Anthropology 324 - Cultures of Money

This course explores money as an ethnographic object.  It focuses on anthropological writing about the everyday uses of money from “exotic” fields to places much closer to “home,"  from colonial encounters to household budgeting and the world of finance, for example. Anthropology has long been interested in the diverse ways in which people attach meanings, desires, and value to the idea that is money. If modern money is a universally recognized object of value, what can the histories and cultures of its circulation say about the making of the contemporary world? The course answers the question by approaching money not simply as equal and interchangeable as it is generally understood, but full of cultural significance.  Together we will see how money is a powerful medium through which one can understand important social and cultural phenomena, such as morality, violence, faith, gender, power, and resistance.

Limited to 25 students.  Spring semester.  Professor Chowdhury.