Sex, Money, and Power: Anthropology of Intimacy and Exchange
ANTH 203
Spring 2022 not offered
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| Crosslisting:
FGSS 223 |
| Course Cluster and Certificates: 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.
Drawing on anthropological, feminist, Marxist, queer, and critical race theory, we will build
working definitions of key concepts: intimacy, division of labor, domestic labor, sexual labor, exchange, commodity, value, neoliberalism, consumer culture, and more. We'll test, apply, critique, and expand these concepts as we work through ethnographic case studies on contemporary sex work and tourism, marketing and pornography, reproduction and domestic labor, marriage, class and sexual lifestyle, labor and care work, and sex stores and commodities. We will connect economic, cultural, and political formations with race, ethnicity, nation, sexuality, class, and gender, scaling up to consider global and transnational exchanges and down to consider how these circuits impact families and communities. Throughout, we will ask: Whose labor is valued and recognized, and why? How do bodies accrue value, and in what kinds of marketplaces? When are intimacies--sexual and social--commoditized? How is race, gender, and sexuality central to these exchanges? How do new transnational circuits constrain and/or empower people? And finally, who benefits from these relations, and who does not? |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS ANTH |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (ANTH)(CSCT)(FGSS)(HRAD-MN)(STS) |
Major Readings:
Essays including Friedrich Engels, Evelyn Glenn, Arlie Hochschild, Gayle Rubin, Emma Goldman, Silvia Federici, Kathi Weeks, Angela Davis, Karl Marx, M. Jacqui Alexander, Rosemary Hennessey, bell hooks, Giovanna Franca Dalla Costa, Erica Williams.
Reading TBD, may be drawn from: George Paul Meiu, ETHNO-EROTIC ECONOMIES: SEXUALITY, MONEY, AND BELONGING IN KENYA; Elizabeth Bernstein, TEMPORARILY YOURS: INTIMACY, AUTHENTICITY, AND THE COMMERCE OF SEX; Gregory Mitchell, TOURIST ATTRACTIONS: PERFORMING RACE AND MASCULINITY IN BRAZIL¿S SEXUAL ECONOMY; Margot Weiss, TECHNIQUES OF PLEASURE: BDSM AND THE CIRCUITS OF SEXUALITY; Nicole Constable, ROMANCE ON A GLOBAL STAGE: PEN PALS, VIRTUAL ETHNOGRAPHY, AND "MAIL ORDER" MARRIAGE; Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, DOMÉSTICA: IMMIGRANT WORKERS CLEANING AND CARING IN THE SHADOWS OF AFFLUENCE; Silvia Federici, REVOLUTION AT POINT ZERO: HOUSEWORK, REPRODUCTION, AND FEMINIST STRUGGLE; Sophie Lewis, FULL SURROGACY NOW: FEMINISM AGAINST FAMILY; Svati P. Shah, STREET CORNER SECRETS: SEX, WORK, AND MIGRATION IN THE CITY OF MUMBAI; Noelle Stout, AFTER LOVE: QUEER INTIMACY AND EROTIC ECONOMIES IN POST-SOVIET CUBA; Kimberly Kay Hoang, DEALING IN DESIRE: ASIAN ASCENDANCY, WESTERN DECLINE, AND THE HIDDEN CURRENCIES OF GLOBAL SEX WORK
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Examinations and Assignments:
reading memos, collective glossary, in-class presentation, short papers, final paper/project |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Readings are under consideration; email me at mdweiss@wesleyan.edu if you would like the finalized list of course texts. |
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