Anthropology 347 - SEM: HOW WE INHABIT THE WORLD

Topics course: Making a place of one’s own entails occupying and consuming what the place consists of. Human inhabitation of the planet can be seen as simultaneously productive and destructive, of both the inhabited space and its inhabitants. Drawing on concepts commonly considered “economic”; i.e. production, consumption, exchange, and property the following questions will be explored in this course: i) Does anthropological research confirm the universality of these concepts in human communities across history and geography as assumed by political and economic philosophers? ii) In what ways are the experiences, and hence understandings of, production, consumption, exchange, and property being transformed by the processes termed “neoliberalism”? How are these changes shaping the ways in which older and newer dispossessed groups may or may not inhabit the world? Readings for the course will include philosophical and anthropological texts.

Instructor Permission. Not open to first-years, sophomores