15Sp Mo 07:00 PM- 09:30 PM      

BLURB (NOT THE ORIGINAL): Organized in four parts, this course introduces students to anthropologically useful ideas in marxism and world system theory, the use of ‘exchange theory’ over the last 100 years, and research in newer versions of ecological anthropology/historical ecology as it bears on the social nature of production.

Students are expected to come away with introductions to each of these areas and a sense of the history of ‘economic anthropology,’ once the least distinguished part of the discipline but arguably, from the 1970s on, one of if not the most productive subfield in the discipline. Each student will write one 5-10 page paper on three or four of these sections and use the last section to bend the materials toward the student’s intended research questions, topically or regionally defined; this final paper may go to 15 pages.  Individualized oral reports on tangential readings are also expected, and will enable students to structure aspects of the course more to their primary interests.

Although designed for graduate students, undergraduates are encouraged to consider the course to round out their undergraduate careers and help define their futures.

BOOKS AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

These books will be available at the UVa Bookstore:

Everyone reads:

MARX - CAPITAL VOL 1 -  

Everyone reads one of these four, to be assigned after the 2^nd or 3^rd class meeting

WALLERSTEIN - MODERN WORLD SYSTEM 1: CAPITALIST AGRICULTURE ORIGINS EUROPEAN - 

WALLERSTEIN - MODERN WORLD SYSTEM II: MERCANTILISM & CONSOLIDATION EUROPEAN - 

WALLERSTEIN - MODERN WORLD SYSTEM III: SECOND ERA GREAT EXPANSION CAPITALIST –

WALLERSTEIN - MODERN WORLD SYSTEM IV: CENTRIST LIBERALISM TRIUMPHANT - 

Everyone reads:

PARRY & BLOCK - MONEY & THE MORALITY OF EXCHANGE -  

GODELIER - ENIGMA OF THE GIFT -  

Read either  

LANSING, J Steve PERFECT ORDER (2006) 

 or

LEMONNIER - MUNDANE OBJECTS (2012)

Or

Carse, Ashley –BEYOND THE BIG DITCH Politics, Ecology and Infrastructure at the Panama Canal (2014)

Responsibilities:

1. In addition to reading the assigned works and being prepared to discuss them;
2. Everyone will take one or more supplementary works to read and report on in class at the assigned time. It is presumed that for the week of this special report the student will be less prepared for the required reading. Numerous books for this purpose are listed in the syllabus. You are welcome to suggest others as they suit your purposes (and we’ll discuss them);
3. To complete the course undergraduates will write 4, graduate students 5, shortish papers (3, 5‑10pages; a final 10‑15). The last paper should be moving relevant portions of the course content to your specific research interests, regionally or topically conceived. The papers should either be witty criticisms of the required reading or sympathetic attempts to describe the content of that reading which will be of use to you in 1, 5 or 15 years hence. I will probably flunk all papers written in the first of these two styles—enough said?

I. INTRODUCTION (au fond?)  1/12/15^[i]

Please come to class having 1) recalled, invoked or imagined what you remember from Mauss’s essay translated to The Gift, forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies.[note bene: essai sur le don]; 2) figured out what Bateson means by symmetrical and complementary schismogenesis; 3) having read or reread Lévi‑Strauss's chapter in Structural Anthropology "Social Structure;" 4) and having read Martin Nicolaus's 'Foreword' to Marx's Grundrise. “Social Structure” and Nicolaus’s ‘Foreword’ are in Collab.

II. PRODUCTION‑‑ A STARTING POINT? Situating the West as a model?           

Marx and Wallerstein In Comparative Perspective

A. Marx's Capital, Vol. I                                                                                            1/26, 2/2, 2/9

More or less for Parts I&II--1/26

SPECIAL REPORTS, (1) Barnett & Silverman, Ideology and Everyday Life, 'Chapters' 1, 2, & 3, with special emphasis on 2. (2) Crocker, J. C. Reciprocity and Hierarchy Amongst the Eastern Bororo,” (1969) Man, n.s.4(1) 44-58. And Barnett, S. “Coconuts and Gold: Relational Identity in a South Indian Caste,” Contributions to Indian Sociology, n.s. 10(1)133-156.

