Readings

The reading assignments for the course are listed in the table below. Because the course is conducted as a seminar and class participation is expected, materials must be read for the assigned day in class. Also in the table are notes, handouts, and study questions that were used in the course to facilitate discussion.

SES # TOPICS READINGS and NOtes
Introduction
1 What is Capitalism? What is Anthropology? No readings for this lecture.
2 Competing Ways of Understanding Expanding Class Inequality in the United States

Ehrenreich, Barbara. "Deindustrializing Chicago." Chapter 6 in The Insecure American: How We Got Here and What We Should do About It. Edited by Hugh Gusterson, and Catherine Besteman. University of California Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780520259713. [Preview with Google Books]

Murray, Charles. "Industriousness." Chapter 9 in Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010. Crown Forum, 2013. ISBN: 9780307453433.

Class Notes About Inequality (PDF)
3 An Ethnographic Problem: The Financial Crisis of 2008

Stewart, James B. "A Reporter at Large: Eight Days." The New Yorker, September 21, 2009.

Boyer, Peter J. "Eviction." The New Yorker, November 24, 2008.
Theories of Capitalism
4 Nineteenth Century Political Economy

Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (A Selected Edition). Edited with an Introduction and Commentary by Kathryn Sutherland. Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780192817969.

  • Introduction, pp. i–xlv.
  • Introduction and Plan of the Work, pp. 8–10.
  • Book I: Chapter I, pp. 11–20.
  • Chapter II, pp. 21–5.
  • Chapter III, pp. 26–30.
  • Chapter IV, pp. 31–5.
  • Chapter V, pp. 36–44.

Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party. International Publishers, 1848.

  • Preface, pp. 3–7.
  • Manifesto of the Communist Party, p. 8.
  • Chapter I, pp. 9–21.
  • Chapter II, pp. 23–31.
  • Chapter IV, pp. 43–4.

Handout on Adam Smith and Karl Marx (PDF)
5 Sociological Perspectives: Weber and Bourdieu

Weber, Max. "Class, Status, Party Weber, Max." Chapter VII in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated, edited, and with an introduction by H. H. Gerth, and C. Wright Mills. Oxford University Press, 1958. ISBN: 9780195004625.

———. "The Spirit of Capitalism." Chapter II in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958, pp. 47–78.

Bourdieu, Pierre. "The Forms of Capital." In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Edited by John G. Richardson. Greenwood, 1986. ISBN: 9780313235290.

Study Questions for Marx and Weber (PDF)
6 Capitalism After World War II

Hayek, Friedrich A. "Individualism: True and False." In Individualism and Economic Order. University of Chicago Press, 1948. ISBN: 9780226320755. [Preview with Google Books]

Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Beacon Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780807056431.

  • Chapter 4: Societies and Economic Systems.
  • Chapter 5: Evolution of the Market Pattern.
  • Chapter 6: The Self-Regulating Market and the Fictitious Commodities: Labor, Land, and Money.

Study Questions for Hayek and Polanyi (PDF)
7 Theories of Capitalism: From Post-Structuralism to Identity Literature

Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. "Recasting Marxism: Hegemony and New Political Movements." Socialist Review 12, no. 6 (1982): 91–113.

Ortner, Sherry B. "Reading America: Preliminary Notes on Class and Culture." Chapter 9 in Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present. Edited by Richard G. Fox. School of American Research Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780933452787.

Class Notes About Post-Structuralism (PDF)
8 Capitalism and Globalization Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Blackwell Publications, 1989. ISBN: 9780631162926.
  • Chapter 8: Fordism.
  • Chapter 9: From Fordism to flexible accumulation.
  • Chapter 10: Theorizing the transition.
9 Contemporary Debates over Capitalism: The Tea Party vs. Occupy Wall Street

Standing, Guy. "The Precariat." Chapter 1 in The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. ISBN: 9781849663519.

Rand, Ayn. "What is Capitalism?" Chapter 1 in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Signet, 1986. ISBN: 9780451147950. [Preview with Google Books]

Raban, Jonathan. "At the Tea Party." The New York Review of Books, March 25, 2010.

Greenberg, Michael. "In Zuccotti Park." The New York Review of Books, November 10, 2011.
10 Capitalism Redux: History, "Progress," and the Return of the Nineteenth Century?

Sinclair, Upton. "Introduction." In The Jungle. W. W. Norton & Company, 2002. ISBN: 9780393977790.

———. The Jungle. Doubleday, 1906.

