Office: Faner 3539 Office Hours: MW 10:00 a.m.-noon, by appointment
10:00-10:50, MWF, Faner 3515
COURSE OBJECTIVES: This course aims to provide students with anthropological perspectives on economic aspects of the encounter between European-based capitalist economies and other social formations. It deals centrally with the ways that wealth and power are created and transformed. It aims to familiarize students with a range of theoretical approaches and specific case studies.
As the Europe economy expanded world wide following Europe’s discovery and conquest of the Western hemisphere and its intensified commerce with Asia and the Pacific, non-European-based societies have been radically transformed. The modern world system engages all human beings in one web of interdependency and inter-responsibility. This revolutionary new phenomena requires radically new ways of thinking about both the category "economy" and our personal and political relationship to it.
These issues will be examined through studying theoretical writings, anthropological descriptions of non-industrial economies, and analyses of the contemporary encounter of these societies with expanding capitalist and industrial economies. By the end of the course, students should be able to distinguish definitional debates from debates of substance. They should be familiar with the tools of analysis used by different theoretical schools to understand economic processes, understand their strengths and limitations, and be able to apply these to specific ethnographic cases.
REQUIREMENTS:
1. Reading: This course requires a great deal of reading. Students are expected to be familiar with all the required readings. To assure this, students will turn in a one page summary/abstract of each assigned reading. All readings should be on reserve in Morris Library Reserve Room. I may substitute one of two articles, yet to be determined, in the final section. You will be notified by email of any changes. SUMMARIES WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED AFTER DUE DATE EXCEPT UNDER EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES.
2. Writing: A term paper of 15-25 pages for graduates, 12-15 pages for undergraduates will be required. Pick a topic by Feb. 15. Turn in a semi-annotated bibliography March 10. First draft of paper due March 31, final draft due April 28.
4. Exams: There will be an in-class mid-term (Friday, March 10) and final (Tuesday, May 9, 12:50-2:50 p.m.) which will test for basic concepts and ability to apply them. Each test will have a map quiz. You will be expected to be able to locate each group we have studied. The final may include a take-home synthetic essay, due at the final exam. If the final includes an essay, the question will be given out by Monday, November 26.
5. Attendance: Only three absences are permitted. After three absences, absences result in a drop of one-third (1/3) letter grade per absence, taken from final grade. Attendance will be taken at the beginning of each class meeting. Rationale: It is impossible to have intelligent, fruitful discussion if students have missed previous classes.
Grading:
| Exams: | Midterm: | 20 percent |
| Final: | 40 percent | |
| Research paper: | 30 percent | |
| Summaries: | 10 percent |
REQUIRED BOOKS:
Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. NY: W.W. Norton & Co. 1967 [1925] (NOTE: The available edition is a poor translation; you may wish to read the reserve copy.]
Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1978. [cited as MER in assigned readings]
SCHEDULE [unrevised for spring 2006, but week by week is accurate]:
Predecessors to and creation of the modern world system
Week 1, Jan. 16
Prefaces, Introduction to Europe and the People Without History, pp. ix-23
Week 2, Jan 23
Chapter 2, Europe and the People Without History, pp. 24-72
Chapter 3, Europe and the People Without History, pp. 73-100
Mauss, The Gift.
Week 3, Jan 30
Mauss, The Gift, cont.
John V. Murra, "Rite and Crop in the Inca State," in Daniel R. Gross, Peoples and Cultures of Native South America. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973. pp. 377-389. ON RESERVE
Week 4, Feb. 6
Helen Perlstein Pollard, "Ecological variation and economic exchange in the Tarascan State," in American Ethnologist 9(2, 1982):250-268. AVAILABLE THROUGH ANTHRO-SOURCE
Christine Ward Gailey and Thomas C. Patterson, "State Formation and Uneven Development" in J. Gledhill, B. Bender, and M. T. Larsen, eds., State and Society: The emergence and development of social hierarchy and political centralization, London: Unwin Hyman, 19 , pp. 77-90. ON RESERVE
Week 5, Feb. 14
Encounters: the first three centuries
TURN IN PAPER TOPIC
Chapter 4, Europe and the People Without History, pp. 101-126. TURN IN PAPER TOPIC.