More or less for Parts III-VI, 2/2

SPECIAL REPORTS 3)& Robert Jackall, Moral Mazes; 4)& C. H. Ferguson's HIGH STAKES, NO PRISONERS: A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars, [or Michael Lewis, The New, New Thing(1999) or Issacson’s biography of Steve Jobs]. 5) Paul Rabinow’s (1994) MAKING PCR

More or less for Parts VII&VIII 2/9

[TO BE READ ALONG WITH THESE TWO PARTS From L. Althusser & Balibar's Reading Capital, Balibar's "On Reproduction,"Pp 254‑272]                         

               SPECIAL REPORTS: 6) Sydney Mintz Sweetness and Power 7 The Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014) by Svern Beckert

PAPER #1

5‑10 PAGE DISCUSSION OF MARX

Due, 2/13

B. Wallerstein, I. The Modern World System, Vols I‑IV.^[ii]                                2/16, 2/23/, 3/2

What are the Models and Facts?[iii]

Read and digest one volume, which one to be determined by your regional and topical interests in consultation with me, (and see note 2); take good notes on the discussions about the others.

1. Volume I Capitalist Agriculture and the Origin of the European World‑Economy in the Sixteenth Century (Although the new editions contain prefaces or the like which summarize some of the arguments that preceded them, nothing quite matches the last chapter in the first volume. I have, therefore, added a pdf of that in the course’s collab Resources section for all those not reading the first volume.)

SPECIAL REPORT, 2/10: 7) J. Schneider's "peacocks & penguins: the political‑economy of European cloth and colors." American ethnologist, 1978, Vol.5(3):413‑447 (Very, very important; sooner or later every grad student needs to read this essay in the context of their consideration of Wallerstein’s oeuvre.); Steinberg, Arthur, & Jonathan Wylie, 1990 "Counterfeiting Nature: Artistic Innovation & Cultural Crisis in Renaissance Venice" in Comparative Study of Society & History 32(1): 54‑88. 8) Abu-Lughod, Janet L. (1989) Before European hegemony : the world system A.D. 1250-1350 New York : Oxford University Press.
    

2. Volume II Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World‑Economy, 1600‑1750

SPECIAL REPORT, 2/17: 9) Sahlins, Marshall. 1988 Radcliffe‑Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology, "Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans‑Pacific Sector of 'The World System,' in Proceedings of the British Academy, LXXIV, 1988, 1‑51. Although this essay concerns facts pertinent to the time period of Wallerstein’s 3^rd volume, it comes out partly in reaction to Volumes I&II. Sahlins was in discussion with Mintz at this time and the two of them agree with what seems to be missing in Capital(an analysis of use value). This is also the context in which Sahlins is configuring his Cook pieces for which the central analytical problems are not at all Wallerstein’s. If a graduate student takes this assignment and is not familiar with Islands of History it might be useful—to the class, to the student—to put this essay in the context of that book.

3. Vol. III The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World‑Economy, 1730‑1840s.^[iv]

SPECIAL REPORT, 2/24:10) Patrick Vinton Kirch and Marshall, Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii, Volume 1: Historical Ethnography; Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii, Volume 2: The Archaeology of History. 11) Peter Metcalf, The Life of the Longhouse: An Archaeology of Ethnicity (2009).

4. Vol. IV CENTRIST LIBERALISM TRIUMPHANT, 1789-1914 -

And Chapter 5, “The Modern World-System in Crisis: Bifurcation, Chaos, and Choices” from Wallerstein, Immanuel  2004 WORDL-SYSTEM ANALYSIS An Introduction Durham: Duke University Press. (In Collab)

                  76

SPECIAL REPORTS, 3/3: 11) Rockdale, by Anthony F. C. Wallace; 12) Global ‘Body Shopping’: An Indian Labour System in the Information Technology Industry, by Biao Xiang (Reviewed in The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 9(1) March 2008:94-95.). 13) Elizabeth Tandy Shermer (2013) SUNBELT CAPITALISM: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics.

