiences in all their diversity
C. Cultural anthropology

a. how human beings organize their lives as members of society
b. how they make these lives meaningful as cultural individuals

 

II. What is economics?

A. Focuses on the economy

1. Root: Greek oikos, household
2. Nash: "the concrete set of activities and organizations through which a society patterns the flow of goods and services" (3).
3. Three realms

a. production
b. circulation
c. consumption

4. Used to occur primarily in households
5. Contemporary economy: institutions, corporations, states

B. Economics = relationships between human beings and the material world of goods, commodities, and money
C. Philosophical dimensions of human economic behavior
D. Four premises of economics

1. human beings need goods and services, but individual needs vary
2. these goods and services have multiple uses
3. these goods and services are scarce
4. acquiring these goods and services requires the expenditure of energy, itself limited

E. Economizing = making rational decisions about how to get needed/desired goods in the most efficient manner possible
F. Given needs, how do people obtain goods? Markets, prices

 

III. What is economic anthropology?

A. Challenges the what and why of economics

1. Broadens notion of what is economic
2. Car example: what kinds of exchanges are economic?
3. Motivations behind economic acts
4. Economics involves human relationships and cultural ideas
5. Culturally specific, not universal

B. Economics describes historically specific form of capitalism and capitalist behavior
C. Anthropologists traditionally focused on non-Western societies, economic models not as helpful
D. Example: selling "Gap" jeans in the US and Vietnam

1. US: supply and demand
2. Vietnam: bargaining
3. The importance of the first sale of the day
4. Economist response: superstition can be an economic variable
5. Anthropological response: rationality is culturally-specific

E. Context and cultural relativism
F. Capitalism is a cultural institution

 

IV. What economic anthropologists do

A. Use ethnography to describe different patterns of economic activity and economic systems
B. Relate economic systems to other elements of culture and social organization

1. Beliefs behind economic practices
2. Consider gender, family, power, politics
3. Example: Trade and gender in Vietnam and Morocco

C. Use findings to consider the fundamental question of anthropology: what unites human beings, how are we different, and why
D. Develop critical perspectives on our own economic life

 

V. Organization of the course

 

For more information, contact:  aleshkow@holycross.edu