| Economic
anthropology is not dead - it just smells funny... Course at the Institute of Anthropology, Copenhagen University By Finn Sivert Nielsen |
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| Course description |
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| Once upon a time,
economic anthropology was one of the biggest and most booming
specializations in anthropology. But with the coming of postmodernism,
anything that smelled of statistics and numbers was no longer
comme-il-faut, and economic anthropologists retreated to the margins of
the discipline. Nevertheless, the last two decades have seen a number of
fascinating innovations within economic anthropology, and many
anthropologists feel that it is just a matter of time before economic
analysis again becomes The Big Thing - particularly, perhaps, because
economic anthropology remains one of the most directly useful branches of
the discipline.
This course will explore the past, present and future of economic anthropology, with special emphasis on theories of consumption (often inspired by Simmel), newer exchange theory (Barraud, Weiner), and New Institutional Economics - which is a branch of economic theory that has won several Nobel prizes during the last decades, where economists increasingly find inspiration in anthropology. If you plan to follow this course, please visit the homepage a few weeks before the course starts, to find information on how you should prepare yourself for the first lecture. |
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