PAPER #2 

5‑10 PAGE DISCUSSION OF A WALLERSTEIN Volume

Due on 3/20

IV. EXCHANGE ‑ AND DESTRUCTION? Legacies of Exchange: Markets, Value & The Gift ‑ at War with Warre or a "Verbose Phenomenology"?

A. Markets^[v] 3/23 (This day will have to be moved to another one; or up by 4 hours)             

1)"Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China" by G. William Skinner (1964) Journal of Asian Studies, 24, (1): 3‑43. Electronic Reserve (There are two other parts, also on line for the interested)

2)"Examining Stratification systems through Peasant Marketing Arrangements: An Application of some models from Economic Geography." By Carole Smith (1975) Man 10(1):95‑122.(JSTOR)

3) 'Introduction' to Markets In Africa by Paul Bohannan & George Dalton (1962) Pp. 1‑26

4) "The Market Wheel: Symbolic Aspects of an Indian Tribal Market" by Alfred Gell(1982) Man: 17: 470‑491. (Electronic Reserve)

5). "Suq: The Bizarre Economy in Sefrou" by Clifford Geertz in Meaning and order in Moroccan society: three essays in cultural analysis by Clifford Geertz, Hildred Geertz, Lawrence Rosen CUP, 1979.

6) "Wealth Production, Ritual Consumption and Center/Periphery Relations in a West African Regional System" by Charles Piot (1992) american ethnologist: 19(1): 34‑52. (JSTOR)

7) Parry, Jonathan, “The Gift, the Indian Gift and the 'Indian Gift,’Man, New Series, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Sep., 1986), pp. 453-473 or Chapter 10 “‘Sociological Marxism’ in Central India: Polanyi, Gramsci, and the case of the unions” Pp. 175-202 (notebene: the pdf includes the bibliography that comes in the end of this book/collection of essays) in MARKET AND SOCIETY: The Great Transformation Today edited by Chris Hann and Keith Hart.

PAPER #3/--Grad Students Must do this one.

B. 1980s: The Aftermath to Gifts and Commodities and The Devil and Commodity Production in South America (i.e. C. Gregory and M. Taussig) 3/30

PARRY & BLOCK - MONEY & THE MORALITY OF EXCHANGE -   

'Introduction' to Appadurai, Arjun (ed) The Social life of things : commodities... c1986, CUP Pp. 3‑63

SPECIAL REPORT:  14) Chris Gregory, GIFTS AND COMMODITIES (2^ed.) Savage Money [NOTE BENE: This is for the South Asianists in the course; having graduated from Melanesia, initially under the tutelage of Alfred Gell, Gregory is now a South Asianist.] Bourdieu, P. OUTLINE OF A THEORY OF PRACTICE (ADDED ON 1/14/14)

C. 1990s GODELIER - ENIGMA OF THE GIFT  4/6

            and

1) Damon, F.H. 1983 "What Moves the Kula: Opening and Closing Gifts on Woodlark Island." In THE KULA: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange. Edited by J. W. Leach & E. R. Leach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 309‑342.

Or 2)                     2002 ‑ "Kula Valuables, the Problem of Value and the Production of Names." L'Homme April‑June 162: 107‑136.

3) Turner, Terence (2008) “MARXIAN VALUE THEORY: An anthropological perspective” Anthropological Theory 8(1):43-56.

SPECIAL REPORT: 15) For two people: Karen Richman’s (2008) Migration and Vodou and Julie Chu (2010) COSMOLOTIES OF CREDIT: Transnational Mobility and the Politics of Destination in China. Maybe 16) Walter E Little and Patricia A. McAnany [ed.] (2011). TEXTILE ECONOMIES: Power and Value from the Local to the Transnational,