Sex, Money, and Power: Anthropology of Intimacy and Exchange
ANTH 203
Spring 2020 not offered
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| Crosslisting:
FGSS 223, AMST 228 |
| Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory |
| Course Cluster: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate, Queer Studies |
Sex and money--intimacy and economy--are often imagined to occupy distinct and separate spheres. Sex and intimacy are located in the private or domestic realm, in spaces of leisure, feelings, care, and personal connections. Money and economy, on the other hand, are purportedly public, located in the market and tied to labor, rationality, and impersonal (non)-relations. This course brings these spheres together, focusing on the links, exchanges, and circuits between the intimate and the economic in diverse cultural contexts across the Americas. 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. We will be centrally concerned with the relationship between economic, cultural, and political formations and with the differences race, ethnicity, nation, class, gender, and sexuality make. Throughout, we will ask, How do practices and bodies accrue value? When are intimacies--sexual and social--commoditized? How have transnational flows complicated relationships between sex and money? How do these intersections constrain and/or empower people? And, finally, who benefits from such arrangements, and who does not? |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS ANTH |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | 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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