  • Chapters 1-4
  • Chapters 11-12
  • Chapter 15

Genoways, Ted. "Cut and Kill." Mother Jones, July/August 2011.
An Ethnographic Look: Capitalism And Everyday Life
11 Social Class: Thinking Outside the Box Bettie, Julie. "Women without Class." Chapter 2 in Women without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity. University of California Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780520235427. [Preview with Google Books]
12 Film: People Like Us: Social Class in America. Directed by Louis Alvarez and Andrew Kolker. PBS, 2001

Bettie, Julie. Chapters 3–5 in Women Without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity. University of California Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780520235427. [Preview with Google Books]

  • Chapter 3: How Working-Class Chicas Get Working-Class Lives
  • Chapter 4: Hard-Living Habitus, Settled-Living Resentment
  • Chapter 5: Border Work between Classes
13 Film (cont.): People Like Us: Social Class in America. Directed by Louis Alvarez and Andrew Kolker. The Center for New American Media, 2001.

Aldrich, Nelson W., Jr. Old Money: The Mythology of Wealth in America. Allworth Press, 1997. ISBN: 9781880559642.

  • Introduction: Elegy in a City Clothing Store.
  • Chapter 2: The Composition of Old Money.
  • Chapter 3: Class Acts.
14 Discussion of "People Like Us" Lacy, Karyn. Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class. University of California Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780520251168. [Preview with Google Books]
  • Chapter 3: Public Identities: Managing Race in Public Spaces.
  • Chapter 4: Status-Based Identities: Protecting and Reproducing Middle-Class Status.
15 Discussion of Old Money and Blue-Chip Black No readings for this lecture.
Capitalism and Its Others
16 Capitalism and Its Others: Soviet-Style State Socialism Verdery, Katherine. What was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780691011325.
  • Chapter 1: What was socialism, and why did it fall?
  • Chapter 8: A transition from socialism to feudalism? Thoughts on the postsocialist state.
17 Capitalism and Its Others: The Nordic Model

Rothstein, Bo, and Lars Tragardh. "The State and Civil Society in Historical Perspective: The Swedish Case." Chapter 7 in State and Civil Society in Northern Europe: The Swedish Model Reconsidered. Edited by Lars Tragardh. Berghan Books, 2007, pp. 229–53. ISBN: 9781845452322. [Preview with Google Books]

Barnes, J. A. "Class and Committees in a Norwegian Island Parish." Human Relations 7 (1954): 39–58.

OR

Isenhour, Cindy. "Building Sustainable Societies: A Swedish Case Study on the Limits of Reflexive Modernization." American Ethnologist 37, no. 3 (2010): 511–25.
18 Capitalism And Its Others: The "Third World"

Donham, Donald L. Marxist Modern: An Ethnographic History of the Ethiopian Revolution. University of California, 1999. ISBN: 9780520213296. [Preview with Google Books]

  • Introduction: Genealogies of the Modern and the Anti-Modern.
  • Chapter 1: The Metanarrative of Modernity in Ethiopia: 1974.
  • Chapter 2: Revolution within a Revolution.
  • Chapter 6: Marxist Modernism at the Ethiopian Center.
  • Chapter 7: The Revolutionary State at the Grass Roots.

Harvey, David. "Neoliberalism 'with Chinese Characteristics'." Chapter 5 in A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780199283279.
A Case Study: Inside the 2008 Financial Crisis
19 Inside the 2008 Financial Crisis Ho, Karen. Chapters 1, 2 or 5, and 6 in Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street. Duke University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780822345992. [Preview with Google Books]
20 Film: Frontline: Money, Power & Wall Street, Episode 1, April 24, 2012.

Tett, Gillian. Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at JP Morgan was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe. Free Press, 2009. ISBN: 9781416598572. [Preview with Google Books]

  • Part One, pp. 1–86.
  • Chapter 6
21 Film: Frontline: Money, Power & Wall Street, Episode 2, April 24, 2012.

Ho, Karen. Chapters 3 and 4 in Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street. Duke University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780822345992. [Preview with Google Books]

Tett, Gillian. Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at JP Morgan was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe. Free Press, 2009. ISBN: 9781416598572. [Preview with Google Books]

  • Part One, pp. 1–86.
  • Chapters 6, 9, and 15.
22 Inside the 2008 Financial Crisis (cont.) Dudley, Kathryn Marie. The End of the Line: Lost Jobs, New Lives in Postindustrial America. The University of Chicago Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780226169101. [Preview with Google Books]
  • Introduction.
  • Chapter 3: Dollars and Diplomas.
23 Inside the 2008 Financial Crisis (cont.) Dudley, Kathryn Marie. Chapters 5 and 8 in The End of the Line: Lost Jobs, New Lives in Postindustrial America. The University of Chicago Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780226169101. [Preview with Google Books]
24 Inside the 2008 Financial Crisis (cont.)

 

Stout, Noelle. Close to Home: Personal Failure and Public Affect in the Mortgage Crisis. Paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Conference, San Francisco, November, 2012.

Jefferson, Anna. "Narratives of Moral Order in Michigan's Foreclosure Crisis." City & Society 25, no. 1 (2013): 92–112.

Discussion Questions for the Final Class (PDF)
25 Final Project Oral Presentations No readings for this session.
26 Final Project Oral Presentations (cont.) No readings for this session.
27 Final Project Oral Presentations (cont.) No readings for this session.