R.H. Hilton, "Introduction," and Robert Brenner, "Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe," in The Brenner Debate, ed. by T.H. Aston and C.H.E. Philpin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. AVAILABLE THROUGH ANTHRO-SOURCE
Week 6, Feb. 27
In Search of Wealth and Chapter 5. Europe and the People Without History pp. 127-157
Carol Smith, "Local History in Global Context: Social and Economic Transitions in Western Guatemala," in Comparative Studies in Society and History 26(1984):193-228. AVAILABLE THROUGH JSTOR
Chapter 6, Europe and the People Without History
Chapter 7, Europe and the People Without History, pp. 195-231
Chapter 8, Europe and the People Without History, pp. 232-262
Week 8, March 6
Wrap up Part 2
Midterm exam
TURN IN BIBLIOGRAPHY
Week 9 - Spring Break
Week 10, March 20
Industrial revolution and the expansion of capitalism
Part 3, Chapter 9, Europe and the People Without History, pp. 263-295
Joan Vincent, "Conacre: A Reevaluation of Irish Custom," in Jane Schneider and Rayna Rapp, eds., Articulating Hidden Histories: Exploring the Influence of Eric R. Wolf, University of California Press, 1995, pp. 82-93. ON RESERVE
Week 11, March 27
Chapter 10, Europe and the People Without History, pp. 296-309
Chapter 11, Europe and the People Without History, pp. 310-353
TURN IN FIRST DRAFT OF PAPER
Week 12, April 3
Daryl K. Feil, "From pigs to pearlshells: The transformation of a New Guinea Highlands exchange economy." American Ethnologist 9(2, 1982):291-306.
AVAILABLE THROUGH ANTHRO-SOURCE
Andrew Strathern, "The division of labor and processes of social change in Mount Hagen," in American Ethnologist 9(2, 1982):307-319. AVAILABLE THROUGH ANTHRO-SOURCE
Chapter 12, Europe and the People Without History, pp. 354-384
Afterword, Europe and the People Without History, pp. 385-392.
Week 13, April 10
Jane Adams, "The Decoupling of Farm and Household: Differential Consequences of Capitalist Development on Southern Illinois and Third World Family Farms," Comparative Studies in Society and History 30(3, 1988):453-482. AVAILABLE THROUGH JSTOR
Michael Taussig, "The Genesis of Capitalism Amongst a South American Peasantry: Devil's Labor and the Baptism of Money," in Comparative Studies in Society and History 1978:130-155. AVAILABLE THROUGH JSTOR
Karl Marx, "Society and Economy in History," in MER 136-142
Week 14, April 17
Karl Marx, "Theses on Feurbach," in MER 143-145
Week 15, April 24
Richard D. Wolff, “The New Reading of Capital in the US” Article for Kapital neu lessen (2004) http://www.brechtforum.org/events/readings/wolff4.php
Jane Adams and D. Gorton, “Confederate Lane: Class, race, and ethnicity in the Mississippi Delta” American Ethnologist 33(2) (May 2006). (anthrosource.net)
Nancy Postero, “Indigenous Responses to Neoliberalism: A Look at the Bolivian Uprising of 2003”. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 28(1):73-92 (2005)
Week 16, May 1
READING CANCELLED Alberto Arce and Norman Long, "Bridging two worlds: an ethnography of bureaucrat-peasant relations in western Mexico. in Mark Hobart, ed., An Anthropological Critique of Development: The Growth of Ignorance, pp. 179-208. (for a brief report of an interview with Arce, see http://www.wb-online.nl/index.php?/wispr_archives/w972201.htm)
Sylvia Junko Yanagisako, “Chapter 1.” Producing Culture and Capital: Family Firms in Italy. http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7367.html or http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7367.pdf
PAPERS DUE.
FINAL EXAM.
Tuesday, May 9, 12:50-2:50 p.m.
Wolf Chap. 2
Murra - Inca
Inca & Tarascan
Economic Theories
Europe - Prelude to Expansion
Brenner
Smith - Guatemala
Wolf Chap. 5
Wolf Chap 6
Wolf Chap 7
Wolf Chap 8