Sex, Money, and Power: Anthropology of Intimacy and Exchange
ANTH 203
Spring 2012 not offered
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| Crosslisting:
FGSS 223 |
This course focuses on the dense exchanges between money and sex/intimacy in various cultural and historical contexts, from the normalized arrangement of sex/money in marriage to the stigmatized arrangement of sex/money in sex work. We will combine recent ethnographic explorations of the relationships between sex/intimacy and money/commodification with interdisciplinary analysis of capitalism, globalization, and neoliberalism. Case studies will be drawn from sex work and tourism; marketing and pornography; reproduction, domestic labor, transnational adoption; marriage; class and sexual lifestyle; labor and carework; the global market in organs and body parts; outsourced surrogacy; sex stores and commodities; and sexual activism and identity politics. Throughout, we will ask, How do practices or bodies gain value? How are intimacies--sexual and social--commoditized? Who benefits from such arrangements, and who does not? And, finally, how are transnational flows complicating relationships between sex and money in a variety of sites? |
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Essential Capabilities:
Intercultural Literacy
Intercultural literacy: the course is a cross-cultural investigation of the differential ways sex and money, intimacy and exchange come together. Readings are ethnographic, and focus on multiple cultures (Thailand, the US, the Carribbean, Russia, India) in their own context, and in comparison.
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS ANTH |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (ANTH)(CSCT)(FGSS)(HRAD-MN)(STS) |
Major Readings:
Lisa Rofel, DESIRING CHINA; Ara Wilson, INTIMATE ECONOMIES OF THAILAND; Katherine Frank, G-STRINGS AND SYMPATHY; Mark Padilla, CARIBBEAN PLEASURE INDUSTRY
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Examinations and Assignments:
reading response papers; final paper. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Readings are still under consideration; email me at mdweiss@wesleyan.edu if you would like the finalized list of course texts. |
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